A Police Officer's View of Flock Video Surveillance - DTNS Weekend

0:01Welcome to another Daily Tech News Show Weekend Edition. Thanks, everybody, for joining us on the weekend. Recently, there's been a lot of news about the Flock Safety License Plate Readers. You might hear it called Flock Surveillance or cameras in your neighborhood or something like that. We talked about it recently on DTNS Live. And we got a really good email from Mike, who is a 17-year police officer who supervises a squad of detectives assigned to investigate violent crimes and works with these cameras and has worked in and around these cameras and used evidence that comes from these cameras and very kindly agreed to come on and talk to us about his experience.

0:45He doesn't work for Flock. He's not representing any organization in particular. These are just his own experiences working with this stuff. Mike, thanks for joining us, man. Oh, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. So tell us a little bit about, you know, first of all, your experience with these cameras. And I know you want to talk a little bit about some of the things that people may misunderstand about them. Yeah. So in recent times, the use of these cameras has really, it has increased quite a bit. And That's one part of the news reporting that is very true. They've been rolled out. Initially, they were more purchased by governments and managed by governments.

1:23But as private industry has become part of that collaboration, they sometimes will front the cost of the hardware and sell it as a subscription. On the tech side, you guys are very aware, subscription or the service technology as a service. They understood that there was a profit motive there, but also there is a public safety benefit genuinely because we were the ones who were looking into these technologies many years ago on our end. Yeah. And so you'll find them not just put in place by governments, but by community organizations and things like that. Kind of like a step up between the ring doorbell and the official ones, right?

2:02Absolutely. Again, my experience has been with all ALPRs, which is what I'll use kind of interchangeably with saying FLOC because there are many different systems, not just FLOC, that exist. But the term ALPR, or Automated License Plate Reader, is generally what we're talking about, although there are larger systems that do more video recording. They are implemented not only by private companies, but by HOAs and other community-type management companies. if you live in an apartment complex, if you live in a gated neighborhood, they might be the ones who install these systems for their own uses as well.

2:36Yeah. And these are license plate readers, but they do capture images, right? So they're not doing facial recognition or anything like that, but they are capturing images that include the car and they say they can identify make and model and stuff like that, right? They can. And I've seen some of the more advanced systems that are able to, say, type in Ford Mustang as an example. And if you give it a date and a time and a place, it will return to you what it believes to be a Ford Mustang driving past that particular license plate reader. But if you put Tom Merritt in, it's not meant to find me, basically.

3:11No, these systems don't do that. And although there might be faces or images of people caught in these cameras, incidentally, it's not something that is intended. And in my experience, It's not something that we really be able to use beyond maybe as a lead, a first step in identifying somebody or something, but it would not be near the evidentiary value or threshold that would be useful to us, at least in law enforcement, in my experience. Gotcha, gotcha. So where are these cameras generally? And should people have an expectation of privacy from these cameras? So I can't speak to where when they're put in by private organizations like HOAs are big flock customers, specifically for those types of neighborhoods.

3:56But generally, I believe that flock's policy and our policy is that they're only installed in intersections or in other areas that would otherwise be viewable to the public. So these are areas that we in the government would say, you don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy. If you were to drive down a major highway in your town and through several intersections that are lighted and pedestrian controlled, you wouldn't have an expectation of privacy that the person sitting next to you couldn't look over and read your license plate. Gotcha. So yeah, and not that a license plate reader would be very valuable pointed at my backyard, but they're not pointed at private residences.

4:31They're not pointed at backyards, in your experience anyway. No, not in my experience. And I believe that if at least it would be my opinion that if we were to, let's say, pull up a camera in doing some type of criminal investigation and notice that it was pointed in an area that it shouldn't be, we would work with whoever the vendor was who installed it to either block that area out or have them readjust it because we don't want to accidentally have evidence suppressed because we are viewing things in an area that we are not legally allowed to be in. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah, you want the evidence that you're compiling to be admissible in court, basically, or it doesn't help your case much, except maybe, like you said, as a lead.

5:13Talk a little bit about evidence standards and how that plays into the need for these kinds of devices like ALPRs. So as I mentioned, or you mentioned earlier, I've been a police officer now for 17 years and more specifically an investigative unit for the past three or four. And just in those 17 years, I've seen there has been a drastic change in what the juries and judges and trials and even the prosecutors who are bringing forth cases to prosecution, what they expect out of us in terms of evidence to prove a criminal case. So there was a time, you know, 20-ish years ago, and there are probably some 20-year veterans who might be listening to this who could tell you a time when all that we did was go to court with our written report and provide testimony.

6:06Witnesses would provide testimony, and then jury would go, yeah, that sounds right. I believe you. And that person might have been, you know, found guilty. nowadays it has been my experience especially in higher profile cases that prosecutors are looking for uh gps data they want video uh not only from us in terms of body camera uh video but also video from any surveillance that might be located near where a crime happened not even not just ones owned by the public there might be public safety cameras but also you know convenience stores and other gas stations that have video. They want GPS data if we can get it.

6:48Because as we know, not only is your cell phone collecting GPS data, probably your car is probably collecting GPS data. You might have other electronics that are interfacing with GPS data. They want all of this data because if they don't have that at trial and then a question of it comes up, it can introduce doubt into a case that a judge or a jury might find to be reasonable enough to say, well, this person isn't guilty. Where was this evidence that you didn't collect that might exist out there? So we have a duty to not only collect enough evidence to establish probable cause, hopefully prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but we have to collect all the evidence we possibly can so that we don't miss any exclusionary evidence that might set somebody free.

7:33So give me, if you can, a hypothetical, a fictional example of the kind of thing we're talking about? Because with these we're dealing with, was this car in this area, right? And how does that play out? So a very common occurrence, I shouldn't say a very common occurrence, a good hypothetical. Let's say that you are an individual is walking down the street on their way from their house to a convenience store to buy a soda. And in the process, a car pulls up next to them very quickly, somebody jumps out of the passenger seat, snatches a purse or a backpack from our victim, it was back out of the car and speeds off.

8:13Now, in that moment of panic, that person may or may not, the victim may or may not get a good description of that vehicle. Maybe it's dark, or maybe they're just scared and they say, oh, I think it was a dark sedan. Or I couldn't really tell, but I know it had a taillight out. So what we would do then is we can go back to the license plate readers that might be in that area or around that area. And we can start to look at vehicles that maybe start to match that description based on what was captured there by time and place or in specific to the license plate reader. If they say, as it drove off, I saw that the first three digits in the license plate were ABC.

8:52Now we can search for the specific digits and the license plate, the system can return to us plates that match that description. And I think this is important for people to understand. And the ALPR data that shows that car was there is not the thing that makes you guilty. It's the thing that proves, well, that car was in the area. And you have to combine that with other evidence, right? Exactly. We are very careful to say a lot of these softwares and systems are lead generators. They're what we use to start to identify suspects, persons of interest, vehicles of interest, areas of interest. but they are not or should not be used exclusively as the driving force behind probable cause to have somebody arrested and brought to trial.

9:38Okay. So I think that helps explain to people who are like, well, wait, this camera is spying on me. Why does it need to know where I'm going? And then the question because, okay, fine, you need to know when that dark sedan, And if that dark sedan, you need to be able to prove, I should say, that that dark sedan was at that intersection near where the incident happened. But how can you make sure that my license plate data isn't going to be misused? So all major departments, good ones that have strong policies and procedures in place, should have security audits and regulations that govern how these systems are used and the way that people access them.

10:20And that's true of all criminal justice systems, all versions of databases that we access that we either compile the data ourself, meaning that we're the originators of the technology and we own it. Or if when we go to third party vendors and we get that data, all of those things still adhere to CIGIC standards that say how we access them, why we access them, who does the accessing and what information is then used going forward, because at some point, most of it is going to become public record as a result of the trial, assuming we get to that point. Yeah, and I think that was the one part of a lot of these stories that did raise my alarm is that there were descriptions of improper use of multi-factor authentication where improper access wasn't being granted, but someone who was malicious might be able to figure out how to get into these systems.

11:13What kinds of safeguards are there usually to make sure that that doesn't happen? Is it part of the training or is it a department by department thing? It is a department by department thing. And in one. I don't want to say issue, but one fact that that doesn't come up enough, I think, when these stories are reported is that when people say the police, they tend to think of us as one all encompassing being that that moves as one unit and has the same brain. and hands and heart and everything. The fact is, is that I believe there's somewhere in the neighborhood of like 750 ,000 different departments in the country, and they employ hundreds of thousands of different police officers.

11:54Some as big as, you know, NYPD, which I think has like 30 ,000 officers, and some as small as a department that might have a chief and, you know, a deputy or sheriff and a deputy. And so really what the safeguards need to be is implemented by the regulations that those departments use. And at bigger departments, progressive departments, they're going to do that on their own because they want to be ahead of the curve and they want to set best practices. And the smaller ones hopefully look to the bigger ones. Or in some cases, you have state regulations or federal regulations as to how they should be operated.

12:26But ultimately, those regulations do need to be in place because, again, if we disuse evidence, it does us no good as the police because it becomes inadmissible and gets oppressed. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, for citizens who are concerned about this, I think you want to make sure that look into what the regulations are and, you know, make sure that not only your local law enforcement agency is following them, which you can ask through your local elected representatives to look into, but also that the companies that they are contracting with, whether it's Flock or somebody else, are providing proper security on their end as well.

13:04And if they aren't, then maybe you could say like, hey, maybe find a company that does put in proper security. Any other thoughts that you have to advise citizens if they're concerned about this, like what they should do, what they should look into? I would like to say I'm not here to blanketly say that this technology is absolutely essential and we have to have it. As policing progresses and as the types of evidence that we have to collect changes, we have to change our techniques in order to gather that evidence. But we are so ultimately answerable to the citizenry, to the public. And I think what you often say, and I agree with you completely, is that too often we try to draw parallels from new technology to older standards.

13:46And sometimes those really work, but sometimes they really don't. And we're seeing that progression. I just know specifically, just to speak, something that's changed over my time here as a police officer is when I started and you were arrested, we could search your cell phone incident to arrest, which is an exemption to the Fourth Amendment that says that when you get arrested and we're taking you to jail, we're allowed to search you because we need to check for weapons and other contraband and things like that. That makes perfect sense. Well, your phone was seen as what they called a digital container.

14:16It was just another pocket that you had. It just happened to be electronic. And we were allowed to search it. over time, that standard has drastically changed. And that's because the public came forward and said, no, we feel like this is something different and we need to change and adapt to how these things are done. That's not to say that we still can't search your phone at some point, but there are different legal standards we have to meet. It's the same with any new technology. And I would just encourage people rather than blanketly coming out and saying, I don't like this new technology. It sounds bad.

14:45But to say, is there a legitimate use for this? How can we properly regulate it and audit it so that the evidence that it does collect can help us solve lots of crimes, but it also protects people from having their privacy invaded in a way that they don't feel is right. Yeah. No, it's a don't throw the baby out with the bathwater kind of problem. You know, you get you need to everybody needs to figure out which parts of the baby and which parts of the bathwater. That's the that's the thing. Mike, thank you so much for helping us understand this from your perspective. It's incredibly valuable. I learned things talking to you now just about the evolution of all of this.

15:20I really appreciate it. Absolutely. I'm happy to finally be able to contribute after near 20 years of listening to you guys. Well, thanks, man. I very much appreciate that, too. Normally, I tell people to promote something or send folks somewhere, but I don't know that that really applies in this case. Is there any last words or anything you want to throw out there for folks? uh no i would just encourage people uh especially when you hear these types of stories and they often are reported and not on dkns's end certainly not i find you guys to be some of the most well-reasoned and well-intentioned and informed uh distributors of this type of information but with something that sounds uh curious to you is to seek out some more information on it and and see what legitimate uses there are and and as i said before if it's if it's something that you feel strongly about, we are answerable to you.

16:13The government answers to you and just make your position down. Fantastic. Mike, thanks again, man. Absolutely. Thank you. And thank you folks for supporting us at patreon.com slash DTNS and DTNS.substack.com. You get these shows ad free and you get them a little earlier sometimes than other folks. Appreciate that. We'll be back on Monday with the news. Until then, everybody have a good weekend. Talk to you soon.

16:49The DTNS family of podcasts, helping each other understand. Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.