Flock, the double edged sword

Photo-Illustration: Jobanny Cabrera; Getty Images

Flock, the double edged sword, is here and will not go away. In the right hands, it's good, in the wrong, it's 1984 as the tech's formidable and ... hackable as no system's invulnerable.

This Is Flock’s AI Search Tool for Cops

WIRED rebuilt Flock’s latest search tool from code the company sends to a police officer’s browser.
Its AI can keep watch across multiple cameras for anyone fitting a written description.

Flock Safety’s latest search tools give police several ways to find people on camera, not just the license plates on their cars. The capabilities sit inside a suite of software now at the center of dozens of police stalking cases. WIRED collected and analyzed that software and created a mock-up of what officers see when interacting with the system.

Among the tools is an AI-powered watch list. An officer can cordon off an area of a city and make the cameras inside it run a continuous, automated search for anyone fitting a written description.

Over the past year, Flock has faced backlash against its technology. Police departments across the country have canceled contracts, and city councils that once approved Flock have quietly voted the cameras back out. Two members of Congress wrote to Flock CEO Garrett Langley after a Texas deputy searched more than 83,000 cameras for a woman who had an abortion. And Illinois found the company had let federal immigration agents access state camera data in violation of state law.

Flock answered in August with a package of changes that shortens the default period over which data are retained, requires case codes for every search, and adds automated auditing to catch officers misusing the tool—all of which Flock says will be mandatory by the end of the year. WIRED examined the code those promises run on, but much of what governs a search happens on Flock’s servers. Crucially, the analysis found that Flock’s guardrails may discourage some abusive uses of its tools, and will record them, but will not stop them.

Panopticon/rev II

The great hidden is, does Flock sell it's dataset to others as the amount of money they could get goes beyond calculation. Everyone has a price. The question to ask its ... what is theirs?