Chief Adam Ferguson addressed concerns about automated license plate reading system, as a packed house questioned whether WLPD really understood the stakes with the AI data being collected.
The Facebook comment section on this article is weird. Accounts from far away or with very few apparent connections to other accounts. A guy with anti-Muslim militia vibes power-posting. Another account with post after post of what looks to be AI generated pictures. Not a lot of what looks to be organic local engagement.
Thanks, Dave. Nice article with some great supplements. I look forward to reading those.
It was a good meeting. I'm glad that everyone came out.
The first order of business is transparency. One initial action item is for the WLPD to share their contract with Flock (and any other similar vendors) so the public can review what type of agreement the City is entering into on behalf of the Public.
Another one would be to release the current policies that govern all of the technology systems that are in place and utilized by WLPD. I am sure there are systems we are unaware of.
From there, we can study and ask more questions, resulting in legislative action from the City Council. They were there, as you reported, so they know that ask is coming.
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Quick question: It wasn't clear to me in the text, but I assume this was Mayor Easter's quote?
“I think our police have deployed the technology properly, and I trust the West Lafayette Police Department with the work they do and the care they take. … I think Chief Ferguson is committed to following up with questions tonight and being transparent.”
To that I would say, "Sure. But let's verify that trust."
Where is our Legilature ? Everyone seems to more & better laws & rules these spy cameras. Why don’t we have a system in place to monitor these cameras & the people that have access to the info they record. Seems to me we have the cart before the horse. Not surprising,given our Legislature & their continuing interest in getting rich,not serving the public.
I don't think you get to complain about Flock cameras if you have a Ring doorbell or a Facebook account.
Cops must be dismayed about this uproar, having been thoroughly trained that any bystander can record them doing their jobs, in personally identifiable detail, because things happening in public places have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Cops that think the public supports them tend to be good cops, cops that think they are on their own are more likely to resort to force.
That said, if we can leverage outrage to get lasting privacy protections, in the form of a constitutional amendment that even the Roberts court respects, I'll bring the hacksaw and spray paint myself.
Agree with you re: Ring cameras, but not re social media accounts. In the latter people choose to broadcast their information, but in the former people are recorded without their consent. I think the "recorded" part is the really the important distinguishing word there. Yes, you don't expect privacy when you're out walking in public. But if a person were following you around with a camera and said "Hey, you have no expectation of privacy" I doubt you'd just shrug that off. It's in the large scale aggregation of all this data, the selling and reselling without consent, that we go from not being private to being actively surveilled.
(Disclaimer: I live near a proud MAGA cop and so I try to imagine any such technology in the hands of a person who has an almost unfettered authority to kill coupled with an entitled authoritarian mindset and really poor judgment and risk assessment.)
A pause to somberly agree that a MAGA cop is a real wild card. I do not understand why that is tolerated, when we so closely monitor teachers and other public employees for a whiff of political bias.
I must firmly reiterate that social media firms are devoted to using you (again, general "you") to violate your neighbor's privacy. One can assiduously avoid signing up for any of it and still be identified (what was the point of tagging people?) and tracked and fed into their analytics.
We surrender privacy to get free email, deter porch pirates, and reduce crime involving cars. I'm genuinely confused why the last of those is so much more objectionable. Would we be okay inserting a private firm between the data and the police? Seems to me that's what Flock tried to do, but like so many other innovations, it's the second mouse that gets the cheese.
I'm more interested in why people (maybe not you) bring up the potential for these data to be sold to business interests. As Chief Ferguson points out, this is not high-res data. Flock can probably tell you a stolen car is likely to be on one of the other side of the river. Any interested firm could learn a lot more by placing an invisible camera across from a church parking lot.
Europeans seemed to react strongly to Google Street View, as did tin hats like me. Did Google really discard from their internal databases all the license plate numbers it so neatly pixelates (I.e., their algorithm works pretty darn well)? No one seriously thinks any consent was given in these public areas. You don't need police access to license plate databases if you can associate plate numbers with driveway addresses.
I agree that there's a lot that's out of our hands already. For me, though, there's a bright line when it comes to the people whom SCOTUS has granted impunity to kill.
And yes, a large part of why I don't trust them is their support of Trump. It's not just the MAGA cop in my neighborhood, it's every major police organization in the country that endorsed Trump in 2024, it's the sheriffs who refuse to enforce gun laws, the white supremacists in ICE. This tells me that law enforcement writ large is a domain that has been overpopulated with authoritarian conspiracy nuts. Who are, again, armed and permitted to kill with an "I thought he might be going for a gun" get out of jail free card.
I like to think WLPD is better than that, but I also don't delude myself into thinking the overt MAGA cop is the only one on that force.
That's fair and probably representative of those on the left (including me). Even if, as I suspect, police mostly find it useful for property crime, it can certainly be used inappropriately in dragnet operations and that needs to be stopped.
It's interesting that so many on the right are also ripshit about this. (Wrong forum, I know.) Are they worried about future denazification? Patronizing gay bars? Access to ammo? If it's the first, the solution is simple: stop attending the white nationalist megachurch, bubba.
As to your question about the sale of these data, I look at a company like Palantir, an overtly fascist AI company whose flawed AI model was part of the targeting and murder of school children in Iran. I wonder what harm they can do by adding these lo-res data to all their other hi-res data, what kind of "AI solutions" they could then sell to ICE.
Focusing on Flock instead of Palantir is a useful distraction for the latter. We live in an age of malignant distraction. Those schoolgirls would still be alive if it were not so important to distract us from Jeffrey Epstein.
Time to oust any elected officials, regardless of party, that are pro-Flock and therefore pro-ICE and pro-domestic-violence
The Facebook comment section on this article is weird. Accounts from far away or with very few apparent connections to other accounts. A guy with anti-Muslim militia vibes power-posting. Another account with post after post of what looks to be AI generated pictures. Not a lot of what looks to be organic local engagement.
That platform is a wasteland.
"A comprehensive look, giving myself to AI using ALPR data, captured moments in time, not a comprehensive picture of who I am or where I was going"
This guy sounds pretty naive about what AI models are capable of.
Thanks, Dave. Nice article with some great supplements. I look forward to reading those.
It was a good meeting. I'm glad that everyone came out.
The first order of business is transparency. One initial action item is for the WLPD to share their contract with Flock (and any other similar vendors) so the public can review what type of agreement the City is entering into on behalf of the Public.
Another one would be to release the current policies that govern all of the technology systems that are in place and utilized by WLPD. I am sure there are systems we are unaware of.
From there, we can study and ask more questions, resulting in legislative action from the City Council. They were there, as you reported, so they know that ask is coming.
---
Quick question: It wasn't clear to me in the text, but I assume this was Mayor Easter's quote?
“I think our police have deployed the technology properly, and I trust the West Lafayette Police Department with the work they do and the care they take. … I think Chief Ferguson is committed to following up with questions tonight and being transparent.”
To that I would say, "Sure. But let's verify that trust."
Yes, that attribution was dropped. I’ll fix that. Thanks.
No problem. It made sense, but I wanted to be sure. Thank you, again.
None of us will be held accountable for not apprehending the criminal that destroyed someone's property or life.
Hello GJones. Thanks for the comment. I believe you are saying that you place the value of the surveillance above the value privacy, is that correct?
Where is our Legilature ? Everyone seems to more & better laws & rules these spy cameras. Why don’t we have a system in place to monitor these cameras & the people that have access to the info they record. Seems to me we have the cart before the horse. Not surprising,given our Legislature & their continuing interest in getting rich,not serving the public.
I don't think you get to complain about Flock cameras if you have a Ring doorbell or a Facebook account.
Cops must be dismayed about this uproar, having been thoroughly trained that any bystander can record them doing their jobs, in personally identifiable detail, because things happening in public places have no reasonable expectation of privacy. Cops that think the public supports them tend to be good cops, cops that think they are on their own are more likely to resort to force.
That said, if we can leverage outrage to get lasting privacy protections, in the form of a constitutional amendment that even the Roberts court respects, I'll bring the hacksaw and spray paint myself.
Agree with you re: Ring cameras, but not re social media accounts. In the latter people choose to broadcast their information, but in the former people are recorded without their consent. I think the "recorded" part is the really the important distinguishing word there. Yes, you don't expect privacy when you're out walking in public. But if a person were following you around with a camera and said "Hey, you have no expectation of privacy" I doubt you'd just shrug that off. It's in the large scale aggregation of all this data, the selling and reselling without consent, that we go from not being private to being actively surveilled.
(Disclaimer: I live near a proud MAGA cop and so I try to imagine any such technology in the hands of a person who has an almost unfettered authority to kill coupled with an entitled authoritarian mindset and really poor judgment and risk assessment.)
A pause to somberly agree that a MAGA cop is a real wild card. I do not understand why that is tolerated, when we so closely monitor teachers and other public employees for a whiff of political bias.
I must firmly reiterate that social media firms are devoted to using you (again, general "you") to violate your neighbor's privacy. One can assiduously avoid signing up for any of it and still be identified (what was the point of tagging people?) and tracked and fed into their analytics.
We surrender privacy to get free email, deter porch pirates, and reduce crime involving cars. I'm genuinely confused why the last of those is so much more objectionable. Would we be okay inserting a private firm between the data and the police? Seems to me that's what Flock tried to do, but like so many other innovations, it's the second mouse that gets the cheese.
I'm more interested in why people (maybe not you) bring up the potential for these data to be sold to business interests. As Chief Ferguson points out, this is not high-res data. Flock can probably tell you a stolen car is likely to be on one of the other side of the river. Any interested firm could learn a lot more by placing an invisible camera across from a church parking lot.
Europeans seemed to react strongly to Google Street View, as did tin hats like me. Did Google really discard from their internal databases all the license plate numbers it so neatly pixelates (I.e., their algorithm works pretty darn well)? No one seriously thinks any consent was given in these public areas. You don't need police access to license plate databases if you can associate plate numbers with driveway addresses.
TLDR: cow's out of the barn, people.
I agree that there's a lot that's out of our hands already. For me, though, there's a bright line when it comes to the people whom SCOTUS has granted impunity to kill.
And yes, a large part of why I don't trust them is their support of Trump. It's not just the MAGA cop in my neighborhood, it's every major police organization in the country that endorsed Trump in 2024, it's the sheriffs who refuse to enforce gun laws, the white supremacists in ICE. This tells me that law enforcement writ large is a domain that has been overpopulated with authoritarian conspiracy nuts. Who are, again, armed and permitted to kill with an "I thought he might be going for a gun" get out of jail free card.
I like to think WLPD is better than that, but I also don't delude myself into thinking the overt MAGA cop is the only one on that force.
That's fair and probably representative of those on the left (including me). Even if, as I suspect, police mostly find it useful for property crime, it can certainly be used inappropriately in dragnet operations and that needs to be stopped.
It's interesting that so many on the right are also ripshit about this. (Wrong forum, I know.) Are they worried about future denazification? Patronizing gay bars? Access to ammo? If it's the first, the solution is simple: stop attending the white nationalist megachurch, bubba.
As to your question about the sale of these data, I look at a company like Palantir, an overtly fascist AI company whose flawed AI model was part of the targeting and murder of school children in Iran. I wonder what harm they can do by adding these lo-res data to all their other hi-res data, what kind of "AI solutions" they could then sell to ICE.
Focusing on Flock instead of Palantir is a useful distraction for the latter. We live in an age of malignant distraction. Those schoolgirls would still be alive if it were not so important to distract us from Jeffrey Epstein.
(To be clear, the “you” in my example is the generic you, not specifically you)
Being videoed overtly by someone would be upsetting to me, but covertly would not. There isn't much I can do about either.
Might as well just start openly picking my nose.