Driver Ticketed for No Insurance Just Because Flock (YC 2017) Said She Didn't(www.techdirt.com)
73 pointsby HotGarbage6 hours ago9 comments
  • ourmandave5 hours ago
    This is 100% cop's fault.

    She presented a current insurance coverage card to the officer and he still ticketed her because Flock said she wasn't covered.

    What would have happened if she showed the current coverage using the insurance app on her phone?

    • caconym_4 hours ago
      Why should a police officer trust a scrap of paper somebody could easily have faked vs. a massive networked software system that claims to have the up to date ground truth? What if, for instance, the victim got her insurance cards and then stopped making her monthly payments?

      (Incidentally, I assume paper insurance cards will cease to be considered valid before too long, and handing your unlocked phone to a cop will be coercively normalized.)

      Cops aren't intellectually inclined (or equipped, for that matter) to second guess a surveillance tool that's showing them an unequivocal answer to a question. This is 100% on Flock for selling a tool to users they know won't reliably question its output, despite whatever bullshit CYA terms and conditions come attached to it, and then failing to ensure that its output is correct.

      • ourmandave3 hours ago
        Ignoring the legal document that's supposed to be proof and going with the system is following your phone navigation into a lake level bad.
        • caconym_2 hours ago
          The thing you need to realize is that reality is the way it is and as a result cops are going to behave the way they do and there's nothing we can do about it in the near to mid term. You appear to think what the cop did here is stupid, and that means you think many cops are stupid, because we've seen far worse examples of "surveillance platform trumps reality according to cop" stories in the news recently. And if you think cops are stupid in this particular way then it would be hard not to agree with me as far as: they can not, in aggregate, be trusted with access to surveillance tools whose outputs are not 100% reliable.

          So whose responsibility really is that? Should the governments that purchase surveillance tools, and the companies that sell them, be held accountable for the (predictable) harms they enable? Or should we ignore them, ignore the fact that we all knew this was going to happen and the fact that it keeps fucking happening, and just blame the individual cops? (which, as we all know, amounts to nothing.)

          The fabric of our society continues to be eroded by these big moneyed interests because we (the public, the parts of our government that are supposed to protect us from predation) continually and happily swallow all the disingenuous mealy-mouthed bullshit they spew to deflect past, present, and future responsibility for predictable harms. If we keep swallowing then we are headed for bad times. I am done swallowing.

      • throw0101a27 minutes ago
        > Why should a police officer trust a scrap of paper somebody could easily have faked vs. a massive networked software system that claims to have the up to date ground truth?

        Why is the "scrap of paper" a problem now after they've been around for several decades (as has Photoshop and colour printers). It's a legal document: if the cop thinks it's fake they can call the insurance company and confirm.

        In Georgia, where one of the incidents took place, the cops can lookup insurance status in real-time:

        > The GEICS system works through required insurer reporting. Every insurance company doing business in Georgia must notify the state when a policy is issued, renewed, canceled, or lapses. Companies report these changes within 30 days. The Department of Driver Services maintains this data and makes it available to law enforcement statewide.

        * https://www.bubbahead.com/blog/can-police-pull-you-over-for-...

      • downrightmike4 hours ago
        Paper is how it has always been. If 71% of the calls flock sends cops on are false positives, that means that 71% time is time cops aren't doing their jobs and we are less safe.
  • cgearhart5 hours ago
    This has been going on for awhile. There was a fella that got flagged by facial recognition in a casino. He was hauled back by security and arrested by the police for trespassing. Even though he gave police his license. They thought it was more likely a fake id than than the “99% match” from the software was wrong. And no accountability afterwards; no change in policy or training.
  • inerte5 hours ago
    Oh so Flock doesn't just record / monitor stuff, but while doing so, it proactively tells the police a car worth stopping is on the street? How did the cop know how to stop the car?
  • octol5 hours ago
    This reminds me of the opening scene of Back to the Future when the robotic arm dumps more dog food in to an already overflowing bowl. Can we coin this sort of technological outcome “feeding Einstein”?
  • schainks5 hours ago
    This is infuriating.

    A modern police department should actively discipline officers that are too lazy to run the necessary checks to prove the human's paperwork is legit, especially when they have a computer that can do it for them right in front of them!

    Cities adding ALPRs should also be holding the ALPR company financially liable for _every single mistake_ these systems make.

    • ourmandave4 hours ago
      He didn't need to run any check. She showed him a current insurance coverage card and he ignored it.

      I don't even want to blame Flock for this level of incompetence.

    • wat100005 hours ago
      There a frightening lack of accountability all the way up the chain. The officer doesn’t care because their bosses don’t hold them accountable. The chief doesn’t hold the bosses accountable for that. The local government doesn’t hold the chief accountable. And ultimately the voters don’t hold the local government accountable.
      • brg4 hours ago
        It’s worse than that. In every jurisdiction, the police department is a revenue generating organization. Overtime, beats, and promotions are rewarded to the officers who pull in the most revenue from tickets and citations. You can check this for yourself. Officer of the year in many jurisdictions are those who have the highest parking tickets written, the most DUI arrests and impounds, or the most traffic citations. In general are not those with the most convictions, public service records, or positive feedback from the community. The accountability the organization and their reporting chain has is to revenue, not to the law.
        • Gibbon12 hours ago
          My belief is we should require all fines and fees be turned over to the social security administration.
      • schainks5 hours ago
        A literal bozo explosion going on in some cities / law enforcement organizations, and the _lowest_ layer has been handed Big Brother tech and told, "Just do what the computer tells you to do".

        So, voters have to ban this tech or get a bill passed that makes the company responsible financially for screw ups. Is there a third option?

      • ToucanLoucan5 hours ago
        You can continue that all the way up to the President, a 37-felony convict.

        It feels like every new innovation in our society now is just a new way to diffuse responsibility.

        • schainks5 hours ago
          Well, the US is the most litigious country on earth, so that tracks.
        • wat100004 hours ago
          In theory, the highest and last level of accountability is the voters. The system isn't perfect, but it's still democratic enough that this sort of thing couldn't happen without the approval or at least indifference of a big chunk of voters.
          • ToucanLoucan28 minutes ago
            I don't think you can call voters a level of accountability given how trivial it is for voters to be lied to. Like politicians lie constantly, not even in the weasely "well I said this, not this" sort of thing, I mean they just lie. They tell easily dis-proven lies, on camera, with no accountability from the media or any kind of overseeing entity.
  • righthand5 hours ago
    Gee…I wonder why no one likes cops? They’re all like the scarecrow: “If I only had a brain…”
  • ViktorRay5 hours ago
    Here’s an interesting quote from Paul Graham about Flock. Paul Graham co-founded Y Combinator and created Hacker News. Since Flock was at a Y Combinator batch, Paul Graham provided valuable advice to them and makes money from them.

    Quote in the link below:

    https://x.com/paulg/status/1493719302725197825

    • downrightmike4 hours ago
      never going to tiwtter
    • MonkeyClub4 hours ago
      The top reply there goes right for the gut:

      "Rebranding surveillance capitalism as ethically driven is one of the more cynical takes I've seen".

  • rolph5 hours ago
    so laterally, this is an exploitation vector, that allows manipulation of LEO perception, and engineering of an encounter. just wait until someone scales it up.
  • matroxmemories5 hours ago
    I find that hard to believe. I know several people that drive trucks and motorcycles with fake registration stickers from their other cars, and without insurance, and never been flagged by flock remotely or even alerting an office that’s behind them.
    • schainks5 hours ago
      "I know people flouting the law in front of ALPRs, why aren't they getting caught?"

      That still means these systems of humans working with machines are broken, does it not?

    • mhb5 hours ago
      You find this one example hard to believe because you have several sort of counterexamples? Weak.
    • BeetleB4 hours ago
      I know several people who drive above the speed limit and never get pulled over/ticketed for it. Therefore I don't believe any claims about people being ticketed for speeding. It just doesn't happen.
    • aetch5 hours ago
      Those aren’t counter examples, that shows that flock is useless
      • matroxmemories5 hours ago
        It shows that what we’ve been told, that flock does not do active policing of basic moving violation type infractions, is probably correct since I know people driving/riding with invalid reg and no insurance for years in the heavily monitored SF Bay Area.
    • jamiek885 hours ago
      All you’ve done here is show further that flock fucks up - which makes your ‘hard to believe’ pretty hard to believe.