I read the recent article here in which the Flock company assures us they’re taking measures to maintain our privacy.
Sure they are.
Here’s what citizens need to know. If the cameras exist, Flock will collect every scrap of data they can with those cameras. And, once they have the data about you, they will keep it. Forever. Oh, they’ll tell you that the agencies who subscribe to Flock control their data.
That’s a load of garbage, and I’ll tell you why.
No one except Flock can actually control what they do with that data they collect. Once they have it, they keep it. It will be stored across redundant data centers throughout the country. Those data centers will be running backup routines on their server storage arrays constantly. Do you imagine that those backup data sets are ever opened to delete data that has expired?
No. They will keep those backup data sets forever. And, no one will ever get to know or see what Flock does with them.
Remember, whatever change in the way their system works they make can be reversed with a few keystrokes. Again, no one but Flock controls those keyboards on which those keys will be stroked.
As long as these cameras exist, your government (all of it) knows exactly where and when you travel. You can’t even find out which agencies are mining Flock’s datasets.
According to Flock, their response is because of police abusing the system. Who among you is surprised by this? The lesson is simple. If the data exists, it will be abused.
Period.
And there’s nothing you can do to prevent it. You’d think we wouldn’t have to worry about our police abusing this information, and that contained in many other databases to which law enforcement has access (NCIC, DAVID, the list goes on).
Here’s a couple-thousand-year-old question about that thought, from the first century CE, written by a fellow called Juvenal: “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” Latin, for “Who watches the watchmen?”
The answer is, no one who counts. Otherwise, we wouldn’t even see this police abuse of our data, would we?
So, since you can’t control the police who won’t control themselves, ask yourselves why you’re giving the government another means to control you?
Don’t you think it should be the other way around? Shouldn’t we citizens be in control of government? You better believe this isn’t the case.
Jesse Ohlsson
Formerly of Centralia
