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Missouri governor orders guardrails on Flock cameras and ALPRs

40 points lenerdenator 40 minutes ago 15 comments

nemomarx 28 minutes ago | parent

This all seems like good and sensible restrictions. Cutting down on how long data can be stored helps with privacy in an cases, and making sure the data isn't being sold or shared with anyone but the state should at least cut off some misuse from private orgs.

jfengel 21 minutes ago | parent

The fact that it came down to a governor to set these standards means it's going to be subject to even more abuse.

It was up to Flock to figure these things out before they deployed it. Instead we've got fifty separate states coming up with guesses as to the needed level of control, and each of them surely forgetting something. That's what happens when you roll your own security.

We now will have 50 separate state police forces looking for ways around the restrictions. And they will find them, because they are far more flexible in finding holes than governments are at patching them.

tiahura 9 minutes ago | parent

When I recognize someone at the mall, how long should I be able to remember that?

petcat 24 minutes ago | parent

Go even further and just adopt the New Hampshire law which doesn't even allow "non-hit" license plate images or records to be transferred off the camera device itself and must be deleted locally within 3 minutes.

wiskinator 21 minutes ago | parent

should also mandate that the license plate data that constitutes a 'hit' must be sent and stored at rest encrypted so that someone can't break into a camera and see who's beeing searched for.

JumpCrisscross 20 minutes ago | parent

> so that someone can't break into a camera and see who's beeing searched for

You know what, if a camera maker is incompetent enough to do this I'm fine leaving it as a back-end for figuring out what the surveillance state is up to.

daeken 14 minutes ago | parent

Even better, honestly: a large bloom filter for the data, such that the likelihood of a collision is relatively low, then send it up to the server for a check. That way there are a small number of erroneous potential hits, but the list never needs to exist on-device.

DaSHacka 13 minutes ago | parent

Neat, had no idea this was a law in NH. This is exactly what I've been arguing in favor of for years; the issue with flock is primarily that it treats everyone as a criminal by default, profiling everything you do even when you've done nothing wrong.

All you'd need after enforcing all cameras be 'hit-based' is also mandating warrants to enact a search, and you've significantly neutered the issue with them in their current state.

tclancy 6 minutes ago | parent

Well, I'll be damned, we finally did something smart in our state legislature. This definitely feels like a "The worst person you know made a good point", but that's me assuming Jason Osborne was in favor.

Cider9986 7 minutes ago | parent

[delayed]

fortran77 7 minutes ago | parent

Restricting private use of ALPR cameras? I don't like that. I like the protection our ALPR cameras give us. I moved to Missouri recently because I got sick of the crime and corruption in California. I think these "guardrails" go too far.

petcat 3 minutes ago | parent

seems like a troll comment baiting people to shit on Missouri for some reason

calvinmorrison 3 minutes ago | parent

fundementally we need to rethink what rights there are in public. We could start with "make photography totally illegal in public, or rewrite what we mean 'expectation of privacy' or what rules we have because the technology demands this.