Cops Searched Thousands of Flock Cameras for Reasons of 'LMAO,' 'IDK,' 'Hehe,' And 'Asdfg' (eff.org)
- Reference: 0185653422
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/09/15/0032227/cops-searched-thousands-of-flock-cameras-for-reasons-of-lmao-idk-hehe-and-asdfg
- Source link: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/09/high-crime-lmao-how-cops-are-treating-mass-surveillance-joke?ref=404media.co
> Last summer, a cop with the Lake County, Indiana Sheriff's Department used Flock's surveillance search engine to look for a license plate across more than 19,000 cameras in 1,558 cities and towns. The cop's stated reason for the search, according to a record of Flock's system, was "LMAO."
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> The cop is one of dozens who put gibberish, jokes, or other nonsense into Flock's "reason" box, highlighting the casualness and lack of care some cops have when searching an incredibly powerful surveillance system. This is on top of the thousands upon thousands of cops who simply wrote something like "investigation," "test," or left the box blank as their search "reason," according to a new [2]analysis by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and shared with 404 Media. EFF's investigation found cops across dozens of jurisdictions writing "LMAO," "LOL," "Hehe," "Haha," "idk," "blah," "TBD," and "robbery I don't remember the case number leave me alone" in Flock's "reason" box for searches.
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> They found cops writing "idiot," "fuck this new search engine," "dickhead," "shithead," and "WEIRD KID" in the reason box. And they found an entire class of police button mashers, who ran searches for reasons of "asdfg," "gyghkkghghjkghjk," "jhjhjkhj," "jkhhkjhjk," "nmbvcbnm," and so on and so forth. The searches came from police departments across the country from 2023 through late 2025, when Flock changed how the "reason" box in its search system functions...
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> Each time a search is performed, a record of it is saved in the Flock system, which can be obtained by the public using government records requests. These audit logs show hundreds of thousands of searches of the system; after 404 Media and other news outlets used these types of logs to show police using the Flock system to look for undocumented immigrants [3]on behalf of ICE , a [4]woman in Texas who had an abortion , and protesters, cops were warned by government surveillance centers to be " [5]as vague as permissible " about the reasons for their searches...
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> A police department said it investigated a cop who wrote "driving around being weird" in the reason field but found it was for "legitimate public safety purposes."
If a police chief "stood in front of a city council and asked for permission to install hundreds of cameras just so his officers could investigate the high crime of 'haha,' they would be laughed out of the room," [6]argues the EFF blog post , calling this proof that agencies can't be trusted to oversee themselves.
But judges aren't being asked to authorize searches or review evidence, which the EFF post argues shows laws and courts haven't caught up yet with a new technology. Whatever auditing happens is clearly "deficient," the EFF warns, and while many jurisdictions require by law an actual reason for searches, "this keeps happening because police use automated license plate readers as a convenient shortcut around constitutional privacy safeguards." The EFF sees police officers "making a mockery of our civil liberties" by logging reasons like "LOL", "LMAO", "sexy", and "idk" while accessing sensitive location data.
In fact, they argue the warrant-less databases fostered a culture of abuse that "allowed police to treat a mass surveillance network like their own personal search engine, permitting the tracking of the movements of everyday citizens for [7]low-level complaints , [8]personal whims , and sometimes, seemingly, for the lols ."
> Flock Safety claims it has improved its system by requiring officers to select from a [9]dropdown list of crimes before running a search-but that only makes it easier for officers to hide improper searches behind the veneer of uniformity. The system does not require proof that the dropdown reason actually matches the true purpose of the search... Since this update, officers are no longer required to type out why they are digging through a driver's movement history, and instead can select a pre-packaged option like "Traffic infraction" or "Other" in half a second...
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> Mass surveillance is incompatible with a free society, and especially so when the people with access to this data are treating it like a joke. This ALPR mass surveillance — the indiscriminate, continuous collection and retention of location data on every driver, regardless of suspicion — should not exist. But because it does, EFF continues to urge courts and state legislatures to immediately step in and impose strict, enforceable restrictions to rein in this abuse. At an absolute minimum, this means mandating rigid data deletion deadlines and an ironclad warrant requirement.
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> If police want the power to track a person's movements, they must be required to convince a judge with evidence and probable cause. They should not be able to bypass the Constitution with a search for "haha."
[1] https://www.404media.co/cops-search-thousands-of-flock-cameras-for-reasons-of-lmao-idk-hehe-and-asdfg/
[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/09/high-crime-lmao-how-cops-are-treating-mass-surveillance-joke
[3] https://www.404media.co/ice-taps-into-nationwide-ai-enabled-camera-network-data-shows/
[4] https://www.404media.co/a-texas-cop-searched-license-plate-cameras-nationwide-for-a-woman-who-got-an-abortion/
[5] https://www.404media.co/police-told-to-be-as-vague-as-permissible-about-why-they-use-flock/
[6] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/09/high-crime-lmao-how-cops-are-treating-mass-surveillance-joke
[7] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/05/more-license-plate-reader-mission-creep-school-residency-verification-background
[8] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2026/09/11/new-flock-misuse-cases-police-arrests-firings-investigation/91691881007/
[9] https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/offense-type-dropdown-a-simpler-more-accurate-audit
Lock them up or fire them, at least (Score:5, Insightful)
doctors & nurses get canned for looking at someone's chart if they're not directly associated with providing care
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The system needs to be dismantled. The cameras need to be removed or destroyed. Hand-slaps for everyone won't work. Cops don't get fired or disciplined like normal employees and anyone who says different isn't paying attention.
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Doctors and nurses are subject to laws specific to those records. Police, not so much. Yet. They should be, and eventually they will be, but not yet. Especially when dealing with a private company's services.
Qualified immunity has to go (Score:3)
Many other countries do not have it and they are not dens of lawlessness.
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The police will pitch a hissy fit and threaten a work stoppage.
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[1]Don't threaten me with a good time [nytimes.com].
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/02/opinion/half-the-police-force-quit-crime-dropped.html
tie it to a case number (Score:4, Interesting)
This seems like a very obvious and straightforward requirement, force the officer to select an active case to tie the inquiry to.
And at the same time display a warning that selecting an unrelated case "will result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination".
Make them just as accountable as any other security system in the pirvate sector.
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> Make them just as accountable as any other security system in the pirvate sector.
That's how accountable they are now. Databases of PII you have to pay to access are just as accountable. There's a field, you enter something into the field or not , you click the button and get the report. For example Equifax's service The Work Number has a field for a tracking number but it's completely optional. I can put anything or nothing there when I use it. (As a rule, I put in nothing, because I am not trying to leak the slightest bit of unnecessary information to Equifax. It's bad enough you have t
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Oh yeah I forgot to mention MERLIN, that was what I wanted to write about first. You can buy access to MERLIN via a data broker if you are in any industry which has a legitimate business interest. The prime example is debt collection but there's also PIs and mortgage officers and so on that can look up that data. All you really need to get access is a business license and a credit card. It doesn't let you look up SSNs, but you can look up a ton of shit even without one, and a metric fuckton with. So basical
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How do you propose that this would work? Would Flock have access to each police department's database of active cases? That would be a cure worse than the disease.
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"How do you propose that this would work? Would Flock have access to each police department's database of active cases"
I imagine it could be made to work the way a federated login works, like how you can use your Gmail / FB / Twitter account to login almost anywhere without the site you're trying to login to knowing any details beyond your userID
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Flock doesn't need access to the police database. There just needs to be somebody at each police dept that reviews all Flock searches for their dept, make sure they match a legitimate case, and be able to bring down punishments - specifically any officer grossly misusing Flock system, even once, should be immediate fired with any and all related credentials revoked.
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> How do you propose that this would work?
Cop puts in a case number. Foreign system queries cop system, asks "is this a valid active case number?" Cop system responds "yes" or "no" and foreign system reacts accordingly. Rate limiting and fail2ban or similar prevents an attacker from using it to enumerate valid active cases, though that information is probably public and available via FOIA anyway.
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Remove the ability to log directly in to Flock to initiate a search. Add new "initiate Flock search" button in the digital evidence management (DEMS) case screen that sends the case number directly into Flock to open the Flock search interface. Lots of ways to accomplish that with varying levels of security, but the point is, the user should never be able to initiate a search without it being tied to a case inside DEMS and should never be able to just enter whatever they want in place of a case number. Idea
Of course they did (Score:1)
They had to write something, and stating the reason as " [1]Stalking my ex [cnn.com]" wouldn't look good
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2026/08/26/us/flock-kentucky-police-officer-arrest
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> So where's all the hue and outcry of age identification on PCs which will require a mandatory ID check just to play a game or use the internet?
We have been talking about it here.
Same answer as your other bullshit.
Fuck off, coward.
have they seen some of these places? (Score:2)
"If a police chief "stood in front of a city council and asked for permission to install hundreds of cameras just so his officers could investigate the high crime of 'haha,' they would be laughed out of the room,""
Uh, have these people seen some of these city council folks before? Some of them would gladly throw money at the police department for any reason.
Who watches the watchers? (Score:3)
Or as it was put nearly two millennia ago, "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"
This is why systems like this require human oversight. Arguably if there's a judicial review process for allowing searches, then this system needs to be required to use that process. With a system containing precinct, local court district, municipal, county, state, and federal district jurisdictions, the nature of setting up proper permissions alone should be a mandatory herculean effort, probably the most difficult part of the entire system.
Without such a system requiring judicial oversight to confirm that searches are authorized, all we have is a further slide into a police-state.
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The problem is Flock is a private company so in theory anyone can pay for access. It just so happens all the customers are the police. That's the legal loophole.
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You forgot to check the "post anonymously" box on your racist troll there, sport.
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Racism is in fashion now they don't have to hide.