Flock is tightening its rules in response to a growing surveillance backlash
Flock is tightening its rules in response to a growing surveillance backlash
面对日益高涨的监控抵制浪潮，Flock 正在收紧其规则
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The police-tech giant Flock is announcing today that it will change officers’ access to its nationwide network of license plate readers, in an apparent effort to quell a growing backlash and win back contracts lost amid concerns about mass surveillance and police abuse. 执行摘要 警务科技巨头 Flock 今日宣布，将调整警员对其全国车牌识别网络的使用权限。此举显然是为了平息日益高涨的抵制浪潮，并挽回因大规模监控和警察滥用职权担忧而流失的合同。
Several changes aim directly at a problem that has made recent headlines: officers abusing Flock’s technology to stalk and harass current or former romantic partners. Flock’s 120,000 cameras form a nationwide network that police departments can use, giving officers access to an enormous pool of searchable location data. A recent Washington Post investigation found 46 cases in which officers were accused of using Flock’s cameras for unauthorized purposes like stalking. 多项改革直接针对近期频频见诸报端的问题：警员滥用 Flock 技术跟踪和骚扰现任或前任伴侣。Flock 拥有的 12 万个摄像头构成了一个全国性网络，供各地警察部门使用，使警员能够访问海量可搜索的位置数据。《华盛顿邮报》近期的一项调查发现，有 46 起案件涉及警员被指控将 Flock 摄像头用于跟踪等未经授权的目的。
To combat that, the company will start requiring officers to enter a criminal case number before conducting a search. The system was launched as an option last year but is now required. It’s meant to verify that each search has a legitimate purpose. This is a baseline standard that civil liberties groups have asked for, but officers have found ways around similar safeguards. 为解决这一问题，该公司将开始要求警员在进行搜索前输入刑事案件编号。该系统去年作为可选功能推出，但现在已成为强制要求。其目的是核实每次搜索是否具有合法目的。这是公民自由团体所要求的基准标准，但警员们此前已找到绕过类似保障措施的方法。
The ACLU recently found that when Flock required officers to enter a reason for a search, some used generic terms like “investigation” or mocked the prompt entirely; at one Oregon department, officers entered “hehehe” 20 times. Because Flock won’t verify case numbers, officers could circumvent the new safeguard just as easily. 美国公民自由联盟（ACLU）近期发现，当 Flock 要求警员输入搜索理由时，一些人会使用“调查”等通用词汇，甚至完全无视提示；在俄勒冈州的一个部门，警员曾 20 次输入“呵呵呵”。由于 Flock 不会核实案件编号，警员同样可以轻易绕过这一新的保障措施。
But Flock is now expanding an automatic auditing system that is supposed to catch those who try that, the firm announced today. The feature analyzes officer search activity and flags to administrators anyone with suspicious searches. This was also introduced as an option last year but is now mandatory. Flock has not shared specifics on how accurate the automatic auditing tool is, nor opened it up to independent evaluators. 但该公司今日宣布，Flock 正在扩展一套自动审计系统，旨在抓获那些试图违规的人。该功能会分析警员的搜索活动，并向管理员标记任何可疑搜索行为。此功能去年也是作为可选项目引入，现在则变为强制性要求。Flock 尚未透露该自动审计工具的准确性细节，也未将其开放给独立评估机构。
Beyond trying to prevent officer abuse, Flock is making changes meant to address broader backlash about how much data its network collects and who can search it. The company now recommends that agencies hold onto data for seven days rather than 30 (though they can choose to overrule this). Departments can also now limit other departments’ searches of data from their cameras to those made for certain stated reasons; for example, they might allow investigations related to “kidnapping” but not for purposes of “immigration enforcement.” It’s another safeguard that depends on officers to accurately report why they’re conducting a search. 除了防止警员滥用职权外，Flock 还做出了一些调整，旨在应对关于其网络收集数据量及搜索权限的更广泛质疑。该公司目前建议各机构将数据保留时间从 30 天缩短至 7 天（尽管机构可以选择不采纳）。各部门现在还可以限制其他部门对其摄像头数据的搜索，仅允许出于特定理由的搜索；例如，他们可能允许与“绑架”相关的调查，但不允许用于“移民执法”。这是另一项依赖于警员如实报告搜索理由的保障措施。
The changes come as a backlash against Flock has started to come from all angles. Tucker Carlson has said its technology is contributing to a “slave state.” Some cities have reportedly dropped Flock contracts because of such protest, though it’s difficult to estimate how many: In February, NPR found that at least 30 cities had dropped in the last year, but the activist group DeFlock puts the number higher. Some states or municipalities are passing laws to ban license plate readers altogether, while some that allow them are switching away from Flock to the other industry leaders, Axon and Motorola. Flock has said these cancellations represent a small number of the 5,000 agencies that have contracted with the company. 这些变革出台之际，Flock 正面临来自各方的抵制。塔克·卡尔森（Tucker Carlson）曾称其技术正在助长一个“奴隶制国家”。据报道，一些城市因抗议而终止了与 Flock 的合同，尽管很难估计具体数量：今年 2 月，美国国家公共电台（NPR）发现过去一年至少有 30 个城市终止了合作，但激进组织 DeFlock 给出的数字更高。一些州或城市正在通过法律全面禁止车牌识别器，而一些允许使用的地区则正在从 Flock 转向行业其他领导者，如 Axon 和摩托罗拉。Flock 表示，这些取消合同的情况仅占其 5000 家签约机构中的一小部分。
Chad Marlow, a senior policy counsel at the ACLU who has become a sort of nemesis to Flock and other companies making automatic license plate readers, says the backlash is driven less by individual abuses—though those don’t help—than by the sheer scale of surveillance that Flock’s cameras enable. “In America, you only get to investigate someone if you think they’ve done something wrong,” Marlow says. As license plate readers grow more ubiquitous, officers have increasing latitude to investigate people without first establishing suspicion of a crime, since searching the troves of data the readers collect does not require a warrant. He adds, “Is it worth it to catch a certain number of criminals, return a certain number of stolen cars, to eviscerate Americans’ privacy?” ACLU 高级政策顾问查德·马洛（Chad Marlow）已成为 Flock 及其他自动车牌识别器制造商的“克星”。他认为，抵制浪潮的驱动力并非仅仅源于个别滥用行为（尽管这些行为确实有负面影响），更多是源于 Flock 摄像头所带来的大规模监控规模。“在美国，只有当你认为某人做了错事时，你才能调查他们，”马洛说。随着车牌识别器日益普及，警员在没有确立犯罪嫌疑的情况下调查民众的自由度越来越大，因为搜索这些识别器收集的海量数据并不需要搜查令。他补充道：“为了抓获一定数量的罪犯、找回一定数量的被盗车辆，而摧毁美国人的隐私，这值得吗？”
Flock CEO Garrett Langley traces the backlash to a different issue. “If you look at the main reason we’ve lost customers, it’s misinformation,” Langley told MIT Technology Review. He says people mistakenly believe Flock does facial recognition or sells the data it collects to commercial buyers. (The misinformation charge cuts both ways, however; the ACLU and other critics have published accounts of the company repeatedly lying to city councils and other decision-makers about what its technology can do.) Flock 首席执行官加勒特·兰利（Garrett Langley）将抵制归因于另一个问题。“如果你看看我们失去客户的主要原因，那就是错误信息，”兰利告诉《麻省理工科技评论》。他表示，人们错误地认为 Flock 会进行人脸识别，或者将收集的数据出售给商业买家。（然而，“错误信息”的指控是双向的；ACLU 和其他批评者曾发布报告，称该公司多次向市议会和其他决策者谎报其技术的功能。）
Though the company has taken steps in response to public concerns, “our change in stance is more of one from building things that are optional,” Langley says, to “building more confidence that as a technology company we have a responsibility to enforce guardrails, not provide optionality.” 尽管该公司已采取措施回应公众关切，但兰利表示：“我们立场的转变更多是从‘构建可选功能’转向‘建立更多信任’，即作为一家科技公司，我们有责任强制执行护栏，而不是提供可选项。”
Flock’s new rules are undeniably small and incremental compared with what the ACLU has advocated. Marlow is broadly supportive of them but notes that judging whether they reduce abuse would require the company to open its systems to independent researchers for the first time rather than citing internal studies. More broadly, though, he says the backlash is putting the company at a crossroads. “Flock has come to the table because this incredible, unprecedented nationwide uprising against their company has scared them,” Marlow says. “But at the same time, they are just absolutely unwilling to make the actual changes they need to make in order to legitimately respond to these concerns. So this is the best that the company is willing to do.” 与 ACLU 所倡导的相比，Flock 的新规则无疑是微小且渐进的。马洛对此表示基本支持，但他指出，要判断这些规则是否减少了滥用，需要该公司首次向独立研究人员开放其系统，而不是引用内部研究。从更广泛的角度来看，他认为这场抵制正将该公司推向十字路口。“Flock 之所以坐到谈判桌前，是因为这场针对他们公司、令人难以置信且史无前例的全国性抗议吓坏了他们，”马洛说，“但与此同时，他们绝对不愿做出真正必要的改变来合法回应这些担忧。所以，这已经是该公司愿意做的极限了。”