A little searching will find you all sorts of such hits, like an officer tracking her domestic partner [0], an officer stalking someone after meeting on a TV set* [1], another officer tracking his ex partner [2], another officer tracking his mistress [3]. This is just a random sample.

* Note this scenario was not with Flock, which is important: there's more than one player in this space. Kill Flock and others might roll in; something broader is needed like, oh, I don't know, constitutional protections or something.

[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/atlanta/news/police-supervisor-accus...

[1] https://www.404media.co/footage-shows-cop-stalking-woman-he-...

[2] https://www.404media.co/cops-keep-getting-arrested-for-using...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byhWSvwz1Vw

Police are, in the most generous light, just as fallible and likely to abuse power as the rest of us. You can loosely define power as “Effect minus repercussion”. Massive effects like the nuclear football have massive repercussions like the end of civilization, so we tend to view them with a degree of balance. MAD has worked on this principle for decades pretty effectively. Even a tiny bit of Effect, with zero Repercussion, leads to unjust abuse, such as the diplomatic immunity issues in New York City. Nearly everything we have given the police has huge Effect, mostly by necessity, but more every day with tools like flock and the stripping of our rights. Endless military hardware, etc. Simultaneously we have ALSO been shrinking the repercussions for police. for decades. When sued the taxpayers pay for their defense. When they lose the lawsuits, the taxpayers pay the plaintiffs out and the police very very rarely face prison. Often times they can keep working in another department. They have extra protections nobody else has so they are less likely to lose those cases in the first place. There is next to ZERO oversight of all the tools we give them, to prevent the lawsuits. Federal police can remain anonymous when they commit obvious homicide or executions, apparently. We are very close to an effectively infinite power situation because there are next to zero repercussions. Even IF cops had no firearms, no armored vehicles, no flock, no palantir. They could still bust the door down to their ex girlfriend’s place and beat up their new boyfriend for any kind of flimsy excuse. Because what are you going to do about it? Sue them? You’re just offering them a free vacation.

We were hearing during the Snowden era about the abuse of NSA systems like XKeyscore and others through what was termed jokingly LOVEINT. Anything that's built will get abused in some way - sometimes its even best not to build such databases at all.

Here's CNN discussing NSA analyst abuse from 13 years ago:

https://www.cnn.com/2013/09/27/politics/nsa-snooping/

Here's an article from 10 years ago discussing the police doing it:

https://apnews.com/general-news-699236946e3140659fff8a2362e1...

This is 10 years old, but in 2016 the Associated Press did a massive public records request for police departments across the country. Between 2013-2015, they found over 600 cases where the police department actually did an internal investigation, found this kind of misuse, didn't cover it up, and handed over the records. About half of those cases resulted in a firing, suspension, or resignation.

This is clearly an undercount, and I'm sure it's only gotten worse since 2016.

https://apnews.com/general-news-699236946e3140659fff8a2362e1...

My only question is why you didn’t believe police could/would do this in the first place? My default perspective is that this is exactly what law-enforcement and other government officials would use this technology to do, especially if there are no guardrails or laws preventing them from abusing it.

If something can be abused, especially with little to no accountability, it will be abused.

>They won't use technology to find our lost/stolen phones

Our local sheriff’s department used Apple’s FindMy to search for my parent’s iPad that had been stolen from their car during a smash and grab. In this case, he found it in the possession of a couple that had found it tossed on the side of the street after the thief had stripped it for cash and credit cards, but it saved them the hassle and cost of having to buy a new one.

Anyways, there’s nothing stopping PDs from searching for stolen electronics. Maybe you should talk to your local city council and ask why yours don’t?

Check out the new Netflix doc, A Toxic Love Story. US Marshall at the center of it all (no spoiler).

Well known pattern: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOVEINT

Why don't they instead push for making abuses of law enforcement access illegal? That way we can both catch criminals and missing people along with avoiding abuse.

I was with you up until the very last line. Why do people imagine that the police are in the business of property retrieval? Once your stuff is stolen in almost all cases it's long LONG gone! Cars are sent to be broken down for parts, tools are sold to fences and so on. The typical thief isn't some mastermind who carefully holds on to what they stole, they rush to their nearest fence or dealer to trade it for what they need.

Police are there to report a crime and add that to area stats, and if the issue is more than a lone junkie then it eventually gets to a detective in whatever the local version of Robbery is.

"They didn't get my stuff back" isn't a realistic criticism, and it detracts from the many other points that are.

The Flock CEO Garret Langley called people that didn't want his unsecure surveillance state in their own communities "terrorists". A term that has a very loose meaning but is always used to invoke state violence. So he wants to create a strong police state and violence against regular people for money aka he's a fascist.

(but HN will flag me for "name-calling" a person promoting and creating violent state oppression)

That’s the sad part. There was a nationwide trend to ignore misdemeanor theft so much so that now there is a new baseline and most police have taken this to heart and don’t even pretend to put an effort into misdemeanor theft -yes, I know many or perhaps most departments are understaffed but still. It’s irritating.

[dead]