“Thanks for reaching out to Flock. Our media team is currently touching grass and taking a break.”
The reported message continued:
“Unlike our cameras, we can’t work 24/7, so we’ll get back to you when we’ve had a snack and regained the ability to form coherent sentences.”
Futurism is the only source here for the wording and its circulation. The original email and recipient list were not independently obtained. The message also promised an answer later. It was not permanent silence.
It was a joke sent to work on the wrong day.
People should take breaks. This includes public-relations people. They have bodies. Bodies become tired, foolish and eventually unionized if there is any justice.
The problem is not the snack.
Flock’s systems capture vehicle observations and make them searchable. This creates several plain questions:
Who may search?
For what reason?
Who checks?
What happens when the person with access knows the person being searched?
Those questions were already in the room.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that a former Kenosha sheriff’s deputy was charged after authorities alleged he used agency vehicle-tracking cameras and other technology to surveil a fellow deputy he was dating.
In Massachusetts, Boston.com reports that New Bedford suspended its Flock system while auditing its use and investigating an officer accused of searching a former partner’s plate. The officer acknowledged the searches but maintained they were professional. The investigation remains active. There has been no completed finding of misconduct.
In Florida, the Times of India reports that an officer was arrested after investigators alleged 717 searches involving an estranged wife’s vehicle. The allegations have not been proved. The officer is presumed innocent.
These are three separate cases. They involve different people, agencies, facts and legal stages. They do not prove that every officer misuses the system or that every unusual search is wrongdoing.
In fact, New Bedford said its wider audit found additional anomalies, many of which turned out to be valid law-enforcement activity. Others remained under review.
This is what an audit is for.
An odd entry is not a verdict. It is a question. A functioning institution keeps a human being available to answer it.
Flock says on its homepage that communities should not have to choose between safety and privacy. It says it reduced its recommended default data-retention period from 30 days to seven, expanded audit requirements and proactive misuse monitoring, required multifactor authentication, and added sharing controls.
Those are company claims. They do not establish how every customer configures or enforces every safeguard. They are still the right subjects for serious questions.
A guardrail must exist where temptation is.
Putting one on a website is easier.
Elsewhere, the public argument has become less orderly. Hood County, Texas, ended a three-camera contract, and commissioners voted to have the cameras covered and unplugged. Townhall reports that a constable carried out that decision. It was an authorized removal.
In Douglas, Massachusetts, police said they believed a camera had been deliberately struck. They found it about 20 feet from its structure and saw tire impressions in the grass. No arrest had been made.
One event involved a county vote. The other involved tire marks. They are not the same form of civic participation.
In San Diego, Gizmodo reports that an unidentified resident dressed as Darth Vader used a City Council comment period to criticize Flock and surveillance.
This proved nothing about the technology.
It did show that the ordinary PowerPoint had failed.
Against this background, the reported Flock reply tried to sound harmless and human. Snacks are harmless. Grass is often pleasant. Human beings cannot work around the clock and should not be asked to.
But institutions do not get tired.
A company selling powerful tools cannot make individual fatigue its whole answer to questions about those tools. It can hire enough people. It can rotate them. It can give a clear return time. It can say that facts are being gathered and due process matters.
New Bedford Police Chief Jason Thody put that part plainly: “Transparency does not require us to prejudge an investigation.”
Correct.
Some answers take time. Fairness takes time. Coherent sentences sometimes take a sandwich.
But accountability is not the same as permanent wakefulness. It is the ability of an institution to answer for its machinery after any one worker has gone home.
The arrangement should be simple:
Workers get rest.
Machines get limits.
The public gets answers.
Nobody gets prejudged.
Nobody gets treated as an object.
Let the press staff touch grass. Responsibility stays at the desk.