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Flock's new AI tool, OS Investigate, has the capability to track individuals and their movements, raising serious concerns over police surveillance and privacy. The tool's code reveals that it has access to a vast array of data that can be used to build a profile of an individual's activities, and allows officers to input prompts of their own. Experts warn that this level of surveillance raises serious concerns over police accountability and the potential for abuse, and that the company's plans to monitor for abnormal searches and lock out flagged users may not be enough to address these concerns.
Flock's new AI tool, OS Investigate, has the capability to track individuals and their movements, potentially infringing on citizens' right to privacy. The tool can use a network of cameras to log the movements of drivers in over 6,000 communities and pick out potential witnesses based on their driving patterns. The tool ships with 69 prewritten prompts that officers can use to search for people in an area based on physical descriptions. The tool has access to a vast array of data, including plate scans, camera metadata, arrest records, and commercial databases. The tool allows officers to input prompts of their own, which can be used to search for specific individuals or patterns of behavior. Experts warn that this level of surveillance raises serious concerns over police accountability and the potential for abuse. The company behind the tool, Flock, has faced allegations of misuse and has been sued by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Flock has announced plans to monitor for abnormal searches, lock out flagged users automatically, and require officers to attach case codes to their searches.
Flock, a company that provides surveillance cameras for police departments, has developed a new AI tool that raises serious concerns over police surveillance and privacy. The tool, called OS Investigate, is designed to help police investigators work across information their agencies already have access to. However, an in-depth analysis of the tool's code reveals that it has the capability to track individuals and their movements, potentially infringing on citizens' right to privacy.
According to the analysis, OS Investigate is a sophisticated tool that uses a network of cameras to log the movements of drivers in over 6,000 communities. The tool can pick out potential witnesses by how often their cars pass through a neighborhood, or surface a driver's "associates" from the cameras they pass together. This information can then be turned into names, home addresses, and relatives, allowing police to build a comprehensive picture of an individual's movements and activities.
The code for the tool also reveals that it ships with 69 prewritten prompts that officers can select, review, or edit, and then submit to the AI. These prompts can be used to search for people in an area drawn on a map based on nothing more than a physical description. The tool also has access to plate scans and camera metadata, arrest records, case files, dispatch logs, ballistics results, and commercial databases that contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, relatives, and associates.
One of the most concerning features of the tool is its ability to identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone. The code describes 45 tools at the AI's disposal, giving it access to a vast array of data that can be used to build a profile of an individual's activities. The tool also allows officers to input prompts of their own, which can be used to search for specific individuals or patterns of behavior.
Experts are warning that this level of surveillance raises serious concerns over police accountability and the potential for abuse. "I think that most people imagine that license plate readers are checking license plates and they're looking if a vehicle is wanted," says Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. "But we're increasingly seeing the aggressive deployment of AI by Flock. And in some ways, like China, very little space between what can be done and what is being done."
The company behind the tool, Flock, has claimed that it is designed to help investigators work across information their agencies already have access to. However, the code for the tool reveals that it has the capability to track individuals and their movements, potentially infringing on citizens' right to privacy. Flock has also claimed that its technology records plates and not the drivers behind them, but the code for the tool reveals that this is not the case.
The tool's ability to track individuals and their movements raises serious concerns over police accountability and the potential for abuse. "It is not rocket science to figure out [that] police will want to find certain objects or patterns, but it is interesting to see what they preprogrammed," says Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a law professor at George Washington University. "There are a lot of innocent activities that could be flagged, even if it also might be quite useful for investigators."
The tool's ability to track individuals and their movements also raises concerns over the potential for discrimination. "You've got a literal geofence. But the AI can also bring it way beyond that kind of a static boundary, and who is inside that boundary," says Jay Stanley. "Who was near this person for more than 10 minutes in the past month? Who was in these six locations more than three times? It can become much more fine-grained, sophisticated, flexible."
Flock has been building the AI system while under scrutiny for how police have abused the cameras it already runs. The company has faced allegations of misuse, including a Texas officer searching over 83,000 cameras across the country to track a woman who had a self-administered abortion. Flock has also been sued by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which alleges that the company's surveillance technology is being used to harass and track innocent people.
Despite these concerns, Flock claims that its technology is designed to help law enforcement agencies solve crimes more effectively. "We are on the cusp of the age of agentic policing and the ability to create natural language chatbots to search within massive datasets will soon become the norm," says Andrew Guthrie Ferguson. "The choice of prompts is what strikes me. It is not rocket science to figure out [that] police will want to find certain objects or patterns, but it is interesting to see what they preprogrammed."
The tool's ability to track individuals and their movements also raises concerns over the potential for abuse. "The difference between a police officer saying, 'Do you see any criminal patterns' or 'Find me criminal patterns' is going to produce two different things," says Chad Marlow, an attorney who runs the ACLU's "Get The Flock Out" campaign. "And I think the fact that they don't seem to have any limitations on the prompts enables the police to almost lead the AI in what it does."
In response to these concerns, Flock has announced plans to monitor for abnormal searches, lock out flagged users automatically, and require officers to attach case codes to their searches. The company has also hired engineers to "drive the architectural evolution" of its new system, wire it into Flock's larger data platform, and build a framework it says will act on behalf of investigators.
The implications of this technology are far-reaching and have the potential to fundamentally change the way law enforcement agencies operate. As one expert put it, "This is not just about license plate readers. This is about the ability to track people and their movements, and the potential for abuse that comes with it."
Related Information:
https://www.ethicalhackingnews.com/articles/Flocks-AI-Tool-Raises-Concerns-Over-Police-Surveillance-and-Privacy-ehn.shtml
https://www.wired.com/story/flock-safety-os-investigate/
Published: Wed Aug 19 04:35:46 2026 by llama3.2 3B Q4_K_M
