Technology

Fired. Should have fired them into a pair prison cell (with all conveniences, of course, and a good couch).

Shared their login details - as in username and password? Why am I not surprised it doesn't even use multi-factor authentication... 🤦🏻‍♂️

At this stage in the game, I'd not be surprised to learn that Flock's database is stored on an unsecured cloud instance with password123 or sithlord as the sole security between it and the world.

The article does not specify the timeframe involved, but does give the totals:

The audit identified 983 search entries involving 97 identifiable license plates from Georgia, New Jersey, Maryland, Florida, South Carolina and North Carolina.

South Carolina plates represented most of the activity. Forty-eight South Carolina plates accounted for 788 search entries, according to the records. Department documents also noted that most registered vehicle owners identified in the audit were Hispanic.

983 searches, most centered in a different, neighboring state. For the record, Savannah is near the GA/SC state line, but still a couple hours from the nearest city in southeast South Carolina, a lot of land that is mostly rural; about the same distance to the nearest big city in Florida, also rural land; and five or six hours from bumfuck eastern North Carolina, where there are no big cities east of Raleigh. Lots of little towns, a few bigger towns, but mostly rural throughout.

What that means is that NOBODY in Savannah PD was overseeing Flock usage until people started making a stink about its misuse, because that's a lot of very visibly out-of-state searches.

It's not like you live in New Jersey and half the plates you see are New York or Pennsylvania, a situation where this kind of search spread would make sense for someone working local cases: for them, that tri-state area is a local spread. Rather, it's that this officer lives in a mid-sized city in the middle of a large rural area, working local cases involving local people, but has an absolute fuckton of searches for license plates from everywhere else.

She said she rarely used Flock herself and generally accessed it to help investigate missing-person cases involving behavioral health patients.

I'd also put money on the ICE husband not just doing it for himself and his own cases, but telling his ICE buds, "Hey, I'll run your plate for you," meaning that he handed it out as favors and that the searches were not just for his own cases, but those of other ICE agents, all with varying degrees of actual legal cause or right to do so.

The only shocking thing here is that they fired her instead of giving her 7 days of unpaid leave for violating the department's password sharing policy or some such nonsense.

A now-former Savannah police officer gave her husband, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, access to the police department’s Flock license plate reader system, which he used to conduct hundreds of searches tied to ICE investigations, according to newly obtained documents reviewed by WJCL 22 News.

They catch a few and hold them up as proof the cops police their own. I suspect the few they prosecute are "trouble makers" in the department. Scapegoats.

We all know it's bullshit. Cops don't police their own, they circle the wagons. They lie, they commit perjury, it's all part of the job.

But nothing happened to him though of course. He probably got a promotion

Looks like what I would expect

No sweat, they will rehire her a few towns over.