It’s a camera system, and data can be queried by police. They have to search for something. So the cops searched for a vehicle matching the description in the general area, seemed to take the first one, and called it a day.

That’s not an AI-uncanny-valley. That’s the equivalent of (pre-flock/cameras) looking at vehicle registration list and assuming the one at the top of the list must be it.

The automation-trust is a legitimate concern but it’s not applicable here.

Perhaps more facts will come out, but if we take the article at face value, the cops are at this woman's house, looking at her car and can see with their own eyes that the car right in front of them has obviously not been in an accident. All that is required is for these cops to rub two brain cells together and they will reach the conclusion that Flock misread a license plate.

It's also worth emphasizing that this wasn't for a parking ticket. The extremely low level of care with which these public servants are conducting a manslaughter investigation is somewhat alarming.

Yes, but it is still your fault. “I am dumb and I was deceived” is no valid defense, least of all for a police officer.

Police approving AI PRs without reading them: This is the way the world works now. Get with the times.

The people who say there are problems with the human police officers are perceived as excusing Flock.

Who is responsible for the area inside a square, the width or the height? It is not an additive relationship.

Certain technology just has too much potential to be misused / people repeatedly prove they can't use it properly. It also comes with risks of making authoritarian takeover easier.

However, here, it seems they used Flock a bit like a regular ANPR. The actions they took independent of Flock show there are better stories to use to criticise this technology.

A lot of people coming to this story seem to have the idea that it's unthinkable for someone to spend 13 days in jail when they have clear evidence they're innocent, so there must be some novel explanation for how this could happen. But as any criminal defense lawyer will tell you it's very thinkable. She was ordered to report to jail on a Friday afternoon, the standard stratagem cops use to ensure people they don't like spend at least a weekend behind bars. She was denied bail, even though she made no move to flee in the months where she knew the police thought she did it, because the courts in many places view mandatory pretrial detention as a punishment for presumptively guilty people.

But seriously, privacy must not become a sided issue. Attacks on privacy are bipartisan, the defense of it would be weakened if it was not bipartisan. Civil liberties protected by the constitution should not be controversial.

Nor does Flock - Flock merely provides a photo and timestamp, which should have been scrutised like any other evidence.

The Flock data showed:

- Car of same make/model nearby at similar time to the accident

- Possible colour match (eyewitnesses gave varying reports on the colour of the perpetrating vehicle). But a match could have been ruled out in minutes had police inspected paint transfer onto the struck vehicle

- A number plate non-match (first three characters were reported to 911 and did not match)

- That's all!

So police didn't do their job (scutinise the evidence), and possibly worse, they may have fabricated evidence (since police claimed Isaacs' vehicle was damaged, but it was in factory-new condition) - which may explain why they're shifting blame to Flock!

- Does anything connect this vehicle to the accident?

- Did it look damaged; as though it had been in a crash?

- Did it look like it was fleeing or driving erratically?

- Was there anything suspicious about the vehicle or the driver?

Police would have deemed the photo irrelevant and moved on. But that didn't happen in this case.

Their failure to do so doesn't have to do with source of the image (Flock, shop CCTV, dashcam), but with their inexplicable lack of rigour.

As far as I know, it lets law enforcement query for things against the data. Can be specific (like a license plate) or more general (like a dark colored mid-sized SUV around <location> at <time>).

To get where this story is at, cops here must have done the latter, and taken the first name off the top of the pile and patted themselves on the back, and then waited 7 months, and went and arrested her. Unless there’s an explanation for a 7 month delay, it seems designed to allow defensive evidence to spoil.

There isn’t an uncanny-valley of automation here. There is just lazy, grossly-incompetent, bad-faith, and malicious cops/investigators.

But they didn't question the quality of the evidence. And there is a reason for that.

Guns can be used for all sorts of things. A handgun in a house is likely to be used for murder/suicide.