Police become “stalkers”? Several media outlets in the United States recently exposed a type of scandal in the country‘s law enforcement departments: unscrupulous police officers from multiple places illegally used artificial intelligence (AI) surveillance systems to spy on their exes, partners, or other acquaintances, and continuously harassed and threatened the victims, causing widespread public concern. In the media‘s view, such major personal privacy leaks not only exposed the conduct of certain law enforcement officers in the United States, but were even more difficult to absolve from blame for subordinates and law enforcement officials who neglected to manage advanced police equipment.
The U.S. Washington Post published an exclusive report on 3, detailing the process of multiple victims being followed by police surveillance equipment. In 2023, Georgia woman Marcy Buckley broke up with her controlling boyfriend Steve, who never stopped harassing her. According to her recollection, this former boyfriend, who served as a local police chief, seemed to know her whereabouts like the back of his hand. Sometimes she couldn‘t escape his gaze when she went out to meet anyone. Until July 2024, during an argument between the two, Steve let slip that he was using a device called a “Flock camera.” Last November, Steve was arrested for harassment, stalking, and misuse of police equipment, but committed suicide before appearing in court this year for fear of guilt.
The media revealed that the “Flock Safety System” is an urban surveillance system built by Silicon Valley capital. Its camera equipment employs advanced AI recognition technology that can accurately identify license plates of speeding vehicles at night and in heavy rain. Currently, the company affiliated with the system, Flock Group, has deployed more than 120,000 camera equipment to monitor traffic conditions covering more than 6,000 communities. On average, it can complete 20 billion license plate scans and recordings per month.
The U.S. Newsweek reported that this system has been widely applied to thousands of law enforcement agencies across the United States, showing significant utility in identifying stolen vehicles, locating missing persons, and other work. For some law enforcement officers with improper behavior, Flock has become a “personal espionage device” specifically used to spy on privacy. Media-reported device usage logs revealed that Steffman had conducted more than 600 spying operations on Marcy and her daughter before his death.
Marcy‘s experience is by no means unique, and the extent to which rogue police officers abuse this set of devices is astounding. According to the Washington Post, a Wisconsin police officer used the above system to check if his ex-girlfriend had been to an abortion clinic; a California police officer simultaneously monitored his wife, mistress, and multiple “love rivals.” According to Newsweek statistics, cases of law enforcement officers abusing such monitoring devices have appeared in 12 states across the United States, with at least 50 law enforcement officers with inappropriate behavior being prosecuted.
Soifer, a lawyer for the U.S. nonprofit law firm, believes that the current cases are likely just the “tip of the iceberg” of systemic problems. According to the media, many U.S. police departments have received reports of law enforcement officers abusing surveillance systems, but the denouncers were still able to log in and use them as usual. In addition, according to a Florida police officer who was fired for misconduct, inside his police department, “almost everyone has misuse incidents,” and the department did not conduct regular reviews of the operating system as required. Some related organizations said that the abuse of such advanced tools is “inevitable,” but U.S. law enforcement leadership is also to blame for the fact that they “regulate poorly,” doing almost nothing to protect victims from abusive police officers.
Because of the special identity of the perpetrators in such cases, who are granted relatively broad powers, the victims‘ related complaints often cannot be taken seriously. The Washington Post mentioned that individual victims faced assaults and wanted to call the police, but the perpetrators arrogantly stated, “I am the police.” Griffith, from Pennsylvania, told the media that she had repeatedly reported to local police departments and the prosecutor‘s office that her husband had an extreme personality and had pursued and threatened her, but they all ignored her complaints. Until one time, her husband cornered her at her mother‘s house with a gun, had a physical conflict with her and her son, and threatened to commit suicide. Marcy had also been frustrated many times during the process of appeal. She had helplessly expressed that her ex-boyfriend Steadman “controlled my every move,” but “who can control him as a police chief?”
Currently, such scandals have caused widespread social repercussions in the United States. North Carolina Charlotte-Mecklenburg police chief Patterson has denounced the abuse of law enforcement technology by industry colleagues as “a betrayal of public trust and a violation of law enforcement officers‘ professional integrity,” saying that any practitioner who crosses the trust red line should be held accountable.