Cops searched 19,000 cameras over a plate, reason given: 'LMAO'Cops Search Thousands of Flock Cameras for Reasons of ‘LMAO,’ ‘IDK,’ ‘Hehe,’ and ‘asdfg’

Flock makes licence-plate readers: cameras that log every plate and where it was seen, so a cop can type a plate and find out where that car has been. A police officer in Indiana searched one plate across more than 19,000 cameras in 1,558 towns last year. The reason he typed into the system's record box was 'LMAO'.

Not one bad apple, just the norm

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a US group that watches privacy and civil liberties, went through the search logs. Cops had filled the reason box with 'LOL', 'Hehe', 'idk', 'blah', with 'idiot', 'fuck this new search engine', 'WEIRD KID', and with keyboard mash like 'asdfg' and 'jhjhjkhj'. Far more simply typed 'investigation', 'test', or left it blank.

These records exist because Flock keeps a log of every search, and the public can request them under freedom-of-information law.

After the warnings, the text box became a dropdown

Earlier reporting used those logs to show police looking up a woman who had an abortion in Texas, protesters, and undocumented immigrants on behalf of ICE. Government surveillance centres then advised officers to be 'as vague as permissible' about their reasons. Late last year Flock removed the free-text box and replaced it with a dropdown list. The EFF called that a loss for transparency.

The EFF asked the departments involved about the joke searches. Most said the officer had been 'counselled'. One who wrote 'idiot' got away with it: the department only found out after the 90-day window its union contract allows for internal investigations had closed.

In one line: sold as the tool that catches murderers, used as a personal search engine, and not even worth a real excuse.