Sergiy Galyonkin has added a photo to the pool:
Pedestrians walk beside a crosswalk on a sunlit street corner in Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan. Black-and-white photograph.

Flock created a fake police department called “Flock City PD” that it used to search a series of live automated license plate readers in several U.S. cities during demonstrations of its surveillance system’s capabilities, public records show. The records show that Flock City PD searched real cameras for people holding signs, “crowds,” people wearing masks, and more, according to audit logs shared with 404 Media.
Flock City PD also searched extremely sensitive queries, which Flock told 404 Media were done to prove that the system would not actually perform these searches and that its moderation tools worked. These searches included “coexist bumper sticker,” “vehicle a pretty girl would drive,” “white truck with a trump sticker,” “religious cars,” “Star of David,” and “don’t tread on me flag.”
Flock employees accessing live cameras for sales purposes, and showing police specifically how to do dubious searches, have become political flashpoints in the backlash against the company. In April, we reported that Flock employees regularly accessed live cameras in Dunwoody, Georgia, at a children’s gymnastics room, at a playground, in a school, at a pool, and in a Jewish community center in the city while demoing the company’s tech to cops. Audit logs obtained by Jason Hunyar, the Dunwoody resident who originally discovered this access, show that an entity called “Flock City PD” also searched live Dunwoody cameras for all sorts of politically contentious topics during sales demos with police. This included searches for behavior that is expressly protected by the First Amendment.

Flock accounts called “Flock City PD - Law Enforcement Demo,” “Flock Intelligence,” and “Flock Safety - Commercial Sales Demo” ran searches in Dunwoody and Bryan, Texas, as well as a handful of other unknown jurisdictions, for “coexist bumper sticker,” “Star of David,” “person wearing a mask,” “crowd,” “vehicle with a political sticker,” “man holding rifle,” “person in scrubs,” “don’t tread on me flag,” “car that a pretty girl would drive,” and “vehicle with trump bumper sticker,” among other searches. All of these were “FreeForm” searches, meaning Flock’s AI image recognition algorithm would determine what would be returned. The audit logs show that not all of these searches were allowed by Flock’s system, and that its moderation tools either blocked some of the searches or displayed a warning prompt before doing the search.
404 Media has previously reported that Flock explicitly taught police how to surveil the No Kings protests, and some of these FreeForm searches are similar to others we reported that real police departments performed themselves.
A Flock spokesperson told 404 Media that some of the searches were done specifically to show the types of searches cops shouldn’t do, and to show some of the guardrails Flock had put in place to prevent these searches. For example, the searches for “vehicle a pretty girl would drive,” is listed as having a moderation “block.” A search for a person with “Star of David” was also listed as having a moderation block, but a search for “Star of David” on a vehicle raised a warning box about the nature of the search before allowing it to proceed.
The searches highlight how Flock employees regularly performed real, invasive searches on real cameras to demonstrate how its technology works; residents of Dunwoody have repeatedly told their city council that they feel like their privacy is being violated as an experiment and sales demonstration for a private company. After Hunyar and 404 Media reported on Flock cameras being accessed in sensitive locations by Flock employees, the company and the city said Dunwoody’s cameras would no longer be used for sales demonstration purposes. The Flock spokesperson said that these demonstrations were done to show police officers what not to do, and said that the “Flock City PD” account no longer searches on any real cameras. They added, “the Flock City PD demo environment is now isolated, and law enforcement agencies cannot form a sharing relationship with it.”
A recent Flock training webinar seen by 404 Media shows a Flock employee logged into the Flock City PD account having access to cameras that seem to be explicitly for training purposes, with names like “Flock Warehouse - LPR Demo Cameras,” “Circle K - Demo,” “Tennessee Demo Cameras,” “Scottsdale AZ Demo Video Cameras,” and “ALPR Demo.”
“Flock City PD is a demo and testing organization name used for law enforcement demonstrations and for our development engineers to conduct testing. Those searches were part of testing and validating FreeForm search moderation and related safeguards. These were not investigative searches conducted by a customer agency,” the Flock spokesperson told 404 Media. “That is also the context for prompts such as ‘Star of David’ or ‘large group with signs.’ These types of prompts are testing the safeguards of the system — that it appropriately blocks offensive or sensitive searches, or flags searches that may implicate First Amendment protections. Our policy is designed so that offensive or slur-based searches do not yield results, and prompts that may implicate First Amendment concerns trigger notice and audit review. As you can see in your screenshot — the safeguards we built are working.”
The audit logs show, however, that many of the sensitive searches were not blocked. Searches for “crowd,” “a person wearing scrubs,” “large group with signs” were all explicitly allowed. More sensitive searches, such as for “vehicle with trump bumper sticker,” “don’t treat on me flag,” “coexist number sticker,” “religious cars,” and “Star of David” had a warning box pop up, but Flock says in a blog post published in April that police can bypass this: “Searches for specific content that could potentially implicate First Amendment rights will trigger a pop-up warning the user and advising that this search will be sent to a superior for auditing if the user chooses to proceed.”
In a blog post explaining how it tests Flock, the company wrote, “some vehicle bumper stickers contain words and symbols indicating religious affiliations or nationalities, and the moderation policy needs to recognize, flag, and block these searches. Just like vehicle identification, these algorithms need to be trained in the real world using real-life examples. Those might be training and demo searches for things like ‘Cross bumper sticker,’ ‘Star of David,’ or ‘Japanese flag.’ These searches, if performed, should not return results.”
Dunwoody residents have made clear that they understand that Flock needs to test its systems, but they did not sign up to be guinea pigs for a surveillance company.
“Flock's claims that they impose restrictions on what users can search for in their database provides the opposite assurance of what they seem to purport. In doing so, they admit that their dynamic surveillance network does in fact capture this sensitive information, and that the gate to that information is controlled solely by the policies of a for-profit corporation,” Hunyar told 404 Media. “As shown in previous demos, their willingness to continuously monitor and catalogue the actions of law abiding citizens exercising their constitutionally protected rights should worry anyone who plans to exercise them now or in the future."
Chelsea forward back in form after World Cup snub
Alex Scott and Morgan Gibbs-White also in contention
Thomas Tuchel is considering an England recall for Cole Palmer and could include Alex Scott in his squad for the Nations League.
Tuchel’s first selection since the World Cup will be confirmed on Friday morning and the head coach has been weighing up claims from a host of players who failed to earn a place in his plans last summer. Palmer was one of those to miss out after struggling for form and fitness but the Chelsea attacker has started the season with four goals and two assists, raising optimism around his hopes of inclusion.
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The Book of Birds by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris, an illustrated guide to Britain’s threatened bird species, has been named as the Wainwright prize book of the year.
Meanwhile, the prize’s children’s book of the year award went to Otherlands: An Illustrated Journey Through Earth’s Lost Worlds by Thomas Halliday, illustrated by Gavin Scott.
Continue reading...Letter sent before Fifa council meeting on 15 October
Infantino under pressure before presidential election
The Football Association’s chair, Debbie Hewitt, has written to Gianni Infantino, demanding that Fifa releases all documents relating to his abandoned World Cup sell-off plan and the decision to lift the USA striker Folarin Balogun’s suspension during last summer’s tournament.
The Guardian revealed last month that Hewitt and other members of the Fifa council were lobbying for an independent review of the proposed Fifa Forward Enterprise (FFE) sell-off and the Balogun controversy. Their requests have been formalised in a letter sent to the Fifa president and his deputy, Mattias Grafström.
Continue reading...Mark Carney’s response to the challenges posed by an unreliable US president contains a clarity of vision that is lacking in post-Brexit Britain
There is no “associate membership” of the European Union, nor any blueprint for what such a thing might involve. It is a political hypothesis, describing a relationship of intimate strategic alignment with the EU, stopping short of actual membership, in ways that are significant but undefined.
This week, Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, invited Canada to be the first country to enjoy this putative status. In her state of the union speech, she spoke of a future relationship elevated “to the highest level possible”, reflecting an affinity of interests and values. Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, reciprocated the sentiment in a speech on Wednesday. Addressing the European parliament, he said the two sides should secure “strategic autonomy through deep cooperation” across a broad spectrum of interests: trade, defence, industrial capacity, science, space and AI. He proposed Canadian participation in the EU’s Erasmus student exchange programme and Horizon research scheme.
Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Continue reading...ANKARA (ANP) - De Turkse president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is voornemens zich opnieuw te kandideren voor het presidentschap, aldus Turkse media op gezag van een hooggeplaatste adviseur van Erdogan.
Daartoe zou de Turkse president vervroegd verkiezingen willen uitschrijven, om zo middels dit geitenpaadje de maximale ambtstermijn van tweemaal vijf jaar te omzeilen. Verkiezingen zouden in dat geval in april 2028 worden gehouden, een maand eerder dan gebruikelijk. Wel moeten eerst 360 van de 600 parlementariërs in het land akkoord zijn, het minimum om vervroegde verkiezingen uit te schrijven.
Vorig jaar nog zei Erdogan niet van plan te zijn zich opnieuw te kandideren als president. Ook vanuit de Turkse overheid klonken vooralsnog geen signalen dat er mogelijk vervroegde verkiezingen zouden komen. Als er verkiezingen komen, is het nog de vraag wie het zal opnemen tegen de Turkse leider. Zijn belangrijkste opponent, oud-burgemeester van Istanbul Ekrem İmamoğlu, zit vast. Vermoedelijk zal hij niet kunnen deelnemen vanuit gevangenschap.
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Trump deed de uitspraak voordat hij komende week een ontmoeting heeft met de leiders van Golfstaten. Hij maakte duidelijk dat hij dan met die regionale bondgenoten wil spreken over hoe het verder moet. Die zijn nauw betrokken, want tijdens de oorlog in het Midden-Oosten kwamen ook landen onder vuur te liggen waar de VS troepen hebben gelegerd.
De president wilde volgens Axios niet zeggen of hij een besluit gaat nemen voor de midterms, de Amerikaanse parlementsverkiezingen in november. De strijdkrachten hebben volgens bronnen opdracht gekregen het troepenniveau in het Midden-Oosten tot het einde van het jaar te handhaven.