License-plate readers aren’t being misused by SDPD. Why the freak-out?

For decades, social scientists have written about how groupthink induces intellectual incoherence. Many people care more about maintaining the “correct” attitude toward a subject than holding a factual model of reality. Once a specific purported outrage is identified and members of a group realize how they’re supposed to feel, what pioneering UC Berkeley sociologist Herbert Blumer called “social contagion” emerges. It used to take months for this contagion to develop. In the internet era, it can be close to instantaneous.

Just ask executives with Flock, the company launched in 2017 that makes automated license-plate readers for use by law enforcement agencies. After the tech came into widespread use, it became controversial — first because of the evidence that police officers were using Flock data to stalk women and that Flock wasn’t as transparent as it should be, and more recently because of evidence that police in many states were supplying information gathered by Flock cameras to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

But in August, a social media tidal wave emerged that asserted Flock abuse is everywhere — because even in blue states, who trusts the police to be honest?