Ok, that’s misleading…there really isn’t anyway you can avoid it. If you have been following the topic of the loss of freedom and civil liberties due to the installation of Flock cameras this won’t be news to you. But if you haven’t, here’s a short run down.
In the category of “It seemed like a good idea at the time”, city, county, state and any other government you care to chose has begun installing Flock surveillance cameras. You know, just like they have in China. They do automatic license plate reading, and while they say they they don’t do facial recognition, there are other tools for that, I think that statement is still up for debate. The Flock cameras were supposed to be an aide is solving crime, tracking fleeing suspects, and stopping the heartbreak of psoriasis. And perhaps they really can do all those things.
However, here is what we have so far.
Your Whereabouts Are Known at All Times
“Big Brother is watching you” is no longer a fictional admonition. Everywhere you go, your location is recorded by phone technology, license plate readers, Uber and Lyft transactions, and cameras.
Privacy? Forget about it. Your location history is in the hands of many tech companies. Can the police and other government agencies force tech companies to share that information about you?
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If your location history puts you within a 1-mile radius of a bank robbery with hundreds of other people, you could become a suspect, swept up in the wide net cast to find the perpetrator.
And this has happened. Auto Journalist Swarmed by Cops After Flock Cameras Mistakenly Flag Car Theft: We ‘Live in a Surveillance State’
Suddenly, in a Kohl’s parking lot, four police cars surrounded Feder’s vehicle. Hands on their guns, the officers began shouting for Feder and his wife to get out of the vehicle.
Fortunately, the couple complied with police instructions.
At that point, after a humiliating pat-down, Feder learned that Flock’s cameras had flagged the vehicle’s plates as stolen.
Moreover, the ambush at Kohl’s occurred after officers had tracked the vehicle for days.
After a fair amount of difficulty, Feder and the officers finally learned that the problem began in faraway Los Angeles, California. There, a Jaguar Land Rover dealership had reported New Jersey plates 34 03 DTM stolen. Flock’s system, however, had recorded the allegedly stolen plate as simply 34 DTM. Then, the system flagged Feder’s Range Rover, which had a plate number of 34 10 DTM.
In other words, Flock’s surveillance system ignored the two middle numbers.
Within the same article, can you be falsely accused of a crime due to a Flock up and in contrast to “innocent until proven guilty” you get “Flocked until you can prove you’re innocent.” As referenced above in the first linked column.
For instance, according to the Denverite, in September, an officer from the Columbine Valley Police Department in Denver, Colorado, visited the home of financial planner Chrisanna Elser. The officer issued her a summons for petty theft and accused her of stealing a $25 package from a porch in nearby Bow Mar, not because Flock cameras had captured her vehicle plates at the scene of the alleged crime, but because those cameras captured her vehicle entering and then leaving the town around the time someone stole the package.
The officer also erroneously claimed to have Ring doorbell camera footage of Elser swiping the package.
Worst of all, after she received the summons, Elser had to prove her own whereabouts. The fact that she did so successfully and that the police department eventually voided the summons, however, does not diminish the broader crime against civil liberties.
Flock Cameras Nearly Got Two Americans Killed Last Week
Flock cameras nearly turned a routine drive into a deadly encounter last week, and exposed how dangerous a new surveillance state can become.
Last Thursday, a Flock camera in Wisconsin flagged a silver SUV as connected to a Milwaukee homicide investigation. Brookfield police shut down I-94, boxed in the vehicle, and detained its two occupants at gunpoint. There was just one problem: the alert was outdated. Milwaukee police had failed to remove the vehicle from the system after it was no longer wanted in the investigation. The SUV’s occupants had nothing to do with the homicide, yet a bureaucratic lapse and an automated alert subjected them to a high-risk police stop that could easily have ended in tragedy.
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This comes as questions about a China-like surveillance state become increasingly relevant as Flock systems expand across the country. Flock says its network now includes nearly 100,000 cameras operating in more than 6,000 communities across 49 states, giving participating law-enforcement agencies access to a vast, interconnected database of vehicle-location records.
That is the danger at the heart of Flock’s expansion: it does not require a malicious officer or a deliberately abusive policy to threaten innocent people. It requires only one stale alert, one bad entry, or one bureaucratic failure, and suddenly an ordinary driver becomes the target of a high-risk police stop.
And that’s just a couple of mistakes made by Flock. What about the human component with access to this sort of surveillance?
Five Police Officers Arrested and Fired After Abusing Flock Surveillance Cameras
Five officers with the Albany Police Department in Georgia were arrested and fired after allegedly abusing Flock cameras.
The Georgia Bureau of Investigation revealed in a July 6 release that the officers were charged with “Misuse of License Plate Data and Violation of Oath of Office.”
The Albany Police Department had conducted an internal audit of the Flock cameras, which automatically read license plates and capture other vehicle details such as color, make, and model.
The audit revealed that the officers “previously accessed the Flock system on multiple occasions and utilized the retained license plate data for non-law enforcement purposes.”
Each of the five officers — Tytianna Davis, Jade Jackson, Nicholas Richardson, Brittney Smith, and Issac Whitus — are between 23 and 32 years of age and were charged with one count of Violation of Oath of Office.
They were each charged with between one and 11 counts of Misuse of License Plate Data.
The now-former police officers were arrested and booked into the Dougherty County Jail.
A one off with some bad cops in one department?
When Flock Comes to Town: How These AI Cameras Work and What to Do About Them
Apparently, that’s a no.
Since Flock Safety began partnering with law enforcement, a growing number of officers have been found abusing the surveillance system. In one instance, a Kansas police chief used Flock cameras 164 times while tracking an ex. In another case, a sheriff in Texas lied about using Flock to “track a missing person,” but was later found to be investigating a possible abortion. In Georgia, a police chief was arrested for using Flock to stalk and harass citizens. In Virginia, a man sued the city of Norfolk over purported privacy violations and discovered that Flock cameras had been used to track him 526 times, around four times per day.
Also in Georgia, but this time Savannah, 6 Georgia police employees terminated for using Flock cameras to stalk people
This time, FOUR Savannah, Georgia, police officers and two civilian employees of the department have been charged with using the Flock surveillance “car tag readers” to stalk people for their own personal reasons.
We’ll be told, again, that this is not the fault of Flock and that the cameras are simply being misused, so we have to accept this level of surveillance in exchange for our freedom.
Yeah, that last line is perfect, and no it’s not the Babylon Bee.
Baton Rouge police defend Flock cameras as privacy concerns mount nationwide
It’s more than just a license plate reader.
Morse said the system goes beyond standard license plate searches.
“Instead of just typing in the license plate you can say, ‘hey I’m looking for this red Honda that has a black number and damage on the passenger side,’” Morse said.
The cameras track more than stolen vehicles and active police targets. Every vehicle that passes a camera is photographed and logged with a digital time and location stamp that is kept for 30 days, according to Flock.
While at this time Flock denies using facial recognition, I’m not sure that’s not a component.
The layers of convenience are hard to resist.
Whole Foods knows what you buy to eat, which is connected to Amazon, which knows what supplements you buy and what you order for your home, which is connected to countless other systems, all feeding into a growing web of information built quietly around each of us. It used to feel unsettling when you talked about something near your phone and then saw an ad for it later. Now, we accept it as part of life.
Not that long ago, we would have been appalled at the idea of a store using facial recognition while we shop. Today, we barely notice.
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Even in the small town I live in, a new layer of surveillance is being introduced. Recently, the city council approved a contract with Flock cameras, installing license plate-tracking technology throughout town. These systems are not exclusively for law enforcement. They are available for purchase, for monitoring, and for data collection.
The commitment was about $17,000.
People noticed. In a place where news travels fast and people like to talk, it didn’t take long for the backlash to begin. Some residents have already taken matters into their own hands, cutting down cameras. Others showed up at the city council meeting to voice their concerns.
People move to small towns for a lot of reasons, but being tracked every time they drive to the grocery store, hardware store, or feed store is not one of them.
A few days later, I was at the airport and chose to opt out of the facial scan, as I always do. The employee rolled their eyes and said, “Do you know how many other cameras have already captured you walking through here?”
I told them I didn’t know, but this was the only one giving me the option to opt out. So I was opting out.
It is getting harder and harder to opt out.
If you want to know what tracking surveillance is being used in your area, https://www.atlasofsurveillance.org/
It’s run by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Atlas of Surveillance is a project of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada, Reno
But this is an issue that seems to be bringing a lot of the political spectrum together. As much as it pains me to use something from cnn.
Flock cameras are getting mobbed
In recent weeks and months, though, another kind of network has taken shape: a coast-to-coast pattern of opposition to the company. The objectors range from public officials to individual vigilantes, spanning metropolitan and rural America alike. In a politically divided country, opposition to Flock cameras is the rare issue that binds people across the ideological spectrum.
“It’s a violation of people’s privacy,” said Caleb Williams, a 24-year-old in rural South Carolina who identified as a political independent.
“Rational people know it comes down to violating personal liberties,” said Adrien Kaiser, a self-described constitutional conservative who lives northwest of Houston.
“I firmly believe the government can do things to make life better for people, but a surveillance state is the first step towards a police state,” said Jon Dendy, a progressive in Massachusetts.
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“Oftentimes our critics will say we need to make a choice between safety or privacy. And I think that’s I think that’s wrong,” Flock CEO Garrett Langley said in a recent interview with CNN’s Eric Levenson. “As a country, as a society, as a species, we have proven over and over and over again that we can have safety and privacy.”
Over the last few months, Flock has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons. Police have been caught using the system to stalk exes and colleagues, and journalists have reported that, contrary to the company’s claims that it only logs vehicles, the cameras can be used to track people.
No information available it its a real journalist or just someone from cnn. If it’s a real journalist, then considering it’s cnn, it would have to have been Scott Jennings.
And since there does seem to be some agreement politically.
Dump the Flock: Flock Cameras as the Catalyst for a Modern Boston Tea Party
We saw it with COVID: Under the banner of “safety,” governments and partners bypassed privacy norms, imposed vaccine passports and proof-of-status requirements for everyday public spaces, and normalized emergency powers that eviscerated medical choice and bodily autonomy. The same playbook is now expanding into perpetual surveillance.
Picture this: Every time you drive down the road — to work, to church, to pick up your kids, or just to clear your head on Louisiana’s backroads — a network of cameras is logging your license plate, your vehicle’s make, model, color, and often more. Timestamped. Geolocated. Uploaded to the cloud. Searchable by police departments across the country, sometimes federal agencies, with little to no warrant required for historical “fishing expeditions.”
This isn’t science fiction. This is Flock Safety’s automated license plate reader system — over 80,000 cameras strong nationwide, expanding fast, and already operating in places like Central, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans right here in Louisiana. Marketed as a “safety tool” to catch stolen cars and criminals, it’s fast becoming the infrastructure of a modern surveillance state.
We all remember covid, where a man was arrested for walking out of his apartment and sneezing in an elevator all alone. People arrested in the fresh air, people ratting on their neighbors for having company. Now with Flock, you don’t even need the neighbors to rat. They can just monitor the neighborhood like the did with the lady arrested in Denver. Yes, we all remember the Covid era.
So, they’re are building a file on everyone, depending on where you shop I suppose. What you eat, where you go, who you see, known contacts, supplements all according the article by Mollie in The Camera Knows you belong.
All without a warrant.
What else might go into that dossier on you? This brings me to my final point…honest.
Gun Range Removes Flock Cameras Pointed at Entrance to Parking Lot
A gun range in the suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin has taken down Flock cameras that were installed more than six months ago, after a video showing the cameras and questioning why they were there went viral.
There are 4 Flock cameras “pointing into the entrance of the parking lot. Not the street — into the entrance, so they can read every license plate that comes in here”
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According to a note posted on the range’s infrequently used Facebook page, the decision to allow Flock to install their cameras came after a string of burglaries at several Milwaukee-area gun shops.
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allow a third-party to put up multiple cameras to record the business’s parking lot instead of just putting up some security cameras of their own. Eagle Sports says it was oblivious to the fact that the system would “later” be used in ways that raise serious privacy concerns, but unless Eagle Sports Range did absolutely no research into Flock beforehand, management had to know that the cameras would be on 24/7 and recording the movement (and license plates) of every customer and employee.
And, apparently they did absolutely no research into the Flock company….
Flock is not foreign owned. It was founded by three Georgia Tech alums in Atlanta, Georgia in 2017. I have no idea where Eagle Sports Range got the idea that it’s an Israeli company, but it’s not true, and management should really take this post down before they get accused of blaming the Jews for their mistake.
Covid showed us the government has absolutely no problem abusing their authority. Obviously, it seems like this system has enough flaws and enough problems to cause concerns. I think a hard look right back at it while it’s staring at U.S. is in order. Very short order.
