{"id":1210,"date":"2023-12-30T13:55:46","date_gmt":"2023-12-30T13:55:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/?p=1210"},"modified":"2023-12-30T13:55:48","modified_gmt":"2023-12-30T13:55:48","slug":"how-to-pump-the-brakes-on-your-police-departments-use-of-flocks-mass-surveillance-license-plate-readers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/2023\/12\/30\/how-to-pump-the-brakes-on-your-police-departments-use-of-flocks-mass-surveillance-license-plate-readers\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Pump the Brakes on Your Police Department\u2019s Use of Flock\u2019s Mass Surveillance License Plate Readers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From Pasadena, California<\/a> to Lexington, Kentucky<\/a> to Menasha, Wisconsin<\/a>, to Newark, New Jersey,<\/a> the surveillance company Flock Safety is blanketing American cities with dangerously powerful and unregulated automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras. While license plate readers have been around for some time, Flock is the first to create a nationwide mass-surveillance system out of its customers\u2019 cameras.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Working with police departments, neighborhood watches, and other private customers, Flock not only allows private camera owners to create their own \u201chot lists\u201d that will generate alarms when listed plates are spotted, but also runs all plates against state police watchlists and the FBI\u2019s primary criminal database, the National Crime Information Center (NCIC). Flock\u2019s goal is to expand to \u201cevery city in the United States,\u201d and its cameras are already in use<\/a> in over 2,000 cities in at least 42 states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike a targeted ALPR camera system that is designed to take pictures of license plates, check the plates against local hot lists, and then flush the data if there\u2019s no hit, Flock is building a giant camera network that records people\u2019s comings and goings across the nation, and then makes that data available for search by any of its law enforcement customers. Such a system provides even small-town sheriffs access to a sweeping and powerful mass-surveillance tool, and allows big actors like federal agencies and large urban police departments to access the comings and goings of vehicles in even the smallest of towns. And every new customer that buys and installs the company\u2019s cameras extends Flock\u2019s network, contributing to the creation of a centralized mass surveillance system of Orwellian scope. Motorola Solutions, a competitor to Flock, is pursuing a similar business model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If the police or government leaders are pushing for Flock or another centralized mass-surveillance ALPR system in your community, we urge you to oppose it, full stop. You can do this by urging your local councilperson or other elected representatives to adopt our recommendations into law, attending public meetings and hearings, and raising the profile of the issue by writing letters to the editor and op-eds. You can also use social media to highlight the issues \u2014 be sure to tag your elected officials \u2014 including by sharing this blog post. If you\u2019re an elected official or community leader, you may also be able to engage directly with your police department \u2014 we have found that some departments are willing to do so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a few places, residents concerned about privacy and over-policing have successfully blocked their police departments\u2019 acquisition of Flock or other ALPR systems. But, in many other cities, those efforts have been thwarted. In communities where such systems can\u2019t be stopped entirely, we can still help protect our and our neighbors\u2019 civil liberties by working with our local police department and elected officials to ensure that local ALPR cameras do not feed into a mass surveillance system that lets potentially every law enforcement department in the world spy on the residents and visitors of any city in America.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We don\u2019t find every use of ALPRs objectionable. For example, we do not generally object to using them to check license plates against lists of stolen cars, for AMBER Alerts, or for toll collection, provided they are deployed and used fairly and subject to proper checks and balances, such as ensuring devices are not disproportionately deployed in low-income communities and communities of color, and that the \u201chot lists\u201d they are run against are legitimate and up to date. But there\u2019s no reason the technology should be used to create comprehensive records of everybody\u2019s comings and goings \u2014 and that is precisely what ALPR databases like Flock\u2019s are doing. In our country, the government should not be tracking us unless it has individualized suspicion that we\u2019re engaged in wrongdoing. We more fully lay out our concerns with this technology in a March 2022 white paper<\/a> on Flock, and in a 2013 report<\/a> on law enforcement use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Cars<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fast-Growing Company Flock is Building a New AI-Driven Mass-Surveillance System<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Flock’s adoption of new technology may expand current government surveillance reach and erode Americans\u2019 privacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Source: American Civil Liberties Union<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many police departments neither understand nor endorse Flock\u2019s nationwide, mass surveillance-driven approach to ALPR use, but are adopting the company\u2019s cameras simply because other police departments in their region are doing so. As such, they may be amenable to compromise. That might even include using another vendor that does not tie its cameras into a mass-surveillance system. In other cases, you may be able to get your police department or local legislators to add addendums to Flock\u2019s standard contract that limit its ALPR system\u2019s mass surveillance capabilities and highly permissive data sharing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In those situations, the three most important areas for regulation and negotiation are how long the data is retained, who the data is shared with, and how that data is used by law enforcement. We obtained samples of Flock\u2019s Government Agency Customer Agreements with the Greensboro, North Carolina Police Department and other Flock contracts with local police. Below is suggested contract language across these three areas, based on these agreements, that you can use in your local advocacy efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Data Retention<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Whether ALPRs are being used for Amber Alerts, toll collection, or to identify stolen vehicles, a license plate can be run against a watchlist in seconds. The police do not need records of every person\u2019s coming and goings, including trips to doctor\u2019s offices, religious institutions, and political gatherings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

New Hampshire state law<\/a>, which requires law enforcement to delete non-hit license plate capture data within three minutes, is a good model. But you should get the shortest retention period you can in your community. From worst to best, here are three approaches that can be taken to the retention of ALPR data:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Pasadena, California to Lexington, Kentucky to Menasha, Wisconsin, to Newark, New Jersey, the surveillance company Flock Safety is blanketing American cities with dangerously powerful and unregulated automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras. While license plate readers have been around…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","wpcat-1-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1213,"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210\/revisions\/1213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfawbn.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}