At least 10 US government and police agencies restrict Flock — TechCrunch
At least 10 local government bodies and police departments in the United States have restricted or begun phasing out the use of Flock Safety technologies since the summer. The decisions are being made over concerns about mass surveillance, privacy protection, data sharing, and procurement procedures, TechCrunch reports.
Over the past three months, steps to terminate contracts with Flock have been taken by Monroe, Ohio; Newburgh, New York; Richmond, Virginia; Hopkinton and New Bedford, Massachusetts; as well as Lansing, Michigan. Police in East Bridgewater and Grafton, Massachusetts, have also announced plans to abandon the company's cameras. Residents of League City, Texas, voted against the police's continued use of Flock license plate readers, so the cameras are to be removed.
Privacy and data access
Asheville police in North Carolina lost access to the technology after the city voted in August to end the contract. The El Paso County Sheriff's Office in Colorado said in September that it would stop using Flock cameras. Sheriff Joseph Roybal stated that county law enforcement has the tools, training, and experience to locate and detain criminals without these cameras.
In March, the city of Ithaca, New York, adopted a resolution to terminate its contract with Flock Group. In the document, city authorities referred to confirmed cases of federal agents using Flock infrastructure to obtain information without separate authorization from the local government body that signed the contract. The resolution also mentioned reports that Flock allegedly allowed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to use results of queries to the automatic license plate reader database for investigations involving immigrants.
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Flock's position and restrictions
Flock said its technologies help solve serious crimes, locate suspects, missing persons, and stolen vehicles. The company stressed that customers own their data and decide to whom and how to provide it; Flock also said that it does not sell data and has no contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
In August, the company announced that it would reduce the standard data retention period for new customers from 30 to seven days. It also said that law enforcement agencies need a case code to search the database. More than 100,000 Flock cameras are used in the United States.
Florida banned license plate readers on state highways this summer, while Texas suspended state funding for Flock. At the same time, Cleveland, Ohio, extended its contract with the company but began restricting immigration-related queries and narrowed access to the database to Cleveland police only.
