[tkems]

One of the Flock cameras was installed in my city nearby where I live. Once I noticed it, I thought it was a red light camera at first since it was near an intersection.

I did some research on them and found that they are completely wireless (cellular network most of the time) and powered by a 65w solar panel. Since they capture every license plate that passes by, I wasn't thrilled it was a private company keeping the data, even if they say they only keep it for 30 days.

I did a FOIA request with my city to see how many are in use and their locations to share with my community. I also plan on asking why my city thinks it is a good use of tax dollars. I think it should be a requirement for cities to disclose their use since it is a private company installing private equipment (and a camera at that!) on public land to monitor the public.

[dabbledash]

Call me old fashioned, but I think the constant monitoring of citizen's movements is bad even (especially?) when the state does it. If we're going to live in 1984, the involvement of corporations seems like the least of our troubles.

Good on you though, for actually going after this information and sharing it with your community. People absolutely have the right to know if they're being subjected to this.

[u32480932048]

I'm curious what the FOIA request will yield. Many of these are in private shopping centers or convenience stores, so I'm not sure any particular government body is accountable for them.

It would cost money for your city to buy its own camera system. These are presumably free, or perhaps even paying private property owners to lease the parking space. They can then turn around and charge municipalities and cities (and car repo companies, etc) for access to the information.

The police, et al, have <rules> about what they can gobble up and save, but there's nothing in the constitution about buying evidence from data brokers.

I'd bet having the comings and goings of everyone from the local WalMart and a few convenience stores at key intersections is very useful for tracking people down. At least one brand advertises the ability to get notifications when a vehicle is seen on any camera.

[infecto]

I believe in most of the arrangements the police are getting free access. Walmart decides to pay for a couple cameras at a few thousand per year and Walmart gets access to the data with the option to share it. So it’s even stickier since the police are not paying for it.

Flock will indeed alert on matches.

[tptacek]

Flock got introduced to my municipality (Oak Park, IL) when OPPD was able to use data from a neighboring muni (it may have been Chicago, I forget which) to work back on an incident. OPPD had (has) authority to make arbitrary technology acquisitions so long as they're under a fixed cost (I believe $20k) --- this is a common arrangement in area munis, and maybe around the country --- which, if you're a product manager at Flock, gives you a trivial and effective game plan: go close deals to get <$20k pilot deployments up and running, and then work on expanding them.

The problem you have if Flock squicks you out is that you're not a normie. Flock's pitch to normies is incredibly compelling. Flock theoretically lights up any time a stolen car drives into your muni; stolen cars are a primary vector for crimes (here, especially: carjacking, but also thefts, burglaries, etc). The data it collects is shareable only, and with consent, to other law enforcement agencies. It records make/model/color/plate, but no other direct identifying information. Assume for the moment that it all works as advertised, and it's on paper a weird capability to push back on your local police having.

Our own OPPD messed up acquiring Flock. I think they tried to skip the pilot, and go straight to a muni-wide rollout, which required board approval. That blindsided the board. Instead of rubber-stamping it as expected, the board kicked it out to the technology and police oversight (CPOC) citizens commissions. I serve on one of those. Here's what we came up with:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1v_sko3OljbZUEbcZbv_L9q9z...

What we ended up getting:

* A negotiated special-purpose police general order governing use of Flock, limiting it to violent crime, and installing procedural safeguards (most notably: a monthly readout to CPOC on Flock hits).

* A rollback down to 8 cameras from 20+.

* A one-year review of how Flock went.

The glaring hole left open: we have no direct public input on which munis we share Flock data with.

A year later, the monthly readouts to CPOC were FOIA'd and published, and the results are in: overwhelmingly, Flock stops in Oak Park were not responsive to crimes in Oak Park, but rather had OPPD doing warrants enforcement work for neighboring munis. Worse: the premise of Flock, that we could plug into regional hot-lists of stolen cars and cordon Oak Park off from them, turned out to be terribly flawed: the CPD hot-list is full of bullshit reports or recovered cars never cleared, so we were regularly pulling random innocent people over. The Flock technology worked fine! But the municipal systems it depends just aren't ready to safely use it.

The big thing coming off Flock for us is ACLU's CCOPS model ordinance, which adds mandatory board review for any surveillance technology (broadly defined in the ordinance). We worked for 4-5 months getting it prepped for the board, which has counsel drafting a local enacting ordinance; I'm optimistic we'll get it this year. CCOPS is something any muni can get; it's a good pitch, with something for a lot of different constituencies to like.

I think the "private company monitoring public land" thing is an argument that carries a lot of weight on Twitter and HN, but my experience in (our own specific) local politics is that it's a good way to get people to look at you like a Martian.

[FireBeyond]

> The data it collects is shareable only, and with consent, to other law enforcement agencies.

> It records make/model/color/plate, but no other direct identifying information. Assume for the moment that it all works as advertised, and it's on paper a weird capability to push back on your local police having.

Ex Flock employee here... the first part may have changed, but private organizations (HOAs, mostly) can also have Flock deployments, and are not subject to the same sharing restrictions.

Also, image recognition does a lot more, it can identify vehicles by mismatched panel colors, roof racks, trailer hitches, bumper stickers and other factors, too.

[tptacek]

Right, sorry, I'm aware that there are private HOA-style Flock deployments too, I'm just talking about the Flock pitch to municipalities.

[dabbledash]

Can data be reviewed retroactively to track someone that wasn't a suspect at the time the image was captured. E.g., "we now suspect john doe was involved in a series pf bank robberies. Tell me everywhere his car allowed up in the last 30 days."

[tptacek]

Yep.