[tptacek]

Are they? Work I was involved in was instrumental in getting our Flock contract cancelled. Meanwhile, all the surrounding municipalities have, over the last 2 quarters, acquired more ALPR cameras.

I'm certain that had the 2024 election gone a different way, we'd still have our Flock cameras.

[sodality2]

It's definitely a push and pull; more are adopting it, but more are pushing back. The total amount is definitely still rising, though, but so is awareness.

There's Eugene and Springfield, OR; Cambridge, MA; a few in TX; Denver and Longmont, CO; Redmond, WA; Evanston and Oak Park, IL; etc.

[tptacek]

I'm Oak Park (I helped write our ALPR General Order and the transparency reporting requirements that formed the case for killing the contract because it wasn't addressing real crime).

Oak Park is 4.7 square miles. All our surrounding munis have rolled out more ALPRs after we killed ours.

Further: because of the oversight we had over our ALPRs before, they weren't really doing anything, for something like 2 years. OPPD kept them around because they were handy for post-incident investigation. We effectively had to stop responding to alerts once our police oversight commission ran the numbers of what the stops were.

Which is to say: our "de-Flocking" was mostly cosmetic. We'd already basically shut the cameras down and cut all sharing out.

[sodality2]

I definitely think there's something to be said for nuance; my county is one of the worst in my state for penetration [0] but according to their transparency log avoids many of the common criticisms of Flock, like data sharing, immigration enforcement use, etc [1].

I'm just happy for any sort of critical analysis or attention being brought to every municipality's use of this technology as so often people have no idea at all, though. Because there are a lot of counties which are far worse, and almost none of the public is even aware; I suspect there is at least some gap between people who would care if they knew, and people who care now.

[0]: https://alpranalysis.com/virginia/206807

[1]: https://transparency.flocksafety.com/williamsburg-va-pd

[therobots927]

How did you go about getting the contract canceled? I’m assuming you had to convince the police chief?

[tptacek]

No. The police chief was unhappy with the outcome.

I also didn't personally get the contract cancelled --- in fact, I (for complicated reasons) opposed cancelling the contract. But I can tell you the sequence of things that led to the cancellation:

1. OPPD made the mistake of trying to deploy the cameras as an ordinary appropriation, without direct oversight, which pissed the board off.

2. We deployed the cameras in a pilot program with a bunch of restrictions (use only for violent crimes, security controls, stuff like that) that included monthly transparency reports to our CPOC commission.

3. Over the pilot period, the results from the cameras weren't good. That wasn't directly the fault of the cameras (the problem is the Illinois LEADS database), but it allowed opponents of the cameras to tell a (true) story.

4. At the first renewal session, an effort was made to shut off the cameras entirely (I was in favor then!), but the police chief made an impassioned case for keeping them as investigative tools. We renewed the contract with two provisos: we essentially stopped responding to Flock alerts, and we cut off all out-of-state sharing.

5. Transparency reports about the cameras to CPOC continued to tell a dismal story about their utility, complicated now by the fact that we (reasonably) were not using them for alerting in the first place; we had something like 5 total stories over a year post renewal, and 4 of them were really flimsy. The cameras did not work.

6. Trump got elected.

7. A push to kill the cameras off once and for all came from the progressive faction of the board; Trump and the poor performance of the cameras made them impossible to defend.

8. OPPD turned off all sharing of camera data.

9. The board voted to cancel the contract anyways.

[therobots927]

Just having the transparency report available to demonstrate that the cameras weren’t working seems like an important step. I’m working on trying to get this information myself for my local area. I do agree that the election moved the needle. Hopefully this generates a pro-privacy coalition that will be just as opposed to similar efforts when the blue ties are back in power.