[smalltorch]

Silliness. Who enforces it then? The local law banning it was already equally as valid as a court order would have been. Would the county need to ask the judge to take it down?

Someone has to physically take it down and I'm guessing flock didn't put that in the budget.

[dragonwriter]

Ultimately, as a member of a legislative body, if you don’t like the way the executive bodies charged with inplementing a law are doing so, your choices are:

(1) Work with other members of the legislative body to hold the executive accountable for failures, via hearings, sanctions (often, if at the same level, including removal), etc., or

(2) Work with the same body to file a lawsuit as a body to compel compliance, which has additional enforcement provisions (including contempt orders by the court for noncompliance) not available with the bare law and no court case,

(3) Taking any avenue open to the public at large (including individual lawsuits, public advocacy including including electoral advocacy against any elected executive officers involved, etc.).

What is not generally an option is unilaterally assuming the role legally assigned to the executive in inplementing the law, or simply assuming whatever other powers you imagine are best to realize the intent of the law even if they are outside of its letter.

[fc417fc802]

I agree in general but on the other hand, isn't removal of unauthorized private property from public lands a routine duty of local government employees? So if anything I feel like flock is lucky the cameras weren't physically destroyed upon removal.

For example, if a maintenance worker had been instructed to remove them how would this have played out?

[tptacek]

The cameras would have been removed. Munis don't generally destroy random tech infrastructure they pull off poles, though they might throw it in a big pile. Flock could invoice for the cameras, but most munis would probably tell them to go fuck themselves.

[kevin_thibedeau]

> Who enforces it then?

The executive can enforce judicial orders. This is civics 101.

> The local law banning it was already equally as valid as a court order

The ban is an ex post facto law. Rights holders to property have a legitimate reason to defend those rights across policy changes.

[tptacek]

An ordinance banning ALPRs that impacts previously-installed Flock cameras is not an ex post facto law. But a municipal ban on private Flock cameras poses constitutional problems --- and not because of post facto or takings. Generally, the ballgame here is over publicly-owned cameras, so none of this is really apposite.

[tptacek]

The court enforces it. We're getting into movie plot politics here. The sheriff's department will not in fact ignore a district court ruling. These scenarios rapidly reach the point where the sheriff is removed from office and imprisoned for some amount of time. This is what happened to Joe Arpaio.

This is much simpler in a municipality: the board simply fires the village manager and the chief. A sheriff is usually an elected though.

Before you reach the point of suing, you cancel contracts, payments, IT infrastructure, and have public works remove the cameras from any county-owned infrastructure.

I mean, all this is pretty silly, though, because what you really do is just turn the cameras off.

[beart]

Joe Arpaio was not removed from office. He was charged with contempt but was never incarcerated. He was pardoned and then lost his next election.

[chasd00]

or just start fining Flock per camera per day for a brazillion dollars. Sheriff compliance or not, that's still in their power.

[cucumber3732842]

They'll never do it because Flock has the money and lawyers to fight it and friends in high places. Textbook "high risk of setting precedent you don't like" situation. They don't want to lose the ability to do the same to hundreds of dollars per violation per day routine (something that's constitutionally kind of sketchy to begin with) to normal people.

[tptacek]

They'll never do what? Flock has taken cameras down all over the place. They're a company we don't trust, but they're not Bond villains.

[lokar]

And then get a order to take the camera to satisfy the debt

[tptacek]

This is all very silly. Flock is not a scheme to install forever-cameras. They get paid primarily by municipalities. If your muni votes to shut the cameras off, they will shut the cameras off. If it votes to take the cameras down, nobody is going to stop public works from doing that.

The problem is that the First Law Of Message Board dictates that the most interesting narrative wins, and the narrative where Flock has deviously come up with a surveillance "forever chemical" to attach to every municipal road is much more interesting than "this is a service and if you stop paying for it it goes away".

[mistercheph]

> If your muni votes to shut the cameras off, they will shut the cameras off.

That's simply not true: there are numerous instances of municipalities having to fight flock to get cameras removed or shut off, and instances where local governments pass ordinances that local law enforcement refuses to enforce because the cameras, which have been banned, are not off, as you allege is what happens, and law enforcement continues to use the data the cameras provide despite the contract being terminated.

Just google e.g. "flock trash bag" to see how cities are having to deal with Flock.

There are links elsewhere in this thread to a few of the many instances where this happens but I'll link to something that hasn't been mentioned yet, where flock cameras are turned back on and used by law enforcement in Springfield after contracts are cancelled, and cameras are left up that flock pinky swears are off that turn out to be on and accessible by law enforcement:

https://www.kezi.com/news/local/stolen-car-found-in-springfi...

And again, that is just talking about the instances where the municipality actually wants the flock cameras turned off or removed, there are many instances, like TFA, where the local government wants them on or doesn't care, and they remain on and used by other agencies, despite the termination of the contract with one of the client agencies.

[tptacek]

When a municipality passes an ordinance prohibiting ALPRs, and the municipal police force refuses to shut off the ALPRs, and the municipality does not then fire the chief (or the muni executive, if needed), then the muni was full of shit about being opposed to the ALPRs in the first place.

I'm deeply involved in municipal politics and was for many years involved in national politics (and, more to the point, discussions of national politics online) and I see this all the time: people crossing the streams between the two, as if the levels of responsibility and accountability were comparable. A municipal sworn law enforcement official that ignores a duly passed ordinance that has gone into effect is breaking the law and their contract and can trivially be fired, not after a long drawn-out procedure but immediately.

I watched us shut our cameras down. As I said: there was no drama, at least procedurally. If our chief had tried to prevent the cameras from coming down, she'd have been out on her ass the next day. I'm sure there are places where there was drama, but I'd need to see the full story before drawing the conclusion that you're drawing. What I see here is the more interesting narrative ("the cameras are impossible to take down, they're a virus!") asserting itself in its natural habitat, the online message board.

I don't know what this story about a misconfigured camera (it strobed an "outage" alert after being deactivated) being reactivated by a technician is supposed to tell me. The theory here is that Flock is running a scam where they're rolling trucks to surreptitiously enable individual cameras?

[lokar]

I thought what was going on was they would keep them up after the local contract as they could still get value from them as part of the national network.

[tptacek]

I don't doubt that they will, if all your muni cares about is "not paying anymore", they'll take advantage of the easement or whatever. Kind of the same way DirecTV was happy for you to leave the dish installed.