> From the beginning, we have been clear that our customers own the data captured by their ALPR cameras. This has always been the case, but some of our contractual language has confused the public on this crucial point... The principle is simple: customers own the data, decide who can access it, and choose who they share it with.
I'm one of the general public that is continually confused by their usage of the word "own". I can't imagine that their language update will make it any more clear.
If the data is on Flock's servers (it is) and accessible by Flock (it is) then it is Flock who owns the data, not the PDs. Sure, they can allow the PDs to have say over what is done with the data, but ultimately Flock has the ability to use the data however they'd like.
This is not hypothetical, they have used previously shared data with DHS [0] without the so-called owner's permission and use data for their AI training [1] without option to opt-out.
Flock can make all the promises it wants, but the reality is that once growth stalls out on camera installations, which it must, shareholders will immediately insist that they pivot into other monetization schemes. There aren't really any laws holding them back, just their already weasel-worded contracts that they could easily renegotiate once the police departments are putting pressure on the city/county/state/federal legislative bodies.
The possibilities are endless:
- Is your employee visiting your competitors?
- Where has your husband/wife/lover been?
- What medical buildings has this person been to?
- Does this person go to churches / gun ranges?
Ironically, those questions are more legal than Flock's current usage. The vast majority of Flock's revenue comes from government, and government cannot hire a 3rd party to do what would be unconstitutional if done directly. Thus far, pervasive monitoring without a warrant has been considered an unreasonable search.
[Edit: I think Flocks "victims" have a decent argument for injunctions for the removal of the cameras on the basis that Flock is conducting an illegal search on behalf of the government.]
However, the government can generally do what the public is allowed to do. So, if there are companies serving a genuine market for monitoring your employees, etc. via video surveillance installed on private property... then the government would not be restricted from accessing what private businesses have access to buy.
It’s an important reminder: I think a lot of people think that online privacy is just a thing that keeps you from being micro-targeted by ads and algorithms - and many don’t care about that. But it’s also a thing that keeps that data from governments that are increasingly confident that they can control the narrative, if and when they use this information in violent ways against their own residents. Because once it’s collected, it can and will be laundered for government use.
There's a lot across agency law, but one example would be Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Assn., 489 US 602 (1989) involving a drug test performed by ostensibly private railroads, but pursuant to federal regulations. That was considered sufficient government action to implicate the 4th Amendment.
Those are small potatoes. The obvious big customer is the federal government. Founders Fund was an early investor, Flock's enormous volume of data would be a great fit for Palantir, and as early as 2020, Flock was facilitating direct access for fusion centers:
> “FLOCK already has their license plate reader systems in several neighborhoods in North SA [San Antonio] now,” James Glass, the deputy director of the Southwest Texas Fusion Center, wrote in an October 2020 email to colleagues. “In order to be granted free access to search the FLOCK system for license plate reader hits, we are asked to agree to sign this MOU.”
That wasn't the CEO, and "lie" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. A non-product person (CISO) was being asked if a specific feature exists and they believed it did not. Should they have said something along the lines of, "as far as I know, no" yes, they should have. It's a mistake, not a lie. Lie would require intentionally having knowledge of it and trying to obscure that fact.
Clearly, the stories in the press have hurt them, especially the police abuse. Requiring case codes is a good step, and proactively catching signs of abuse is a big change from "we're just an unopinionated tool; you should talk to your policy department". They're still passing the buck on educating users on the limitations of their tool. I remain skeptical of any of their claims around data ownership.
Reading these actions, you can pick apart how to circumvent them, and the security audit is still pending — let's see how damning of a report they'll allow to be released.
I dont know why we're not looking at the obvious answer here. Encrypt the data behind warrants and require narrow parameters for the warrants. It will require state-by-state implementation + legal changes sure but it's the safest, simplest solution.
P.S: Anyone know how London has solved this problem?
The only acceptable change is the removal of these cameras.
I can't go walk my dog around the neighborhood without looking up and seeing police accessible cameras. They can track my movements with no probable cause and no warrants.
And they're objectively ugly as fuck. I am fortunate enough to live in a neighborhood with a two mile tree-lined path, and these are the only inorganic "scenery" besides the path and adjacent road. It's ruined my daily walks.
It doesn't deal with the lingering threat that remains of the people who would be willing to do this kind of stuff for money.
The problem is ultimately that there are people motivated to spy on their neighbours and bring about a totalitarian surveillance nightmare in exchange for money.
You're just playing whack-a-mole as long as these people can still operate in society. They'll be back, and more insidious and more determined to destroy society.
> They can track my movements with no probable cause and no warrants
My understanding is that IF they are tracking your historical movements over time from multiple different cameras, that constitutes a "search" and the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant in that case.
There have been slightly different variations to this in the courts lately, such as google location history and geofence warrants, but unless you know of a legal precedent (besides "they're getting away with it right now") that says historical movements don't need a search, I'm inclined to believe that they do.
Whether or not that is currently being successfully tested in court is another story.
Seems like there is some caselaw that supports your theory based on US Supreme Court rulings in Kyllo v. United States (2001) (thermal imaging), United States v. Jones (2012) (GPS tracking) and Carpenter v. United States (2018) (tracking via cell site data).
The people running Flock are simply bad people with the completely wrong temperament.
We shouldn't have these cameras at all but even if we were forced to have them the people running Flock are the last people who should be in control of them.
The way they act on social media and in interviews they just come off (and surely are) fragile ego children.
I highly encourage everyone to start organizing locally. It’s extremely easy to do. Read your city’s local meeting transcripts (LLMs can help find ones with Flock mentions), see who said what, email them. Make a website, find who else has publicly commented and reach out to them, reach out to local newspapers.
Make a site specific to your area. I’ve created https://stopflock419.com for my part, and I’ve already had five people in my area reach out to me (after spreading it around via friends and family).
Local campaigning is easier than you think! Most of the councils who approved these were a) lied to about the cameras’ capabilities and b) generally just on autopilot, they aren’t Flock fanboys, they just kind of take the police chief at their word that these are good tools.
Flock is still a snowballing disaster for eroding personal privacy and increasing abuse.
Guns have safety triggers but cops still have no problems with discharging them too quickly and wrongly.
Let’s learn from guns, we should have limited them in the US decades ago and today the problem is hugely based on lack of will for action at every step in history.
For a skilled, trained, and calm shooter maybe. Cops don't practice enough or are trained well enough for IMHO that to matter. US cops don't take time to aim, they just mag dump.
Interesting to see the sentiment expressed in the comments here given the context that they are being posted on a promotional website for the private equity firm that launched Flock.
Even this isn't true (unless you meant morally, which I can't agree with) in the USA. There are times and situations where you absolutely have a right to privacy in public. For example, the government still needs a warrant to listen to you on a phone call in a public phone booth. The government needs a warrant to attach a gps tracker to your car even if it's on the public streets.
Personally, I would love extending protections against private corporations (not just government), and prevent the storage and aggregation of surveillance sensor data.
I mean, you wouldn't mind if I followed you everywhere then, right? And waiting outside your home when you're inside. They call that stalking. Doing that systematically to everybody doesn't make it ok.
Plainly, I think it makes sense to not be constantly in view of a single entity when in public.
My building already has cameras at the entrances and in the halls. Doesn't bother me.
Abuse is possible, but I don't see why we can't limit it with laws and regulations. And the potential gains in terms of preventing crime and catching criminals are huge.
I'm one of the general public that is continually confused by their usage of the word "own". I can't imagine that their language update will make it any more clear.
If the data is on Flock's servers (it is) and accessible by Flock (it is) then it is Flock who owns the data, not the PDs. Sure, they can allow the PDs to have say over what is done with the data, but ultimately Flock has the ability to use the data however they'd like.
This is not hypothetical, they have used previously shared data with DHS [0] without the so-called owner's permission and use data for their AI training [1] without option to opt-out.
This is not ownership.
[0] - https://apnews.com/article/immigration-abortion-license-plat...
[1] - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/apr/...
The possibilities are endless:
[Edit: I think Flocks "victims" have a decent argument for injunctions for the removal of the cameras on the basis that Flock is conducting an illegal search on behalf of the government.]
However, the government can generally do what the public is allowed to do. So, if there are companies serving a genuine market for monitoring your employees, etc. via video surveillance installed on private property... then the government would not be restricted from accessing what private businesses have access to buy.
Is there actually a legal precedent for this?
> “FLOCK already has their license plate reader systems in several neighborhoods in North SA [San Antonio] now,” James Glass, the deputy director of the Southwest Texas Fusion Center, wrote in an October 2020 email to colleagues. “In order to be granted free access to search the FLOCK system for license plate reader hits, we are asked to agree to sign this MOU.”
https://www.vice.com/en/article/talon-flock-safety-cameras-p...
They lost me when the CEO lied to a city official in a public meeting. ( https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/tracking-alpr-c... )
Reading these actions, you can pick apart how to circumvent them, and the security audit is still pending — let's see how damning of a report they'll allow to be released.
P.S: Anyone know how London has solved this problem?
Looks like they don't actually give a shit. These safeguards should be the required bare minimum.
I can't go walk my dog around the neighborhood without looking up and seeing police accessible cameras. They can track my movements with no probable cause and no warrants.
It doesn't deal with the lingering threat that remains of the people who would be willing to do this kind of stuff for money.
The problem is ultimately that there are people motivated to spy on their neighbours and bring about a totalitarian surveillance nightmare in exchange for money.
You're just playing whack-a-mole as long as these people can still operate in society. They'll be back, and more insidious and more determined to destroy society.
What's the solution to that?
My understanding is that IF they are tracking your historical movements over time from multiple different cameras, that constitutes a "search" and the Fourth Amendment requires a warrant in that case.
There have been slightly different variations to this in the courts lately, such as google location history and geofence warrants, but unless you know of a legal precedent (besides "they're getting away with it right now") that says historical movements don't need a search, I'm inclined to believe that they do.
Whether or not that is currently being successfully tested in court is another story.
My police chief is okay with it and the case number "abc123" is FOIA-exempt out of operational security concerns.
See also: https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/06/06/web-of-knowledge/
Now, flock investor should get more hate.
We shouldn't have these cameras at all but even if we were forced to have them the people running Flock are the last people who should be in control of them.
The way they act on social media and in interviews they just come off (and surely are) fragile ego children.
Make a site specific to your area. I’ve created https://stopflock419.com for my part, and I’ve already had five people in my area reach out to me (after spreading it around via friends and family).
Local campaigning is easier than you think! Most of the councils who approved these were a) lied to about the cameras’ capabilities and b) generally just on autopilot, they aren’t Flock fanboys, they just kind of take the police chief at their word that these are good tools.
[1]https://www.britannica.com/science/Animal-Group-Names
Guns have safety triggers but cops still have no problems with discharging them too quickly and wrongly.
Let’s learn from guns, we should have limited them in the US decades ago and today the problem is hugely based on lack of will for action at every step in history.
Just another example of tech bros enriching themselves and destroying as much as they can along the way.
Even this isn't true (unless you meant morally, which I can't agree with) in the USA. There are times and situations where you absolutely have a right to privacy in public. For example, the government still needs a warrant to listen to you on a phone call in a public phone booth. The government needs a warrant to attach a gps tracker to your car even if it's on the public streets.
Personally, I would love extending protections against private corporations (not just government), and prevent the storage and aggregation of surveillance sensor data.
On the contrary, you should absolutely have a right to not be pervasively tracked and surveilled.
Plainly, I think it makes sense to not be constantly in view of a single entity when in public.
Abuse is possible, but I don't see why we can't limit it with laws and regulations. And the potential gains in terms of preventing crime and catching criminals are huge.