Gardner police discontinue Flock cameras as license plate readers face scrutiny
The Gardner City Council voted to immediately turn off the city's Flock Safety license plate cameras and cancel the contract, citing growing privacy and data-access concerns. The cameras, which photograph license plates to help locate vehicles tied to crimes or missing persons, have been criticized for creating detailed records of people's movements. Council member Kelly Johnson noted the action only applies to city-owned cameras, not those operated by Johnson County or the state. Flock Safety has announced it will reduce data retention from 30 days to seven days and require a criminal case number for searches.
Over 1,200 vendors had access to our information through the Flock system.
- neom
"Authorities have charged or accused at least 50 law-enforcement officers of using license-plate readers for unauthorized purposes, including to stalk women without their knowledge or consent, a Post analysis of police and court records found.
In 26 of these cases, police investigators and prosecutors said the officers used the technology to spy on their wives, their girlfriends, their exes, their exes’ new partners or women they wanted to meet."
And 3 more just a week ago in Georgia: https://www.cbsnews.com/atlanta/news/3-georgia-deputies-arre...
If you're curious how this plays out in practice, investigation room video of an officer who confesses to using one to create an alert on a woman so he could pull her over later to get her instagram: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I3UfAMzz9Lc
- atmavatar
"Over 1,200 vendors had access to our information through the Flock system," Steinmetz said, adding he did not know the identities of all those entities.
Even if for some strange reason you're OK with the police having access to the surveillance data (despite multiple recent articles revealing abuse), I'd like to think most people would take issue with random third parties also having access to it.
Flock cameras and their ilk are not OK in a civilized, free society.
- jmpman
I've been thinking about this for a while. The only place I want flock cameras is at the entrances of the mall parking lot. I can't articulate why that seems acceptable, and yet I view everywhere else as an overstep.
- throwitaway222
Maybe we need to upgrade the system to be more like...
To use this service copy and paste your authorization:
634534534535453454565646567880123843489579823374234
Thank you!
Your authorization gives you permission to search for plate 5VFA213 only. Signed by Judge Ja....
The problem isn't flock either. The next system that replaces this is going to be self-charging and swapping out Drones that scan large areas 15 feet above traffic and follow people it hasn't seen on a daily basis (non-normal events). Good luck us.
- aussieguy1234
There are multiple cases of people being falsely imprisoned because police believed Flock over actual evidence. In each case Flock was wrong.