I recently learned a city I frequent near my home not only already has installed, but in fact elected to expand, quite significantly, their police department’s Flock camera network. I had heard of Flock before, and as I looked into it I became rather dismayed at the use of tax dollars for mass surveillance AI infrastructure.
Unlike more “traditional” automatic license-plate reading cameras (ALPRs), or even speed or red-light cameras, Flock cameras are interconnected. They send data back to AWS (Amazon-owned) servers Flock leases. Data can, depending on decisions made by participant agencies, then be shared with others. It can also be queried without a warrant.
Flock cameras also capture qualitative details about the vehicles rather than the simple OCR (optical character recognition) required to read a license plate. For example, if the car has a broken taillight, or what color it is. Flock has also outsourced the processing their AI system is unable to do, to gig workers abroad.
One also wonders if the massive data collection these cameras enable will not only be processed using AI but actually will be used to train the AI to make it better, something that benefits Flock substantially in terms of its valuation as a company and could enable them to raise prices. Other AI companies use the data from users to “improve their services”; one does not necessarily want mass surveillance to become more effective if we are to continue to retain any semblance of rights.
The municipality I live near which has set up Flock cameras did not even put up a “transparency” page, which Flock makes optional. The transparency pages don’t offer much detail, however.
The new Flock cameras cover every main thoroughfare, making it challenging to avoid this mass surveillance.
Fortunately, where I live we have a high-trust society and thus don’t see a need for such Orwellian nonsense.
If you want to learn more about Flock cameras and help to map their locations, check out the following:
https://deflock.me (same as https://deflock.org) community-driven database of installed Flock cameras
https://dontgetflocked.com allows you to plan routes avoiding known Flock cameras, where possible
https://haveibeenflocked.com allows you to look up your license plate in a subset of Flock search logs
https://eyesonflock.com allows you to see aggregated data from Flock operators’ transparency portals