Image by Aaron via Adobe Stock
During a July 8 town hall meeting, Newport residents aired their grievances about the perils of Flock Safety cameras. Less than a week later, on July 14, Newport PD announced they’d be ending the pilot program and removing the six active cameras.
“The victory in Newport means a lot because it means we’re being listened to by the people who we voted in,” Newport-based lawyer Jacquline Mayer Grant explained. “But Boone County, Cincinnati, Kenton County, and Fort Thomas have them, so we’re just a blip on the map.”
In 2017, Garrett Langley co-founded Flock Safety in Atlanta. The AI-powered cameras are an Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR). They scan license plates to track criminal behavior like kidnappings and stolen vehicles. Today, more than 6,000 communities in the U.S have installed the cameras. In fact, DeFlock.org crowdsources all the cameras—more than 110,000 of them. Last year Langley called DeFlock a “terrorist organization”; recently, he apologized.
“It’s taking pictures of your license plate, and it’s only on public roads, so you’re not entitled to privacy on public roads,” Grant says. “But it’s marketed as a safety measure and not a surveillance measure. I have never been against the cameras because I thought Newport police specifically were doing something wrong. I just don’t think that power should be held by the government without checks and balances.”
At times, the cameras do work to track down suspects like May’s Newport Circle K shooting. But many other times, the information captured is used for more personal or political reasons. Dayton, Ohio suspended the program after the city discovered immigration agencies had been using the technology. Law enforcement in Texas allegedly used the cameras to search for a woman who self-administered an abortion. Law enforcement also uses the technology to find protestors and activists, and to stalk exes. This year a Ring Super Bowl ad received such a huge backlash that Ring canceled its partnership with Flock. Editor’s note: The ad was specifically about the Search Party feature which is unrelated to Ring’s cancelled integration with Flock.
“Colerain Township, who audited their cameras the other day, gave them leads on maybe 75 or 80 individuals, but it logged 42 million impressions,” Michael Staverman of Northern Kentucky Against ICE says. “Every impression might not be a unique individual, but it’s collecting information on every citizen in that area and mapping their daily lives.”
This year, major cities like Los Angeles and Cleveland have ended Flock because of citizen dissent. Despite the win in Newport, Kenton County is still mulling the program. Fort Thomas is contemplating doubling its cameras, and Milford residents have been protesting the program.
“Like lots of activists like me, we are ready to go after every single place,” says Staverman. “But there’s so many fronts that activists are pushing back on, and a really easy one is to push back when they’re going to adopt them. It’s a little harder when they already have them, and you have to do your research to make a case for taking them away.”
Recently, Staverman attended a Kenton County Fiscal Court meeting and said he’s confident Kenton County will de-Flock, which is impactful considering the county wants to install cameras at park entrances.
“Live feeds have been publicly streamed, so even people that may be slightly comfortable with the surveillance aspect are immediately uncomfortable with the cameras when they realize that they’re not secure,” says Staverman. “Every single customer gets access to a community’s cameras. It goes nationwide, and nobody knows that.”
The website HaveIBeenFlocked.com publishes license plate info, so anyone can look up a plate.
“It’s not whether or not your license plate has been scanned, because all of our license plates are getting scanned when we’re driving,” Grant says. “It’s whether when it’s scanned is somebody searching your plate, like a law enforcement officer searching it.”
In June, the Supreme Court ruled in Chatrie v. United States that acquiring a person’s cell phone location data from a technology company via a geofence warrant constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment. The ruling could affect Flock. But according to Grant, the cameras don’t violate the Fourth.
“It’s the aggregate use of them that is pretty accurately going to be challenged,” she says. “It’s a system of cameras taking pictures of the license plate and tracking location and movement and putting it all together instantaneously and looking for people based on weight, race, and gender. It’s not the individual act, and that’s why the cops who are so pro-Flock are behind it. You could have a cop sitting at a corner taking pictures of license plates or writing them down. But if you have cops at every corner specifically profiling people and putting that data together instantaneously, then it’s a little bit more than just a picture of a license plate.”
Concerned citizens across all political spectrums speaking their minds have been effective. “I’ve been in government rooms where people have said, ‘If you don’t get rid of them, we’ll find a way to get rid of them.’ I don’t endorse that, but it definitely is indicative how much people are against them.”
Another issue is even if the city removes the cameras, businesses can still opt in. “It’s just something that we as citizens need to stay at least moderately informed about, and to keep holding the line,” Grant says. “Technology is advancing rapidly, and there are just mind-bending questions we’ve never had to face before that we’re constantly going to need to fight back against. Once somebody’s right has been violated, trying to resolve it in the court system versus preventing it can take years.”
“I am legitimately concerned that we’re giving a government that disappears people administratively from ICE camps the power to watch us wherever we go. That’s really scary.”
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