Copyright Ars Technica
Flock Safety—the surveillance company behind the country’s largest network of automated license plate readers (ALPRs)—currently faces attacks on multiple fronts seeking to tear down the invasive and error-prone cameras across the US. This week, two lawmakers, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), called for a federal investigation, alleging that Flock has been “negligently handling Americans’ personal data” by failing to use cybersecurity best practices. The month prior, Wyden wrote a letter to Flock CEO Garrett Langley, alleging that Flock’s security failures mean that “abuse of Flock cameras is inevitable” and that they threaten to expose billions of people’s harvested data should a catastrophic breach occur. “In my view, local elected officials can best protect their constituents from the inevitable abuses of Flock cameras by removing Flock from their communities,” Wyden wrote. Several communities have already come to this conclusion, although their concerns go beyond fears of hackers or potential data breaches. They’re also concerned that law enforcement will use the sweeping database for invasive tracking. For instance, Texas scanned more than 80,000 ALPRs to allegedly do a wellness check on a woman suspected of self-administering an abortion, 404 Media reported. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has also worked with local police to conduct “immigration”-related searches of Flock data, 404 Media reported. (Langley wrote in a blog that providing ICE access is a local decision, “not Flock’s decision.”) Reaching across the political spectrum, people in seven states have won fights to remove Flock’s invasive cameras in their towns and cities, sharing templates for success that are inspiring even more opposition campaigns. These critics oppose Flock not only because cameras threaten to violate the privacy of anyone who drives past them but also because the cameras are error-prone and can lead to wrongful detentions, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reported. For years, the EFF has tracked cases where ALPRs misread license plates, with the software accidentally reading an “H” as an “M” or a “2” as a “7.” Other times, ALPRs confuse the state on the license plate, giving cops the completely wrong target. Several Americans have been accused of stealing cars because of these errors, some held at gunpoint and detained until the cops figured out the errors, the EFF reported. And now, as Flock seeks to roll out a new product that would detect human threats by audio, there is another emerging threat widening the range of possible errors: police mishandling correct data. As cops nationwide increasingly come to rely too heavily on ALPR camera feeds, disturbing cases suggest that departments big and small tend to avoid basic police work as a check on the tech, which would prevent baseless accusations. Removing cameras may be easier than fighting Flock footage A financial planner in her 40s living in a Denver neighborhood, Chrisanna Elser, learned the hard way that cops can’t always be trusted to vet Flock data. Earlier this fall, a small-town cop with the Columbine Valley Police Department accused her of theft, apparently just because she happened to drive through his town at the time of a crime, Denverite reported. Back in September, Elser shared footage from her smart doorbell. It showed an off-putting confrontation with a cop, Sgt. Jamie Milliman, who patrols Bow Mar, a town outside of Denver with a population of under 900. The officer was investigating the theft of a $25 package from a Bow Mar resident’s stoop and appeared completely confident that Flock footage he reviewed, which placed Elser’s car in town, was proof enough of her guilt. In the video, Milliman warned Elser, “You know we have cameras in that jurisdiction and you can’t get a breath of fresh air, in or out of that place, without us knowing, correct?” After Elser adamantly denied taking the package, Milliman then claimed that the theft victim provided footage that supposedly showed Elser in the act. However, he refused to show Elser that footage because she would not admit her guilt. “If you’re going to deny it, I’m not going to give you any courtesy,” Milliman said. “If you’re going to lie to me, I’m not going to give you any courtesy.” Given no choice but to accept a summons for a charge of petty theft, Elser told Denverite that she went “on a warpath” to prove her innocence. She retraced her steps through Bow Mar on the day of the theft, requesting surveillance images from the tailor she’d visited. She also gathered footage from her car and her husband’s car, which showed she never stopped in Bow Mar on either leg of the trip. At no point did her car get closer than a quarter-mile to the residence where the package was stolen, GPS data from her car and phone showed. Even after making this huge effort, nobody wanted to review the evidence, though, Elser told Denverite. The police department told her to expect a long wait to speak to anyone about her case, and local officials, including the mayor, declined to intervene. Seeking justice, she sent “a voluminous Google Drive folder” along with a seven-page affidavit to the Columbine Valley police chief, Bret Cottrell. In October, he dropped the charges, giving Elser kudos for doing her own police work, without offering any apologies. “After reviewing the evidence you have provided (nicely done btw), we have voided the summons that was issued,” Cottrell told Elser, never mentioning the doorbell video Milliman claimed placed her at the scene. Elser isn’t the only one who has been targeted by a cop seemingly just for being in the area of a crime. The EFF documented a 2024 Detroit case where cops used ALPRs to search all Dodge Chargers in an area following a shooting. That broad search led cops to a car located two miles away. They ultimately detained the car’s owner, Isoke Robinson, and placed her 2-year-old son in their squad car. Robinson’s car was impounded for three weeks while cops failed to check obvious clues that should have ruled her out as a suspect—including that the shooter’s vehicle was missing a fog light, and Robinson’s was not, the EFF reported. Cities installing cameras risk Flock lawsuits Some wrongfully detained people have successfully sued after shocking ALPR arrests, earning awards as high as $1.9 million. Robinson got a $35,000 payout from Detroit for her traumatic experience, the Detroit Free Press reported. Elser told Denverite that she’s considering suing and remains “unnerved by the prospect of being wrongfully accused on the basis of circumstantial evidence from a mass surveillance system.” As a financial planner, Elser feared an accusation of theft could have ruined her career, she noted. Ashley White, a former public defender, told Denver news outlet 9News that likely “this small police department didn’t want to spend any resources or time looking into the actual facts of the case and just charged an offense and figured, ‘We’ll figure out what happens later.’ And that’s not how it’s supposed to work.” Elser’s and Robinson’s cases, along with others where Flock data was used to accuse innocent people of crimes, should put communities on high alert about potential misuses of Flock cameras in their areas, White said. “People should care because this could be you,” White said. “This is something that police agencies are now using to document and watch what you’re doing, where you’re going, without your consent.” Haters cross political divides to fight Flock Currently, Flock’s reach is broad, “providing services to 5,000 police departments, 1,000 businesses, and numerous homeowners associations across 49 states,” lawmakers noted. Additionally, in October, Flock partnered with Amazon, which allows police to request Ring camera footage that widens Flock’s lens further. However, Flock’s reach notably doesn’t extend into certain cities and towns in Arizona, Colorado, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, following successful local bids to end Flock contracts. These local fights have only just started as groups learn from each other, Sarah Hamid, EFF’s director of strategic campaigns, told Ars. “Several cities have active campaigns underway right now across the country—urban and rural, in blue states and red states,” Hamid said. A Flock spokesperson told Ars that the growing effort to remove cameras “remains an extremely small percentage of communities that consider deploying Flock technology (low single digital percentages).” To keep Flock’s cameras on city streets, Flock attends “hundreds of local community meetings and City Council sessions each month, and the vast majority of those contracts are accepted,” Flock’s spokesperson said. Hamid challenged Flock’s “characterization of camera removals as isolated incidents,” though, noting “that doesn’t reflect what we’re seeing.” “The removals span multiple states and represent different organizing strategies—some community-led, some council-initiated, some driven by budget constraints,” Hamid said. Most recently, city officials voted to remove Flock cameras this fall in Sedona, Arizona. A 72-year-old retiree, Sandy Boyce, helped fuel the local movement there after learning that Sedona had “quietly” renewed its Flock contract, NBC News reported. She felt enraged as she imagined her tax dollars continuing to support a camera system tracking her movements without her consent, she told NBC News. “I’d drive by them and flip them off and curse them,” Boyce told NBC News. “It was like we were building our own prisons, and we were paying for it.” A conservative who voted for Donald Trump, Boyce became determined to take the cameras down. She soon realized that many people in her community who opposed Flock were liberal, people she “normally wouldn’t be having conversations with.” But it was worth being “open to having conversations with them,” she said, if it meant ending Flock’s invasive tracking. Banding together, Boyce’s coalition against Flock won their fight, with Sedona’s City Council unanimously voting to end Flock’s contract in September. A template to remove Flock in your town After winning her fight, Boyce published a “template” that she believes can help people shut down Flock in their towns. In it, she suggested that a core group of three to four residents spearhead initiatives, starting with filing a public records request to determine whether a city or town has a Flock contract. With the contract in hand, the group should next meet with a member of city council to schedule a community talk about Flock as an agenda item at an upcoming meeting. “Once you have an agenda item, use all your resources to invite residents to attend and comment,” Boyce’s template said. That means reaching out to local press, as well as getting the word out by distributing postcards at local events or community recreation areas, like at farmers markets or on “pickleball courts.” Postcards should be written to help residents understand the many reasons Flock cameras are concerning, Boyce’s website said. Recommended “talking points” seek to appeal to logical and conspiratorial-minded people while also disputing what Boyce described as the “exaggerated” safety impact that Flock touts when convincing cities to sign contracts. If the contract isn’t canceled at the first scheduled meeting, “keep the pressure on,” Boyce’s site recommended. “They need to know the residents will not give up on this, that they are watching, and they will persist politely until the cameras are taken down,” her website said. Hamid agreed that the “diversity of pathways to camera removal suggests the momentum isn’t dependent on any single narrative or tactic. And it’s change that [is] broad-based and across the political spectrum. This scale of location data surveillance is a threat to all of us, and more and more communities are recognizing that.” She told Ars that EFF has learned that advocates can win when they target their town’s “specific procurement vulnerabilities—renewal dates, incomplete council votes, budget constraints.” Moving at these times can create “real openings for meaningful change at the municipal level” and give communities opportunities to ask “harder questions about Flock contracts.” “The most effective campaigns combine three elements: clear technical documentation of Flock’s known failure modes and risks; concrete municipal procurement pathways that show how contracts can be terminated or not renewed; and broad coalition-building across impacted communities, civil rights organizations, and elected officials willing to act—united around the core demand that mass, profit-driven surveillance has no place in municipal governance,” Hamid said. Flock accused of downplaying harms It’s possible that a Virginia court could rule that Flock’s cameras violate the Fourth Amendment’s privacy protections, NBC News reported. In that case, a retired veteran and co-plaintiff sued the City of Norfolk over Flock privacy concerns, filing a motion for summary judgment last month. In response, however, the city maintained that courts have agreed that ALPRs “are not a search,” citing precedent concluding that “a person travelling in an automobile on public thoroughfares has no reasonable expectation of privacy in his movements from one place to another.” But whether the court sides with residents won’t matter much to communities who already won peace of mind by getting cameras removed without legal interventions. Hamid told Ars that cases like the abortion tracking and ICE access to Flock “illustrate exactly what EFF has been warning about: Flock’s databases become tools for tracking protected activities and facilitating invasive federal enforcement actions.” Growing awareness of these harms, Hamid suggested, is “already shifting community perception.” “When people understand that Flock data can be used to track them exercising reproductive freedom or to facilitate federal immigration enforcement, the calculus around ‘public safety’ technology changes entirely,” Hamid said. “The location surveillance itself becomes a risk to public safety.” EFF is encouraged that lawmakers are pushing the FTC to probe Flock’s data handling, even if no investigation follows, Hamid said. “This represents a significant shift—federal policymakers are now directly confronting the fact that Flock’s infrastructure poses genuine risks to people’s privacy and safety,” she suggested. Flock’s spokesperson told Ars that “Flock is relentlessly focused on data integrity and security” and “values the concerns raised” by lawmakers. The company defended its security practices but noted that it’s up to agencies to adhere to best practices that protect local travelers’ data. Back in June, EFF accused Flock of blaming users, downplaying harms, and doubling-down on “the very systems that enabled the violations in the first place” rather than taking steps to address citizens’ concerns. To have elected officials “publicly questioning Flock’s business practices,” Hamid suggested, “signals to local officials that these concerns are legitimate, and that contract rejections are defensible.” More cameras could come down, Hamid said, as pressure intensifies and communities face risks posed by the cameras: that cops may take Flock shortcuts and that data breaches will reveal sensitive information, as well as other scary possibilities that come with increased access and ALPR errors. Opposition may ramp up as new kinds of errors emerge, with the latest threat being Flock’s plan to use microphones to detect gunshots in communities. That could be “a recipe for innocent people to get hurt,” EFF warned, if cops show up with guns drawn, expecting violence after cameras record common sounds like a car backfiring or kids setting off fireworks. “Communities rejecting Flock aren’t choosing to be less safe; quite the opposite,” Hamid said. “They are coming to terms with how such a massive, sprawling, and ultimately ungovernable surveillance system puts themselves and their community members at risk.”
