City Lawmaker Responds To Flock Camera Ban By Demanding A Cell Phone Ban

from the u-mad-bro? dept

Flock Safety has made its bed. It has courted homeowners associations and gated communities since it first arrived on the market, apparently hoping to convert inherent racism into perpetual revenue streams.

Then it went to where the real bias has always existed: US law enforcement agencies. It promised to tie their systems in with those deployed by private citizens. It attempted to talk Ring (another company with too-close ties to cops) into bed, before shitting the shared bed in front of hundreds of millions of TV viewers during the most recent Super Bowl.

Flock’s reputation had already been in steep decline prior to the Super Bowl debacle, but that aborted arranged marriage saw its shady doings exposed to millions who previously weren’t aware there was a surveillance camera company even less concerned about rights and privacy than Ring.

Flock was doing things even Ring wouldn’t do. It was telling citizens one thing and giving cops something else entirely: a nationwide surveillance network with built-in ALPR (automatic license plate reader) capability with zero oversight. Flock said it would prevent federal abuse of local law enforcement camera networks and then did absolutely nothing to prevent this. Meanwhile, cop shops were using Flock’s cameras to track people across the country — you know, dangerous criminals like the woman (at the request of her abusive ex) who left Texas to seek an abortion in another state.

All of these concerns have resulted in Flock losing plenty of public market share. Sure, it may still be doing brisk business in the private market, but government contracts are where the real money is. Flock can’t seem to stop the bleeding. Multiple local governments have terminated contracts with Flock and plenty more are considering doing the same, especially now that it’s shady dealings have been called out by federal lawmakers like Senator Ron Wyden.

Still, the company has its supporters. And they’re exactly the sort of people you’d expect them to be. A public meltdown by a public servant is the subject of this excellent reporting by Joseph Cox of 404 Media. Here’s a bit of background, which also contains some super-useful background on Flock’s PR team.

Like in many other communities around the country, the use of Flock’s AI cameras has become a major topic of discussion in Bandera (Texas). In February, Bandera held a town hall meeting exclusively about Flock that Flowers moderated. Kerry McCormack, a former Cleveland city council member who is now on the public affairs team for Flock, came to that meeting to discuss the technology, demonstrating that the company is sending representatives even to tiny towns in order to promote its use. 

Dial in on a couple of things. First, there’s the fact that former public servants are now running flack for Flock. Second, there’s the mention of Bandera, Texas city council member Jeff Flowers, who’s apparently so smitten of Flock that he’s willing to go full batshit when confronted by public criticism. Bandera’s city council voted 3-2 to end its contract with Flock in response to public resistance, which included repeated vandalizing of the town’s eight cameras.

Flowers apparently couldn’t handle this vote or the resistance that generated it. He went right off the rails, almost immediately:

After the vote, Councilmember Jeff Flowers, a staunch Flock supporter, said that if people in the town wanted privacy then the city council should basically ban all technology, essentially calling people who did not want government surveillance hypocrites.

Nice. This deep disconnection from reality wasn’t limited to comments made during the vote. He also posted an op-ed (subtitled “Bandera Declaration of Independence”) in the local newspaper, in which he ignorantly continued to claim that rejection of government surveillance was a hypocritical stance taken by people who voluntarily own smartphones and access the internet.

Flowers said that at the next city council meeting he will propose “a total ban on all cellular and GPS-capable devices for all operations within city limits. If we are to be truly ‘private,’ we must leave our smartphones at the city line.” He will also propose “a total ban on outward facing cameras,” and “a total termination of all internet services and electronic record-keeping. We are going back to 1880, paper ledgers and cash only.”

Flowers is the kind of idiot that’s almost smart enough to be dangerous. But he’s not quite there yet. It’s one thing to “share” information with service providers, apps, and online services. It’s quite another to be forced to share information with the government. While the government may actually demand less information in exchange for services than most internet service providers, people are far more willing to sacrifice privacy for convenience when the recipient is another private party.

Pretending these two things are equivalent is lazy at best, and totalitarian at worst. They’re not the same thing. And even if the collection of data by third parties might result in warrantless access of this data by the government, very few citizens are going to affirmatively choose to surrender data to the government, even if it’s nothing more than an always-on collection of their movements via automatic license plate readers.

To be sure, there are people working for Flock who think Flowers is worthy of a high five or two, if not a permanent position in the PR department. They’re no smarter than Flowers is. This is not a win for Flock. This is another unforced error by surveillance state enthusiasts who are voluntarily creating more negative press for Flock. Flock loses. Flowers rants. Flock loses again. If either party was truly smart, they’d be distancing themselves from each other.

Filed Under: alpr, bandera, jeff flowers, surveillance state, texas, traffic cams

Companies: flock safety