Flock (Again!) Activates A Camera System A Town Had Voted To Shut Down

from the rogue-corporation dept

The easiest way to tell that Flock Safety doesn’t really care that its massive network of ALPR (automatic license plate reader) cameras is being abused by cops to stalk their exes and harass residents is to judge it by its actions. When confronted with court case after court case detailing these allegations (and those are just the cops who actually got caught!), the company says two things: first, we’re not personally responsible for the actions of “bad apples” and second, some vague “fixes” are on the way at some indeterminate point in the future.

The other way you can tell Flock doesn’t care about anything but future profitability is this: when cities pull the plug on Flock systems due to local backlash, Flock has — one more than one occasion! — decided to to simply turn the cameras back on.

Dayton, Ohio ended its contract with Flock following public complaints and some apparently forbidden sharing of data with federal immigration officers. But the city had to resort to covering Flock cameras with garbage bags to prevent further recordings since even the PD seemed unsure of whether or not it could actually control this function and Flock itself remained deliberately vague about when (or if!) it would be showing up to remove the recording equipment that contractually still belonged to it.

Dayton’s government had good reason to be concerned about Flock:

Last week, for example, the mayor of Menominee, Wisconsin said that Flock cameras in the city “have been activated without city council approval.”  

[…]

[Evanston, Illinois] previously ordered Flock to shut down 19 cameras (18 stationary and one flex camera that can be attached to a squad car) provided by the company and put its contract with Flock on a 30-day termination notice on Aug. 26. The company took down 15 of the 18 stationary cameras by Sept. 8, only to reinstall all of them by Tuesday. 

Neat, huh? That’s on top of an audit performed by the South Carolina Secretary of Transportation that found more than 200 unpermitted Flock cameras operating on public roads.

Now, we can add Littleton, Massachusetts to the growing list of Flock’s ALPR+DGAF activities:

Like in dozens of communities across the country, many Littleton residents were displeased to learn about the installation of Flock Safety’s automatic license plate-reading cameras earlier this year. In May, following backlash, town officials voted to shut down the six cameras on public roads.

Last week, police discovered Flock had restored power to the cameras without notifying the town.

The discovery, detailed in a Littleton Police Department notice this week, led the department to order the cameras remotely powered down, disable system login access for officers, and confirm a Flockwork order was in place to remove the cameras from utility poles “as soon as possible.”

That’s pretty fucked up. That’s Flock saying that not only is the customer never right but the customer shouldn’t be allowed to make their own decisions. It’s Flock unilaterally deciding that the rest of the nation’s users of Flock’s ALPR systems shouldn’t be deprived of access to Littleton’s cameras just because the entity paying for its services decided it no longer wanted to do business with Flock.

The Littleton PD did everything it could to abide by the vote and the town’s wishes. Flock, however, went the other way seemingly simply because it could. While PD officials have said this might have been the result of some miscommunication between the PD and Flock, it would seem an existing Flock work order to remove cameras would not have honestly resulted in this:

According to the statement, Littleton Police Chief Douglas Landry met with a Flock technician following the incident, and that “given the volume of vandalism and tampering incidents the company has dealt with nationally, it would not necessarily be treated as unusual on [Flock’s] end” to have a camera need to be turned back on unexpectedly.

Do what now? Flock was told to remove the cameras. Instead, Flock decided this meant it could flip the on/off switch as often as it wanted to until it actually got around to removing the cameras, due to vague concerns about backlash Flock has absolutely earned.

And I can guarantee you whatever things Flock is saying at this point, it’s only saying because it got caught. I have yet to see an incident where Flock has informed cities or PDs of inadvertent activation or illegal access. In every case, it’s always Flock making excuses after the fact for things it could have done more of to prevent (illegal access) or abusive things it did itself (re-activating/re-installing cameras) that contradicted the intent of city residents and their governments. These are not the actions of a trustworthy tech provider. These are the actions of a company that clearly believes it cannot be fucked with because it has managed to corner this market.

Filed Under: alpr, law enforcement, police misconduct, privacy, surveillance abuse, tracking

Companies: flock, flock safety