Flock Once Tried To Turn Every Ride Share Driver Into Part Of Its ALPR Network

from the roving-rights-violations dept

Until just recently, Flock never felt it needed to rehabilitate its image, even when several cities were dumping contracts and cameras over persistent surveillance concerns. When cities shut down systems, Flock just kept running. In some cases, it even installed cameras that without proper permits or any other legal authorization.

What’s hurting Flock now is that its biggest user base — US law enforcement agencies — are filled with people who see the Flock camera network as a cool and easy way to stalk their exes, their exes’ friends, families, and new significant others, or aid in harassment of critics, protesters, or anyone else a bored cop might want to track.

While Flock is only now introducing limits that might deter misuse (but that wholly rely on law enforcement agencies implementing the changes), its latest effort to polish its ALPR turd needs to be weighed against its entire history, especially the stuff that happened not that long before the company decided it might be best to engage with the general public’s concerns, rather than just do whatever seemed immediately pleasurable to cop shops.

Joseph Cox brings us the unsettling news that Flock attempted to turn a nation of underpaid gig workers into an extension of its massive, persistent surveillance network:

Flock planned to use dashcams installed in hundreds of thousands Uber, Lyft, and delivery drivers’ vehicles to scan license plates those drivers travelled passed, essentially turning Uber and Lyft drivers into roaming surveillance vehicles, according to a Flock presentation shared with 404 Media.

The document provides more details on Flock’s planned partnership with Nexar, a popular dashcam company. 404 Media first revealed the intended partnership last August when multiple sources provided information on the plan. The presentation shows Flock was actively pitching this partnership, and its use of Uber and Lyft drivers, to potential customers right around the time 404 Media reported on it.

Following this leak and 404 Media’s subsequent reporting, Flock went on the record to claim that the reported partnership never materialized. Flock didn’t specify why it chose to drop the pursuit of this extension of its surveillance network, however. It left it up to 404 Media to suss out what had failed, but without the ability to explain why this never came to fruition.

The documents 404 Media obtained showed Flock pitching a Lyft/Uber dashcam partnership to the Georgia Attorney General’s Office. That pitch stated the obvious: a network of cameras already voluntarily enabled by rideshare drivers would be added/infected by Flock’s ALPR system, increasing coverage anywhere ridesharing services were available. Not included in the presentation or documents: any notification of drivers that they were now part of a law enforcement surveillance network.

Also not explained in the documents was how any of this was legal. What Flock was proposing was the hijacking of cameras operated by individuals in their private vehicles. It seems Flock was relying on the simple addition of more boilerplate to already lengthy end user agreements governing ridesharing services to obtain the “consent” necessary to turn these cameras into government surveillance options.

It’s also not clear that Flock has completely abandoned this project. None of the involved parties — Lyft, Uber, Flock, or third-party linkage apparatus Nexar — have responded with an official statement or even a direct “no comment.” So, while my headline suggests this was a failed attempt to expand Flock’s surveillance reach, there’s really nothing on the record that indicates this has been taken completely off the table.

We’re looking at allegations dismissed without prejudice, to borrow a judicial term. Just because Flock might think it’s a bad idea to pursue this now doesn’t mean it won’t make another attempt in the future. And rest assured that the cop shops that loved the proposal won’t lose any sleep during this negative press-provoked pause. All they have to do is wait until Flock tries again and help themselves to whatever this network gathers with or without the explicit permission of the cameras’ owners.

Filed Under: 4th amendment, alpr, license plate readers, rights abritrage, surveillance state

Companies: flock, flock safety, lyft, uber