Category Archives: Surveillance Creep

Is It Against the Law to Destroy Flock Surveillance Cameras?

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Across the nation, people are vandalizing Flock surveillance cameras at an alarming pace. A surge in such activity underscores the growing resistance to this police surveillance technology.

WHAT ARE FLOCK CAMERAS?

Flock Safety makes surveillance camera systems that record and analyze everything that passes them. The company sells its services as a crime-fighting tool, and some law enforcement agencies that have contracts with Flock use the cameras’ automated license plate readers to track or reconstruct movements of vehicles in criminal investigations.

According to the company, more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use its technology. More broadly, there are more than 130,000 AI-powered automated license plate readers on American streets, according to DeFlock, an advocacy group that tracks the cameras.

Because Flock cameras are all connected, it creates a nationwide latticework of recorded activity. Across the majority of states, a police officer in one state can be alerted if a car they’re looking for pops up in another and can inform the local authorities.

WHY ARE PEOPLE VANDALIZING FLOCK CAMERAS?

An online movement called DeFlock is growing in popularity. DeFlock’s messaging claims that Flock cameras are a serious risk to your privacy and civil liberties. These systems continuously record your movements without a warrant, probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion. Your driving history is rarely confined to the town or city where the cameras are installed. It’s typically shared with thousands of other agencies nationwide (secretly). DeFlock claims that once the data is out of your community, you have no control over how it’s used or what rules apply, leading to instances of misuse.

People have cut down Flock cameras with an electric saw in upstate New York, thrown paint on them in Oakland, California, and rammed a truck into them in Idaho. One man in Florida sits in a lawn chair holding up a piece of cardboard on a pole to block the camera’s view. City governments have joined in by deactivating the cameras or canceling contracts with Flock in Fort Collins, Colorado; Eugene, Oregon; Madison, Wisconsin; Knoxville, Tennessee; Syracuse, New York; and Walla Walla, Washington.

ARE FLOCK CAMERAS IN WASHINGTON STATE?

Yes. DeFlock’s map currently shows more than 2,100 mapped automated license plate readers in Washington, with Flock Safety accounting for the large majority of mapped cameras. Another independent Washington ALPR inventory lists 2,187 mapped cameras in the state and says 1,912, or 87.4%, are attributed to Flock Safety.

CAN FLOCK CAMERAS BE USED TO TRACK PEOPLE?

404 Media reported that a Flock capability called “FreeForm” allows users to search camera records based on what someone was wearing, their tattoos or even their race. The site also reported that, despite Flock not sharing data with agencies like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, police officers have been performing searches to aid in immigration sweeps.

IS IT ILLEGAL TO DISARM, BLOCK OR VANDALIZE FLOCK CAMERAS?

In short, yes. Damaging a Flock camera can result in criminal charges. However, the specific charge depends on the circumstances.

Washington’s malicious-mischief laws make certain types of property damage a felony. Second-degree malicious mischief is a class C felony when someone knowingly and maliciously causes more than $750 in physical damage or creates a substantial risk of interruption or impairment of public service by damaging certain public property. First-degree malicious mischief is a class B felony under circumstances including damage exceeding $5,000 or certain interruptions of public service.

DO FLOCK CAMERAS VIOLATE THE FOURTH AMENDMENT RIGHT AGAINST UNLAWFUL SEARCH & SEIZURE?

No. Courts, such as in cases like United States v. Martin, have held that license plates and vehicle characteristics displayed on public roads carry no reasonable expectation of privacy under the Fourth Amendment, because motorists knowingly expose them to public view.

Nevertheless, the debate rages on. Civil liberties groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argue that networked, mass-surveillance databases aggregate data in a way that mimics continuous tracking—drawing parallels to Supreme Court rulings on cell phone location data (Carpenter v. United States) and GPS trackers (United States v. Jones) that do require search warrants. Because of this aggregation concern, ongoing lawsuits and lower court appeals are actively challenging these deployments

WHAT ARE MY CHANCES AT TRIAL?

Probably not great, but not impossible, either. In June, a grand jury in Ohio refused to bring felony charges against a Clermont County man accused of destroying a Flock automatic license plate reader (ALPR). The prosecution’s case seemed iron-clad: according to Cincinnati’s Local12, police identified the man using surveillance footage from multiple nearby cameras, combined with info gleamed from a credit card and a customer rewards account. Despite the evidence against him, the jury declined to indict him, resulting in all charges being dropped.

Clearly, the public lacks the will to prosecute these crimes. Also, observers and commentators on social media suggested the grand jury’s refusal to indict acted similarly to jury nullification – where a panel rejects clear legal guilt because they disagree with the law or the tool being protected.

Please review my Search & Seizure Legal Guide and contact my office if you, a friend or family member are charged with a crime involving the use of Flock Cameras. Hiring an effective and competent defense attorney is the first and best step toward justice.

Flock Cameras Raise Privacy Concerns

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Flock Safety is one of the largest ALPR vendors in the United States. Their cameras are installed for police departments, businesses, and HOAs. Captured vehicle data is uploaded to Flock’s cloud system, where participating agencies can search and share information across jurisdictions. Flock is not the only ALPR vendor. Other vendors still participate in similar practices.

WHAT ARE ALPR’S?

Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs or LPRs) are AI-powered cameras that capture and analyze images of all passing vehicles, storing details like your car’s location, date, and time. They also capture your car’s make, model, color, and identifying features such as dents, roof racks, and bumper stickers, often turning these into searchable data points.

These cameras collect data on millions of vehicles regardless of whether the driver is suspected of a crime. These systems are marketed as indispensable tools to fight crime, but they ignore the powerful tools police already have to track criminals, such as cell phone location data, creating a loophole that doesn’t require a warrant.

WHAT IS THE PROBLEM WITH FLOCK SURVEILLANCE?

Flock’s ALPR cameras aren’t like your normal traffic cameras. This surveillance technology records and tracks every car that comes into view.Next, an AI algorithm catalogs the make, model, color, license plate number, bumper stickers, and even scratches. This personal information is then uploaded into a nationwide database that any law enforcement agency with a Flock contract can search — with few regulations or oversight on how they use what they find.

Flock provides one of the most widely used ALPR systems, but they aren’t the only surveillance company. Other vendors still participate in similar practices. See this list of other common ALPR vendors.

Problematically, these ALPR’s have a lack of transparency, oversight, and regulation into how they collect, store, and use our data, and how to hold public and private actors accountable if they abuse it. Consider how much someone could learn about your life if cameras constantly tracked where you drove. They could discover which doctors you visit, what house of faith you worship at, who you visit or drive around with — even which political meetings and protests you attend.

And we’ve already seen how this mass surveillance tool can be weaponized and abused by law enforcement. ICE and CBP have repeatedly used Flock to go after immigrants without warrants. Kansas police used them to pursue a man who wrote a critical op-ed about the department, while a Colorado police officer wrongfully accused a woman of theft based on a Flock hit and then refused to look at evidence proving her innocence. A mother and her children were held at gunpoint because ALPR cameras wrongly flagged their car as stolen.

My opinion? Automatic license plate reader (ALPR) companies like Flock Safety are quietly trying to build a nationwide mass surveillance system. If there are Flock cameras in your city, they are tracking, logging, and sharing your movements without a warrant. Please contact my office if you, a friend or family member are charged with a crime involving Search & Seizure issues. Hiring an effective and competent defense attorney is the first and best step toward justice.

The Age of Surveillance Creep

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Surveillance technology is growing at an alarming rate in our society. For example, AI-powered cameras use of artificial intelligence software to help people take better photos by identifying objects intelligently and optimizing the color and output based on the scene. These technological innovations are not lost upon law enforcement agencies. Tools like Flock Safety license plate readers have the capability to track individuals across cities and states.

Cities and municipalities and considering a variety of surveillance systems to fight crime. Advocates say it makes cities safer, improves traffic, speeds up airport and stadium lines, makes workers more productive and safeguards valuable company property. Problematically,  electronic data gleaned from cities, municipalities and law enforcement can, without any discretion, provide the information to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies.  Suddenly, the gradual expansion of surveillance technology has now turned narrow safety programs into broad monitoring networks.

Welcome to the Age of Surveillance Creep.

WHAT IS “SURVEILLANCE CREEP?”

“Surveillance creep” is the idea that surveillance measures first installed for beneficial purposes are later used for more sinister purposes. While surveillance has always been about collecting data, it has now stretched into collecting much more personal information. While a type of surveillance may seem reasonable initially, its intentions past its initial purpose are mainly unknown and perverse. For example, with the rise of technologies to help people work from home comes the ability for employers to surveil their employees without their knowledge or at odd hours.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is one example of this type of surveillance. While having access to your friends and family online may seem like a simple and effective type of digital monitoring, this can lead to data collection and targeted advertising which is far less simple. A person’s use of social media also acts as a type of peer surveillance, where the watched watch each other, thus giving even more power to the watcher.

While many social media users are aware of small data collection on their sites, they continue to use the platform and give it their information willingly due to the addictive qualities of online social networking. Even data collection from advertising agencies seems light when compared to the potential threats of fraud and identity theft that can come from social media sites. The idea of social media and data collection has become so normalized that the threats of more sinister crimes are occurring more often.

FACIAL RECOGNITION

According to experts, large-scale companies are happy to sell facial recognition systems to law enforcement agencies. On the upside, the technology assists in finding criminals and missing persons. However, this technology is not always accurate. There are many instances of racial bias and misidentification when using facial recognition. In short, surveillance cameras being used for facial recognition do not recognize darker skin very well. These technological glitches and flaws tend to be negatively affected when it comes to facial recognition searches.

My advice? The government and large corporations are using surveillance as a way to creep into your daily life. You should have the right to contest that information. Seizures and searches of digital data must be cabined to probable cause, limited to specific categories of information relevant to the investigation, and closely overseen by a neutral judge.

Please contact my office if you, a friend or family member are charged with a crime involving evidence gained through electronic surveillance. Hiring an effective and competent defense attorney is the first and best step toward justice.