A mischief-maker in a Darth Vader suit recently endorsed Flock at a city council meeting, and it has not helped the company's fortunes. Around the US, citizens have been protesting and sometimes vandalizing the company's network of surveillance cameras. And the advocacy has caused some governments to change course.
Government officials, commonly hesitant to second-guess law enforcement practices, have become concerned enough to question these mass surveillance practices. US Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) on Wednesday wrote to Flock CEO Garrett Langley to announce an investigation of "Flock Safety's collection, retention, and dissemination of data gathered by its artificial intelligence cameras."
Despite "Darth Vader's" comments last week at a San Diego City Council meeting about the need to "continue utilizing Flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the rebel scum," a growing number of local governments in the US have been cancelling or choosing not to renew their contracts with Flock and other makers of automated license plate readers (ALPRs).
The Institute for Justice (IJ), a Virginia-based legal advocacy non-profit, on Wednesday published a new database that tracks the termination of local government ALPR contracts. As of Wednesday, the database documents 93 local governments that canceled ALPR contracts.
The IJ, which is challenging ALPR use on Fourth Amendment grounds in Norfolk, Virginia and San Jose, California, previously published a database that documents police abuse of ALPRs, a topic addressed in Hawley's letter. Incidents include romantic stalking, wrongful traffic stops and detentions, and other forms of misconduct.
"I think what's happened is that the American public has woken up to the mass surveillance that quietly arose around them," said Robert Frommer, senior attorney at IJ, in an interview with The Register. "And they don't like it.
"It does seem to me that the rate of cancellations, the rate of public protest has increased over the past few months. I think that's both due to more news attention being paid to the real life abuses of this technology, as well as the Supreme Court's recent decision in the geofence case," Frommer said. In that case, SCOTUS ruled that cops need a warrant to grab location data.
Frommer said that he believes the IJ's efforts to document ALPRs and associated abuses have helped focus the public's concern and have illustrated the problems with warrantless mass surveillance.
ALPRs, from vendors like Flock, Motorola Solutions, and PlateSmart, among others, capture license plates whenever cars drive by, along with geodata and potentially images of people. This data can be combined with other information, effectively putting all passersby under constant surveillance without any warrant.
"I think what we're seeing now is the reaction to that," said Frommer, who explained that the problem with Flock cameras is that they're accessible to anyone with login credentials, without any authorization from a supervising authority.
"You don't need to go to a judge and get a warrant," Frommer explained. "You don't need anything. And when you basically give that search power to the bored officer in his cop car in the middle of a shift, it inevitably happens that they start using it and start misusing it, whether to look people up personally or whether to investigate people at political protests."
These sorts of issues, Frommer said, have made people question whether we should live in a panopticon.
The IJ's litigation and its Plate Privacy Project, said Frommer, follow from the belief that there are solutions, whether they come from the courts or lawmakers. Pointing to Hawley's letter, he said that this is not just a state or local issue, but has become a federal concern.
"I think what the din that you've heard over the past couple of months shows that there absolutely needs to be a change, a reckoning," he said. "And that's what we're pushing for in our litigation. We're pushing for a warrant requirement. You want to go look up somebody's past travels and see where they have been? Go to a judge, explain it, and get a warrant."
Flock did not respond to a request for comment.
(Score: 5, Informative) by SomeGuy on Monday August 31, @11:31AM (11 children)
And yet people are somehow ok with their cell phones, Windows 11, doorbell cameras, chatbots, and every web site spying on them.
I guess it is a start.
But it does make me wonder where this Flock resistance is really coming from.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday August 31, @12:31PM (4 children)
At least the rest of those require SOMEONE to opt in. Some person actually purchased the cell phone, the doorbell, or whatever. Even Windows can be opted out of, if you do a little research. Flock cannot be opted out of. You have zero choice in the issue. You become a complacent member of the Empire, or you become rebel scum that must be hunted down.
I said what I said. - Sophie Cunningham
(Score: 2, Troll) by Bentonite on Tuesday September 01, @02:40AM (3 children)
The "opt-in" process is identical between tracking devices and surveillance cameras.
Someone else purchased the flock contract, the tracking device and the surveillance doorbell, without asking you.
You unfortunately cannot opt-out of other "people" being meat proxies for tracking devices, nor you can opt of being surveilled by surveillance cameras, if you ever go outside.
The only actual way to opt-out would be to destroy ever single surveillance camera and tracking device you come across.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 01, @12:53PM (2 children)
I can't see it that way. Local businesses have had security cameras for decades, to use against shoplifting and robbery. Private citizens use door bell surveillance for their own private purposes. Flock, on the other hand, is paid for with your tax money so that government can intrude on the private lives of millions. My neighbor installing his own surveillance with the intention of protecting his family does not compare with City Hall prying into EVERYONE'S lives.
You have a valid complaint that few people know how to install and use their own security systems, without granting access to Evil Corp. But, it can be done. Maybe we should go on a crusade to educate people about their options.
I mean, I know when my neighbor goes to work, with or without a Ring camera. It's background noise, and I don't care about it. The question is, did I configure Ring so that it reports to Evil Corp when my neighbor goes to work? When he hooks his boat trailer to the truck and heads out for the weekend? When he brings a woman home? Your personal security system doesn't HAVE to fill storage at some corporate server farm. More people need to understand that.
I said what I said. - Sophie Cunningham
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Bentonite on Wednesday September 02, @04:09AM (1 child)
There's a big difference between cameras that write to an offline computer that cycles the video stream every week (that is only looked at in cases of robbery) and surveillance cameras that transmit everything to some remove computer over the internet.
Many businesses do not use cameras, as those cannot stop acts - only record acts being committed (which could be handed to the police, but good luck with that if the police are too busy going after innocent people).
Not true - for any of the popular doorbell surveillance cameras, the video stream first goes to the businesses remote server to be extensively abused (with flock-like techniques too) and then such proprietary citizens can view the stream (not sure what viewing the stream is going to be helpful with, other than spying on the neighbors and any passerby's).
The surveillance doorbell etc your neighbor installs pries into the life's of everyone who is in the view of the camera and the range of any microphone.
As you installed a ring camera, unless you ensured it cannot ever connect to the internet (good luck with that one, considering it has Wi-Fi and the passwords of many Wi-Fi networks are easy to guess and how the proprietary cr…app needed to access the video streams has a connection to the internet), yes you did.
When it comes to proprietary software configuration, just because there's a setting that purports something along the lines of; "disable spying", doesn't mean that does anything beyond disabling your access to the spying data.
Please show basic respect for humanity by removing the surveillance camera.
If you are worried about your house being broken into, install something actually effective like doors with decent structural integrity and decent locks.
For surveillance setups configured by someone who doesn't know better than to setup surveillance, the end result 99% of the time is for the video stream, or extracted data, to end up at some corporate server farm.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday September 02, @08:46PM
You may or may not know that I do Amazon Vine reviews. That is, I get free products to evaluate. I have reviewed some "security cameras". Two of them required internet access to work - and worse, to monitor the cameras, your cell phone had to connect through the camera's own WIFI access point. I found that to be preposterous, and I wrote them up as worthless POS that had no purpose other than to spy on you. And, naturally, those devices were connecting to servers in China.
You're right that the "popular" devices require internet access, and the data is stored "in the cloud". You've got that perfectly right. But, there are a number of devices that DO NOT require internet connectivity, and store nothing in the cloud. Most of those requre storage on an NAS or similar. The more storage available, the more data can be saved. It is up to the end user to decide whether he prefers privacy, or he prefers that "cloud storage".
And, yes, I can assure you that none of my IoT devices connects to the internet, other than for initial testing. I run a router that makes it easy to block all traffic to a device.
If you visit my home, please don't destroy any of the devices you might discover. None of them are phoning home to the mothership.
And, finally - I might ask what you consider to be "decent structural integrity and decent locks". I've spent many years, passing through locked doors, for which I had no keys. Some are better than others, some will take some time to pass through. But there are few doors that I can't defeat, given some privacy for ten minutes. My greatest concern would be someone discovering me while I manipulated a lockpick, or even a plain old credit card or screwdriver. Or, setting of an alarm. Got windows? Game over. It will only take a thief a few seconds to get in. It might be nice to have a camera located where it can identify the thief.
Pro tip: don't invest in a camera with such a poor picture, you can't distinguish between a mouse and a moose.
I said what I said. - Sophie Cunningham
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31, @12:46PM
Please study the American Revolution- not just military, but philosophically- the concept of freedom. Freedom from tyranny, governmental overreach, literally _anything_ done by some kind of governmental power, but with no input from We the People.
One of far too many examples: documented places where they (officials) have shortened yellow light times just to "catch" more "red light runners".
There are assholes who comment "why are you worried about cameras if you didn't do anything wrong?"
A) sometimes the system makes a mistake and totally innocent people are being fined and much of their time and life being wasted. If they take it to court and win, and sue, it's all my tax dollars- not by my choice at all- being forcefully taken out of me to pay for all of it. What benefit do I or society get?
B) If you like mass surveillance, data centers logging your every move, you're a big problem and need to move to China, or Russia, or somewhere similar.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31, @12:49PM
Same as the data centers, China. Isn't it obvious? /s
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 31, @09:50PM
Yeah, it's a start. I have the "spy microphones" in the house, and I occasionally switch them all off, but really: your phone is capable of the same things. I suspect the spy microphones are a little less careful about covering their tracks when they listen in uninvited, I definitely get signs that I have had my conversation tapped showing up in my "personalized feed." I consider it a good reminder to go full tinfoil hat: all phones off, all microphones off, if there's ever anything that needs hiding. In the meantime, act normal, let them have "normal life" if I'm going to get prosecuted for bad mouthing the local school board in the privacy of my own home, bring it on.
The Flock resistance seems to be being promoted as "the straw that broke the camel's back" - they're actually charging people with crimes based on the faulty data, and it's clear that the camera is in the loop (as opposed to all the other crimes they've charged people with based on faulty data for the past 250 years around here....) I think it hit a tipping point and now the media is making it cool to hate on Flock. But Flock is just the tip of the iceberg, there are so many other providers to law enforcement and everybody else out there - think your Ring audio/video is private, really untappably private? Guess again.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 01, @01:51PM
I would be less against this stuff if the cops weren't so dangerous. But there's plenty of evidence that too often the cops shoot people (and pets) for no good reason. The fact that SWATing is actually considered significantly potentially lethal proves the cops are too dangerous.
US cops are defective. They're like a gun that too often shoots by itself without anyone else pulling the trigger. Sure you're not supposed to point a gun at stuff you don't want destroyed. But most guns don't shoot by themselves that often. Those that do will be considered faulty.
If Big Brother was my "Big Bro" and actually taking good care of me and treating me well, then I've no problems with Big Bro knowing where I am.
However seems too likely that Big Brother will take care of people the way murderers and other criminals take care of people...
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday September 01, @08:25PM (1 child)
And yet people are somehow ok with their cell phones, Windows 11, doorbell cameras, chatbots, and every web site spying on them.
The cops can't use that cell phone data without a warrant signed by a judge. Not an ALPR network, all a cop needs is for his department to have a subscription.
As to Windows 11, show me where your data come from. The last I saw, people are rebelling against Windows. Desktop Linux is up to 4% from <.1 before W11.
The cops can only see your doorbell camera data with a warrant or if you volunteer it. Again, not so FLOCK.
The "patriotic" Defense Secretary Hegseth carries an American flag in his jacket's snot rag pocket.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Bentonite on Wednesday September 02, @04:40AM
Try searching; "cell location data no warrant" - you'll realize that the US police have accessed location data, without a warrant, countless times before.
Recently the supreme court ruled that doing so is not allowed as known, but that ruling didn't include prosecutions for all the past known illegal accesses, so business will continue as usual.
Windows for years has been known to spy on what programs the used run and how long; https://web.archive.org/web/20251222133904if_/https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/08/02/gaming-on-windows-10-a-years-journey/ [archive.org]
https://www.theregister.com/2015/09/01/microsoft_backports_data_slurp_to_windows_78_via_patches/ [theregister.com]
Every time a usb device is attached to a WC, an entry within Windows device management is made. Not a suggestion to run such proprietary software, but it documents it; https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/device_cleanup_tool.html [majorgeeks.com]
Even NPC sites document the extensive surveillance windows 11 is publicly admitted to doing; https://web.archive.org/web/20250326050753/https://www.pcworld.com/article/2379675/ways-windows-11-collects-your-data-and-what-you-can-do-about-it.html [archive.org] (spoiler; the settings do nothing).
(Yes, microsoft admitted that windows 11 (and also windows 10) keylogs you and then "anonymizes the keylogs" (how do you even do that?) and then sends it off.
windows 11 tracks devices with "Global Device ID's (GUID)", which is tied to windows accounts and thus the used personally;
https://www.pcmag.com/news/a-hackers-arrest-reveals-microsoft-can-track-users-via-a-windows-device [pcmag.com]
https://www.windowslatest.com/2026/07/10/you-cant-fully-disable-microsofts-gdid-windows-11-tracker-but-these-settings-limit-what-it-captures/ [windowslatest.com]
Every last surveillance doorbell company has handed over camera data to the police without a warrant or consent from the meat proxy;
https://morningoverview.com/your-doorbell-camera-may-be-sharing-footage-with-police-without-telling-you/ [morningoverview.com]
https://petapixel.com/2022/07/27/googles-nest-will-provide-data-to-police-without-a-warrant/ [petapixel.com]
https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/google-nest-backend-data-fbi-privacy-smart-cameras-2026/ [stateofsurveillance.org]
Try searching; "«brand surveillance camera» no warrant".
(Score: 4, Interesting) by FuzzyTheBear on Monday August 31, @12:12PM (1 child)
It's not every idea that should reach markets. If it exists ideas will ALWAYS find it's way to war , spying or repress the citizens. This was a good idea , but the potential for abuse was too high and that should have prompted the
" Ditch it , bad idea " and the sales clerks were too happy to sell it as a control/ repression tool.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday September 01, @08:33PM
Are you blaming Mr. Orwell for ALPRs? That's like blaming Stephen King for school shootings (not that he didn't have the book pulled from circulation after Columbine, he did).
Does that mean Jules Verne gets credit for Apollo 11?
The "patriotic" Defense Secretary Hegseth carries an American flag in his jacket's snot rag pocket.
(Score: 5, Informative) by HiThere on Monday August 31, @12:46PM (7 children)
Flock is much wider than just "a license plate reader", and every article that describes them as such should be considered "whitewash".
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31, @12:54PM (6 children)
I keep commenting (here and on other sites) that in my area, major US eastern city's suburbs, ALL of the cameras are pointed directly at our FACES, not licence plates on the backs of the cars. (we don't have front plates). I've taken to wearing a COVID mask when approaching traffic lights.
BTW, sometimes the cameras are not obvious- sometimes on a side pole, or otherwise pretty well hidden. The big high-mounted white housing cameras are being replaced by much smaller black ones that again, are often pretty well hidden.
2 years ago a coworker told me he had been stopped by a cop. Cop asked where he had been (is that any of the cop's business?) Coworker gave some kind of answer that cop didn't like. Cop pulls out a tablet and starts swiping through a list of pictures of coworkers face from each traffic light intersection he had just driven through. Not a city, btw, semi-rural suburbs.
(Score: 4, Touché) by epitaxial on Monday August 31, @02:49PM (1 child)
Funny how all you ever hear about is how bad China is in this regard.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday September 01, @08:39PM
They're old hands at it, China [mcgrew.info] was Orwell's 1984 in 1984.
The "patriotic" Defense Secretary Hegseth carries an American flag in his jacket's snot rag pocket.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 31, @09:54PM
Germans have been wearing Gorilla masks for speed cameras for decades.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday August 31, @10:03PM (2 children)
>pulls out a tablet and starts swiping through a list of pictures of coworkers face from each traffic light intersection he had just driven through.
Tipping their hand early, all the more incentive for countermeasures.
I've always thought that a dynamically targeted laser beam would be a fun project.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday September 01, @08:35PM (1 child)
A hammer works as well and is no more dangerous to your personal freedom.
The "patriotic" Defense Secretary Hegseth carries an American flag in his jacket's snot rag pocket.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 01, @09:41PM
Well, if we're going "there" you may as well go full Kyiv and have quadcopters deliver sticky bombs.
🌻🌻🌻🌻✌️ [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 02, @05:09PM
As reported by many sources, Florida has just banned Flock cameras from state highways,
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/florida-bans-flock-license-plate-readers-state-highways-rcna595420 [nbcnews.com]
While this does not affect local roads (owned by towns, etc), they are taking out in-town camneras where they are on FL state roads.
Hoping this is the first of the dominoes to fall...