After Flock Safety announced Thursday that it is making changes to its platform intended to quell privacy concerns, at least two local agencies responded.
Flock Safety operates a vast nationwide network of automated cameras that record the license plate numbers and other characteristics of all passing vehicles every day.
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Thousands of law enforcement agencies in 49 states can search and share Flock’s data across jurisdictions to aid their investigations.
Among those are the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office and the Glynn County Police Department.
Glynn County
In Glynn County, police announced the launch of a Transparency Portal available to the public that includes the department’s policy on the use of data from the 80 Flock cameras around the Golden Isles.
The portal also includes data on usage, which agencies share data with Glynn County and what the cameras can and cannot do.
“The Flock cameras in the Golden Isles are automated license plate readers. They photograph the license plates of passing vehicles and convert the plate number into text. They also record basic information about the vehicle, like body type and color and the date, time, and location of the camera,” GCPD wrote in a Facebook post. “Our Flock cameras do not recognize faces. They don’t measure speed. They don’t track you. They don’t even know who you are.”
The department emphasized that misusing data gathered by a Flock camera doesn’t just violate policy. It’s a crime.
St. Johns County
The St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office also shared a social media post on Thursday about its use of license plate reader technology, although not specifically about Flock cameras.
“SJSO introduced license plate reader technology in 2017 and currently operates 180 cameras countywide,” the agency wrote.
According to the Sheriff’s Office, LPRs in St. Johns County have led to the following since 2017:
- Locating 600+ stolen vehicles & 300 stolen tags
- Recovering 164 items of stolen property
- Locating 247 wanted individuals
- Locating 180 missing individuals
- Charging 831 individuals responsible for crimes
St. Johns County Sheriff Rob Hardwick also made his position on LPR technology very clear: it’s here to stay.
“𝘓𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘦 𝘱𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘢𝘭 𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘭 𝘩𝘦𝘭𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘬𝘦𝘦𝘱 𝘚𝘵. 𝘑𝘰𝘩𝘯𝘴 𝘊𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘺 𝘴𝘢𝘧𝘦. 𝘈𝘴 𝘴𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘧𝘧, 𝘐 𝘵𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘢𝘯 𝘰𝘢𝘵𝘩 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘜.𝘚. 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘵 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺. 𝘞𝘦 𝘶𝘱𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩 𝘣𝘺 𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺 𝘭𝘢𝘸𝘧𝘶𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘭 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘱𝘦𝘳 𝘶𝘴𝘦. 𝘛𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺-𝘣𝘢𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘷𝘦 𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘦𝘧𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘭𝘺. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘺 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘰𝘰 𝘷𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘢𝘣𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘦; 𝘪𝘵’𝘴 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘺.”
𝘚𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘧𝘧 𝘙𝘰𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘵 𝘈. 𝘏𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘸𝘪𝘤𝘬
The Sheriff’s Office said so far, since their installation in 2017, the agency has not identified any misuse of the system by personnel.
Flock under scrutiny
But that potential for misuse has the Flock Safety surveillance technology company under scrutiny from lawmakers from both parties, civil liberties advocates and citizens across the U.S.
Those critics say the pervasiveness of the cameras amounts to unconstitutional warrantless mass surveillance.
Dozens of cities and agencies have nixed their relationships with Flock amid concerns that the data can be accessed for immigration enforcement or used in unauthorized tracking, after a flurry of examples surfaced of law enforcement officers misusing the technology for personal searches.
CEO says changes will drive accountability
In an interview, Flock CEO Garrett Langley said many of the product changes will make what were once optional guardrails mandatory for its users to implement by Jan. 1.
Among them: All law enforcement customers will have to implement an audit tool that’s intended to flag abnormal search behavior. When the system detects abnormal behavior, the user would be locked out pending an internal review, the company said in a description of the changes provided ahead of Thursday’s announcement.
Flock, which says its customers own the data that the cameras record, is also shortening the standard data retention window from 30 days to seven. It said it will allow data to be preserved for longer when it is evidence tied to a case number.
Law enforcement users will now also be required to enter a code from their records management system tying each search to a specific case before it is run, something Langley said civil liberties advocates have long been calling for. Overrides for emergencies would be automatically flagged for review, the company said.
Customers will also be allowed to decide which offense types — such as homicide or arson — outside agencies can search their data for, which would allow a customer to block outside searches related to immigration enforcement, the company said.
Langley said that change will give individual cities and departments control to use the system in a manner “consistent with community values.”
Critics say still room for abuses, supporters urge balance
Critics of the company reacted skeptically to the changes, which they said appeared designed to address the growing bipartisan anger about the cameras but could still leave room for police to abuse the system.
The American Civil Liberties Union said in a blog post that the shortened evidence retention window could be “a step in the right direction,” but it characterized the other changes as “retreads” of inadequate safety measures.
Robert Frommer, a senior attorney at the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that’s led closely watched litigation over the technology, called the changes “window dressing” from a company in “panic mode.”
“This is window dressing that doesn’t address the fundamental problem, which is that police officers are the ones deciding who and when to search, and that should be done by judges with real warrants,” he said.
Andrew Guthrie Ferguson, a professor at the George Washington University Law School whose scholarship has focused on policing, big data surveillance and the Fourth Amendment, said Thursday’s shifts were “better than the opposite” but called for further scrutiny of the technology in the form of “sustained democratic engagement with the rules and judicial checks on access at a minimum.”
Ferguson said he’s been surprised to see the “growing community backlash” against Flock specifically, given that the technology isn’t new and other companies sell it as well. But Flock and the movement against it have “captured people’s sense that maybe they don’t want to be surveilled all the time,” he said.
More than 50 agencies or jurisdictions have canceled, suspended or rejected a contract or deactivated their cameras since the beginning of the year, according to a tracker maintained by DeFlock, a grassroots group formed to track the use of license plate reader technology and push back against it. Cameras around the country have also been vandalized.
In Congress, Republican representatives filed at least two bills aiming to restrict the use of the technology in July.
Ian Adams, an associate professor of criminology at the University of South Carolina currently working on a Flock-related research study, said many of the concerns raised about how the company’s data can be used are not new concerns in law enforcement.
“Anyone with policing experience could have reasonably foreseen that what have been termed as ‘curiosity searches’ by officers, searches for private reasons not related to police work, were going to be a problem this technology faced,” he added, noting that other technologies and platforms like the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information had faced those issues.
Law enforcement experts said it’s a common tension of “policing in a democracy” — balancing useful technology that officers say helps solve and prevent crime with the community’s interest and right to privacy.
“It’s a balancing act. A community has a legitimate interest in how information is used, but it also has a legitimate interest in the effectiveness of a police department in preventing crime,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based nonpartisan think tank. “I think a balance can be struck, but it’s more likely to come from department policy than company changes.”
Successes and failures have captured attention
Flock, based in Atlanta, Georgia, often posts to its website what the company deems to be everyday examples of success stories for its cameras, including finding missing seniors and catching car thieves. But the tech has also been used in high-profile cases that have garnered national attention, such as the search for a suspect in a fatal shooting at Brown University and in tracking and arresting a former North Carolina police officer who authorities say had made threats that he planned to carry out a mass shooting at a festival in Louisiana.
Abuses have also drawn widespread attention. The Washington Post reported earlier this month finding nearly 50 instances of police officers charged or accused of using the cameras for unauthorized purposes, many for tracking current or former romantic partners or family members.
Just this week, six employees — including four officers — of the Savannah Police Department in Georgia were fired after they were accused of searching for friends and family using the tool and allowing an officer from an outside agency to use the city’s cameras.
The Savannah department said it was made aware of the misuse through Flock’s voluntary audit function.
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Lauer reported from Philadelphia.