Brady O'Rourke is blocking a Flock camera in Crystal, Minn., with a roof rake and a bright yellow sign, saying, “I don't want to pay to be surveilled,” and, “My tax dollars are funding cameras at the end of my block. I don't want to live like that. I don't think anybody should have to live like that.”
That small act of refusal landed in the middle of a much bigger machine. Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based maker of the cameras, held its annual conference this week while backlash against its surveillance network kept growing. According to the company, more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use its technology. DeFlock, an advocacy group that tracks the cameras, says there are more than 130,000 AI-powered automated license plate readers on American streets.
Who Gets Watched
Every month, those cameras capture billions of license plates and other details about cars, including makes, models, colors and any alterations. That gives police a running record of where drivers have been over time. Clare Garvie, deputy director of technology law and policy at New York University’s Policing Project, said, “They monitor, quite simply, when we go to and from work, where we go to the doctor, where we drop our kid off at daycare. What we've enabled in practical reality is law enforcement to go back and look at where any of us was at any given point in time.”
That’s the bargain being forced on ordinary people: constant tracking dressed up as public safety. Police leaders say the cameras help them locate stolen vehicles and missing people, and a recent preliminary study suggests that Flock cameras can deter car theft. Jeff Potts, executive director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, said, “There's no question that license plate readers can be very helpful tools for law enforcement.”
But the same system that claims to help police also hands them a tool for abuse. Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst with the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at the ACLU, said the expansion of the technology — combined with advancements in AI and the centralization of data in cloud networks — has increased the risk of abuse. He said some police officers have used it to stalk ex-partners, or accessed the data for immigration enforcement purposes without a local government’s consent. A sheriff’s office in Texas used it to track a woman who may have had an abortion.
Stanley said, “The potential for police fishing expeditions is unlimited,” and, “What a lot of these AI, big data techniques do is they try to boil the ocean, to reduce huge amounts of data down to various people who they think could be involved. The problem with that, of course, is it sweeps up potentially enormous numbers of innocent people.”
The People at the Bottom Pay First
Garvie said the indiscriminate nature of the data collection raises concerns that the cameras violate the Fourth Amendment, which protects people from being searched unreasonably. “We did not set up a system of governance in this country that says, 'Just don't do anything wrong and you won't have anything to worry about.' What we said is, 'No, actually, law enforcement is affirmatively restricted against getting up in our business as we go about our daily lives,'” she said. Garvie said she wants to see more oversight of the technology from lawmakers.
That’s the reform lane: ask the same institutions that built the surveillance web to supervise it a little better. Meanwhile, the cameras keep multiplying, the data keeps flowing, and the people being watched keep footing the bill.
Last week, Flock changed some of its features to help prevent abuse, including shortening how long it recommends data be stored and cutting off access to officers who appear to be misusing the tool. Garrett Langley, the CEO of Flock, said, “We are so transparent about the business. We don't own this data. We don't sell this data. Cities have control over how long it's stored. And who it's shared with.”
Resistance, Legal and Otherwise
An increasing number of people are combating the technology in both legal and illegal ways. According to an NPR review of local news reports, Flock cameras have been vandalized in at least 36 states. People have stolen the cameras, sawed them down, crashed into them with cars, covered them in paint and stickers, and shot at them. Social media is filled with tongue-in-cheek how-to videos, instructing viewers on things like how to discreetly saw through a metal pole. The comments on Facebook posts from local news stations about the vandalism are rife with snark: “Not all heroes wear capes,” one commenter wrote.
Langley said, “These are people being amped up to go do something. And I don't think they're being given the level of information they should that they're also committing a felony.” He said if people have concerns with his company’s technology, they should take it up with their city council.
According to DeFlock, at least 100 cities have deactivated the cameras or canceled contracts with Flock or similar companies. Stanley said there’s a deep well of dislike in the U.S. for the notion of being surveilled by the government. “We're seeing opposition from the left. We're seeing opposition from MAGA Republicans. We're seeing opposition from mainstream Republicans, from centrists. And so it really is a nonpartisan issue,” he said. “This grassroots uprising is just really remarkable. At the end of the day, it's not like anything I've seen in my 20-plus years as a privacy advocate.”
Organizers with DeFlock are holding a National Week of Action through Saturday. They say more than 25,000 people are registered for events around the country — things like protests and education sessions — that offer people a legal way to use their voice. For now, that’s where the pressure is coming from: not the agencies, not the company, but the people who refuse to accept a street full of cameras as normal life.