Letters: Flock Frustration
Editor;
Advocates of Flock cameras say they help police capture dangerous fugitives, stop car thefts and reduce other crimes. While I believe the cameras do help police track criminals and aid in recovering missing persons I also believe the possibility of abuse of Flock’s surveillance technology is also possible.
Questions about Flock and abuse of the system by police are drawing increasing scrutiny and have led to the dismantling of installed systems in several jurisdictions. Past advocates for public safety are now expressing concerns about the cameras and their ability to violate the constitutional rights of the very people they were supposed to protect.
With more than 5,000 jurisdictions currently collecting data on their citizens and questions about how hundreds of thousands of images are being used arising with alarming frequency I believe it is time to start asking hard questions about the technology and who has access to it.
Sincerely,
Katherine Lozano/Concord
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Cameras are hardware. Set legal limits. Enforce the law. Hold Flock up to the light. Cyber stalking by insiders should be prosecuted as serious crime.
What is London’s experience? They have cameras in every pram. OK, kidding about that, but they do have extreme coverage, I am told. How is the safety for privacy tradeoff working over there? I mean, they do have a king, but he doesn’t seem to know anything, so where is/will the threat come from?
Like most things in life, making good choices is in balancing the good and bad of each one. Based on the information I have, I would happily trade keeping my community safe and giving my local law enforcement the tools to optimize their duties in exchange for an occasional violation of privacy.
Well said. I keep in mind there is no expectation of privacy in public and with cameras everywhere, it’s the society we live in.
I can see where they would be useful for police but I can also see where they would be creepy and could be used against the population. The potential for abuse is troubling.
The CEO of Flock is doing interviews everywhere explaining that his company requires automatic detection of abuse, such as stalking by users of the system. (Short video at https://www.youtube.com/shorts/r9QIYJ-xh68) Other safeguards are tunable, such as the number of days images are retained.
Criminals routinely use stolen cars, so ability to track them down in real time is crucial. I prefer to make crime more difficult. Those of us who are not criminals will always be easy to track, with or without cameras.
This is what they look like when they get caught. This man was given a pitty pat to the wrist after he used department databases to TRACK, LOCATE and PULL OVER a female he was stalking.
https://youtu.be/1HIUpsUP3Lk?si=2fBBqgbA_dV6ogGz
A large portion of the money local municipalities use to buy and deploy Flock cameras comes from federal funding sources. State and federal scrutiny is growing and some cities and departments are rejecting them altogether until additional studies are completed and the potential for abuse corrected.
Regarding the Flock surveillance issue, here’s what I learned from my ‘attempted 2-11’, aka, Jugging close-call, in downtown Lafayette, about a year ago; buckle up, it’s a long read:
I called 911 when I noticed that I was being followed by a car full of men, and saw one of them throw a purpose-built puncturing device under one of my rear tires. I was unbelievably fortunate enough to have a chunk of asphalt or random rock plug the sharpened section of pipe that they used, which allowed the tire to hold enough air, while I led the bad guys on a high speed ride to the Lafayette PD station. The dispatcher connected LPD while I was en route and once the bad guys realized where I was leading them they turned around, and headed for the nearest freeway on-ramp, so as I screeched up in front of the station, an officer was coming out to meet me at the curb. As we walked around to the right rear tire, the piece of debris blew out of the sharpened pipe [imagine a sort of kids jack toy], and the tire immediately deflated – guardian angel moment, indeed. He immediately led me inside to their control room full of monitors, and we began retracing my route, from the BofA in the Safeway/Whole Foods parking lot, clockwise around Oak Hill, to Deer Hill, to the intersection at Pleasant Hill Road. That’s where I saw the right rear passenger of a fully-tinted SUV that pulled up to the center left-turn lane behind me, jump out, and run up to my would-be blind spot, to toss the pipe device under my tire. I was in a company cargo van with no rear or side windows, but because I was carrying a large amount of cash from the bank to my office, I was watching my mirrors like a hawk, and saw him do it. When we rewound the video we saw the entire thing unfold, from a camera mounted on the far [east] side of the intersection, he was able to zoom in with shocking resolution. Because my windows were not tinted enough ambient light comes through the cabin, and you could literally zoom in enough to read the label of the soft drink in my center console. Bad guys are clearly hip to the technology, so by tinting their own side windows, all we could make out was the arms of two front seat passengers, leaning on the center armrest. Furthermore, they had installed clear, polarized covers over their license plates. Since the license plate readers must be located on the corners of intersections, or high over the middle of them, the angle prevents the LPR’s from working. Lucky for me the guys got their car a little sideways around one of the corners as they were chasing me, which pointed the rear of their vehicle directly towards one of the LPR’s, allowing a clear view of the tag. The cops immediately fed that number into whatever law enforcement system tracks vehicle info, and in less than a second they had a name, and address, of its registered owner. That immediately brought up a street view, in my case of a home in Stockton, and once again the photo resolution was honestly alarming – suffice to say those Google Street View cameras are taking WAY sharper pictures, and video [and probably audio/WiFi/etc], than what is general public can see! They could zoom in with insane detail on any section of any angle, and nothing is blurry or pixelated, like it is when you or I are poking around online; law enforcement can see right through any windows or doors that may have been open or unobstructed the last time a camera car came through the neighborhood, and I noticed that the program or AI app being used was automatically highlighting the license plates of other vehicles that were in the driveway of that address, or any frame being viewed. I completed an incident report and went across the street to get my tire repaired, with the assistance of the outstanding officers on duty, and continued on with my Saturday. By Monday a detective had mug shots for me to review, having picked up some suspects from my case the following day; unfortunately by then they had successfully ‘jugged’ a couple, who was not as fortunate as I was. The detective could not share details but from what I could glean those poor folks were actually followed, from the bank or market where they were marked by a female accomplice, to their gated home, without noticing they were being followed, resulting in a full-on home invasion… unreal, and so sad.
So take all of that as you will – any illusion you may have of ‘privacy’ in today’s modern cities is truly an illusion, if someone with the proper credentials and access wanted to use it for nefarious purposes, they could do some creepy stuff, to put it mildly. Our surveillance technology is already mind blowing, and getting better, or worse if you will, all the time. My concern is the rapidly increasing AI aspect, as a human being only has so many hours in each day to look at video feeds. But a computer with unlimited processing capacity is another story, and after witnessing the scope of coverage these cameras, and associated sensors, already provide, I can certainly see the potential for some truly dystopian consequences.
I don’t know if Flock should stay or go but I would imagine it’s a moot point now, we’ve crossed that Rubicon, likely irreversibly.
Be aware, neighbors, be kind, and look out for one another. The future is what we make it
Good post… thanks for taking the time to share it.
It was an enlightening experience on so many levels, not the least of which was the extent, and extremely high fidelity of surveillance we already live under. I had no idea that the little cameras hidden under those bubble covers everywhere were capable of such detail. Like little spy satellites all over the place.
But the other shocker for me was how often the jugging thing is taking place, and how many seemingly random strangers that you see at our local shopping centers are there for the purpose of targeting folks for crime. When we rewound to my arrival at the bank it became clear that I inadvertently saved a little old lady, who the robbers had originally followed in, who was there doing her banking all alone, and completely oblivious. Once they saw my dumb a$$ rock up and withdraw a pile of cash, the juggers called an audible. One guy in the bank started texting and suddenly a group of his coworkers in the parking lot went into action, and I became their new target. But how often does it go the other way? Grandma gets a flat tire on her way back up Happy Valley and a couple nice Ukrainian guys just happen to pull up to ‘help’. She may not even realize she’s been robbed until much later, and maybe doesn’t connect the events. Or worse, perhaps they wait, and rob her home instead. Or the thought that the young lady with the baby you’re chatting with at Noah’s Bagels is telling the carful of guys in the parking lot that you’re wearing a $50k watch, or used a Black Card to pay your tab… the mind reels at all the possibilities, and as you have noted here so often, we just don’t hear about it going on around us, because it’s bad for business!
The biggest takeaway for me is to just be aware, if you’re NOT the one staring at your phone, you’re not the slowest wildebeest in the herd [pack?], thereby less appealing to the hyenas in the first place. But our elderly population are just being ravaged, it’s absolutely heartbreaking to hear how often they’re targeted and victimized.
The Lafayette PD officers that I dealt with were exactly the guys I want to show up when I don’t feel like I can handle the situation myself, and you can see how personally they take the matter of criminals preying upon their citizens. They use the tools like Flock to do their best to protect us, but unfortunately LEO’s are human beings, and not all of them are as upstanding as the young men I dealt with. Flock is an extremely powerful resource and as I learned it can be extraordinarily invasive, and I don’t think enough people understand how much freedom we’re risking in the name of ‘safety’. There’s no denying that evil exists among us but it always has, and once upon a time ai think we did a better job of identifying and dealing with it as a community.
The LPD said it best, just pay attention, hang up and drive, so to speak. Watch out for your neighbors, at home and when you’re out & about, particularly the elderly. Get a CCW if you’re so inclined, and practice at a local range, hopefully a new one in Walnut Creek; even if you’re not armed, practice situational awareness as if you are.
Help create less need for more surveillance, it’s really all we can do any more.
Dang, MG, we like the way you roll!
Great post – with actual words and correct punctuation! So refreshing!
But, seriously, yes, we’ve been calling out much of the activity you eloquently reference for some time and often feel we’re not reaching those who need to be reached (having spoken with those elderly victims, the home invasion targets, and people who have lost watches, jewelry and more to thieves out there and watching).
Perhaps your words will resonate with others who may not have considered what you’ve learned the hard way. We hope so.
Thanks again.
It’s powerful technology and its easy to see why police want it but keep in mind that our government tried to use camera systems to frame innocent civilians it said “vandalized” the reflecting pond. Innocent people, in handcuffs, with government officials pretty much just making up stories about what they had done. That just scares the hell out of me.
Flock contracts have been cancelled by more than 200 cities after abuse. Most of the abuse has been done by police in states like Texas and Georgia and Florida. We need more audits and control or we’re in danger of becoming a police state — which some people say they want. Do your homework.
It sounds like we may have rushed into this without thinking of the potential abuse? As people have noted this is a powerful technology and it could be turned against those it was sold as trying to protect. That one cop saying I saw a shiny thing (a girl) was chilling. More regulation and we need to know how these databases are being accessed and used.
Each municipality (customer) is in control of all settings, including how long video files are kept before deletion. Some jurisdictions delete them after only a few hours while others retain them for 30 days or more. My understanding is that most crimes solved with Flock video used footage that is <7 days old. If you are concerned about Flock in your particular community, the place to go to have a dialog is your local City Hall and police headquarters.
Here's the other side of the story. Flock only collects license plate data. There are cameras and software systems in place all over the country from other companies besides Flock and they do at times capture faces and pretty much anything that passes by them. The names of these companies and systems are not all over the news. Why is no one addressing these systems? It seems there's a been a concerted effort to target Flock in particular, the one that in many ways is the least intrusive and the most effective. What's the source of this effort and why haven't other, more intrusive and opaque systems been targeted instead?
Good point(s), MK and we agree… thinking that the issue, like others before us, hasn’t yet imprinted itself on the public consciousness, yet.
I live in a multi-unit development in Walnut Creek, and have an expansive view of a portion of the parking areas. For years, I watched sketchy activities. And I stopped two attempts to cut out catalytic converters. On several other occasions, I went outside and made myself very visible to make it clear that someone was keeping an eye out for bad guys. We got flock cameras, and it is like night and day. No more slow cruising through the parking areas, no issues. Let me emphasize, this change was like NIGHT AND DAY stuff.