[24377] in Privacy_Forum
[ PRIVACY Forum ] Script of my national radio report yesterday on
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lauren Weinstein)
Tue Sep 1 10:29:09 2026
Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2026 07:19:31 -0700
From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren@vortex.com>
To: privacy-dist@vortex.com
Message-ID: <20260901141931.GA16749@vortex.com>
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This is the script of my national radio report yesterday on growing
blowback to the Flock camera surveillance system. As always there may
have been minor wording variations from this script as I presented
this report live on air.
- - -
Yeah, the company we're talking about is of course Flock. There are
reportedly something around 120 THOUSAND or more of their AI cameras
around the U.S. in more than 6000 communities that contract with Flock
to install those cameras. They collect vehicle license plate data from
cars that pass them and feed those into a massive license number
database of which cars are driving where at any given time. This isn't
just cars wanted for some purpose, it's all cars the camera can see.
The official purpose for this is to help authorities solve crimes and
locate criminals and other related purposes. And it has indeed
sometimes been useful for these applications.
The number of these warrantless surveillance cameras has increased
dramatically and their data typically retained for considerable
periods. In many areas this system could often be used to track pretty
much anyone who drives, everywhere they go, effectively pretty much
100% of the time, even though they're not involved in any criminal
activity whatsoever.
Concerns regarding which agencies in which locations have access to
the data of any given community have been growing rapidly because
communities usually have their own rules about this data. Current
national polling says Americans oppose these cameras 46% to 38%, a
reversal from just last year.
In both rural and urban areas, some of these cameras have been
physically attacked. So Flock cameras have been blocked by people
spraying goo over the lenses, they've been shot at, the poles they're
mounted on have been cut down. Police have even started installing
decoy 3D printed fake Flock cameras. Some politicians have been faced
with angry residents at public meetings demanding that the cameras be
removed.
And this situation only got more intense as it has been revealed that
there have been many cases of authorities with access to the system
using it for completely unauthorized and often purely and very creepy
personal purposes. And there almost certainly are far more such cases
than have been made public to date. This is situations like someone
using the system to illicitly track everywhere their ex-girlfriend
goes or watch in detail the movements of a person who happened to
trigger their amorous desires.
This is seriously invasive, creepy, and deeply disturbing, and when
anything like this is exposed many people are going to be
understandably outraged. So there have been an increasing number of
cities and other communities that are canceling or not renewing their
contracts with Flock, and ordering the cameras immediately covered
and/or removed, because they feel that the risks and problems aren't
worth it anymore.
In fact, just today there's word that they're apparently being removed
in Knox county Tennessee and from state highways in Florida!
The CEO of Flock, who has been roundly criticized for some of his past
statements viewed as dismissing privacy concerns, recently publicly
acknowledged that Flock backlash has become a real problem, and
announced some changes to authentication access controls and default
data retention and such.
But with politicians in both parties now calling for investigations
into Flock, and so many people concerned about it around the country,
again in both urban and rural areas, it's hard to see how relatively
minor changes like these are going to take off much pressure, when
it's now widely felt that in significant respects Flock has been
allowed to become another example of unacceptable levels of technology
intrusion into our lives.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
lauren@vortex.com (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Signal: By request on need to know basis
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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