Flock Safety, a surveillance equipment company, says it partners with more than 5,000 law enforcement agency partners across 6,000 communities. Is your city one of them?
The Flock cameras are solar-powered license plate readers that collect data as they record. Agencies that partner with Flock can then search the database for license plate numbers, car make and models, or identifying features like bumper stickers.
Proponents argue the cameras help law enforcement solve crimes, but critics say they data could be misused to track anyone, even those not accused of crimes, with little oversight.
“They’re just collecting data as an active surveillance system, and every car that passes through, the data is collected from that car license plate, using AI. They make a vehicle fingerprint of the car that includes distinguishing features, make, model, color, bumper stickers, roof racks, all these different things,” said Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs in an interview with NewsNation.
“And then it’s retained for sometimes 30 days or more and then in a searchable database, which really turns the whole concept of a license plate reader on its head in that they’re not looking for one specific vehicle or specific vehicles. They’re just pulling everything in.”
Founder Garrett Langley said his surveillance equipment manufacturing company started out of frustration with crime rates in his home city of Atlanta.
“Crime felt too easy to get away with,” Langley said during a TED talk in April. “It didn’t make sense that you could steal someone’s car … or you could kill someone and have a 50 percent chance of getting away with it. … So I did what engineers do. I built a license plate-reading camera.”
How can I check the location of Flock cameras?
According to Flock, nearly 100,000 cameras are in place across more than 6,000 communities in 49 states. The company, however, doesn’t have a detailed list of camera locations publicly available.
That’s where DeFlock comes in. The organization says it wants to raise awareness about automatic license plate readers and “the threats it poses to personal privacy and civil liberties.”
DeFlock maintains a crowd-sourced map showing the alleged location of Flock cameras around the U.S. “Camera locations come from volunteers and the OpenStreetMap community, not a private company or government agency,” DeFlock says. Nexstar could not independently verify the camera locations.
You can zoom into the map below to explore the reported locations of cameras in your neighborhood, according to DeFlock’s crowdsourced data.
To open the map above in a new tab, click here.
The map includes cameras made by other tech companies, not just Flock.
The cameras have been proliferating for years, but backlash has been growing in recent months. Dozens of city councils have voted to get rid of or reject Flock cameras.
Other jurisdictions have been working to implement more safeguards. San Jose, California, for example, limits data storage to 30 days, San Jose Spotlight reported. The city also restricts camera locations so they can’t be placed outside abortion clinics, health care facilities or places of worship.
https://thehill.com/policy/technology/6016998-flock-camera-map-how-many-are-in-your-neighborhood/
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