- Three-year contract will not be renewed, police officials say
- Data and privacy concerns cited
- Herd cameras have faced backlash from a public concerned about privacy
Officials with the Los Angeles Police Department told the Los Angeles Times that its contract with surveillance camera company Flock would not be renewed due to “serious concerns” about privacy and the data collected.
The cameras, which are owned by Flock and used by more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States, scan and track billions of vehicle license plates each month, with the resulting data used by police departments to help make arrests and build cases.
However, there has been widespread public backlash over privacy concerns, with some residents taking matters into their own hands. Recently, a Virginia Air Force engineer was accused of destroying 13 Flock cameras over a six-month period.
According to Military.com, privacy advocates across the country have donated more than $15,000 (around £11,220 / AU$21,660) to the accused’s legal defense.
Additionally, the developers have created a free online mapping tool that allows U.S. drivers to plot routes that actively avoid areas with a high density of Flock cameras.
LAPD Public Information Director Dean Gialamas told reporters the contract was not being renewed because of “serious concerns about civil liberties and civil rights, particularly as it relates to privacy and the data collected by these cameras.”
Gialamas added that he hoped the data, privacy, security and sharing issues would ultimately be “resolved through a contractual relationship.” It is currently unclear whether Flock’s cameras will continue to record and stream data in the meantime.
Analysis: the public fights back
Flock’s network of some 80,000 cameras in the United States has come under fire from data privacy advocates, with companies like 404 Media conducting numerous investigations that highlight how easy it is for this surveillance data to fall into the wrong hands.
According to TechCrunch, researchers also identified an increase in the number of documented cases in which motorists were stopped, detained and even jailed due to false positives and errors with license plate readers.
We also recently reported that an investigation by the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that more than 50 federal, state and local agencies conducted hundreds of searches of Flock’s national network of surveillance data in relation to protest activities.
In the United States, a motoring journalist was even followed for days and ultimately “framed” by the police because of a Flock-based confusion with the license plates attached to the press loan vehicle he was driving.
As public distrust of Flock security cameras grows, we could see more agencies follow the LAPD’s lead in pushing back against this technology.
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