Flock ‘License Plate Readers’ Become Latest Traffic Enforcement Controversy

Flock Safety has taken some stiff criticism over its license plate readers in recent weeks. The national network of cameras has been faulted with warrantless surveillance and encouraging potential breaches of the First and Fourth Amendment. It’s also been revealed that its cameras do quite a bit more than simply read a vehicle’s license plate.

Automated traffic enforcement has become extremely popular in many larger cities of late. Earlier this year, New York became the first locale in the United States to introduce European-style congestion tolls. Chicago has likewise been on a quest to increase the number of speed cameras within the city limits and is hardly alone in doing so. Local governments are often presented with camera-based traffic enforcement (often by the very people selling the products) as a way to maximize a city’s revenue.

But they aren’t broadly popular with the public and many are now voicing concerns about privacy as more cameras are introduced. This has been the fate of Flock Safety, which framed itself as selling advanced "license plate readers” (ALPRs or LPRs) that could be used to help solve crimes. In addition to LPRs, the company simultaneously sells gunshot detection microphones, mobile surveillance platforms, flying drones, and home security systems.

The traffic cameras are supposed to be solar powered and reliant on cellular networks, allowing them to be placed in areas far away from power lines. The resulting footage is then uploaded to the cloud, which can be accessed by anyone with the relevant login credentials. More recently, the company has also promised AI integration that’s supposed to help with investigative efforts.

Unfortunately, this has resulted in some rather severe accusations being leveled against the company. Claims have been made that footage was being accessed by parties that had no business viewing it due to security gaps. But Flock has likewise set up the LPRs (which do far more than simply track license plates) to be easily accessible to begin with. Since the cameras exist on a national level, with the company claiming to serve over 5,000 communities across 49 U.S states performing an estimated 20 billion vehicle scans per month, it’s hard to understate how vast a network this has become.

As for the AI, this takes the cameras beyond the realm of simply being "license plate readers.” The updated system (known as Vehicle Fingerprint) is supposed to allow investigators to search vehicles using simple keywords. That presumes the artificial intelligence can not only track plates but also specific details of vehicles — things like make, model, color, dents, decals — and could potentially leverage facial tracking.

While that could undoubtedly help someone locate a vehicle implicated in a crime, it also opens up the door to abuse. Earlier this month, a Kansas police chief used the system a staggering 288 times to stalk his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. He even used Flock to track them outside of his own jurisdiction.

The ability to have individuals access information they weren’t supposed to have to begin with has been a recurring issue. Earlier in the year, a sheriff's office in Texas was reported to have searched data from more than 83,000 cameras in order to track a single woman suspected of giving herself an abortion. The department even managed to access cameras based in Illinois in order to continue tracking her outside of the state where her actions would not be considered criminal. Regardless of your stance on abortion, that’s a pretty clear violation of the law and a breach of the Fourth Amendment.

The Milwaukee Police Department has similarly been accused of accessing Illinois-based cameras on behalf of Homeland Security. Despite being framed as a way to boost local revenues by catching traffic violations or helping to locate stolen cars, Flock Security has effectively become a tool for immigration enforcement and is being used by ICE.

While some may find that a suitable purpose for the technology, we all know it won’t stop there. There have been sustained concerns about inter-departmental sharing of information on the system in general. We’ve already seen departments using it to violate protocol and the government has been increasingly leaning on private companies like Flock (e.g. Palantir Technologies) to outsource mass surveillance efforts that would technically be deemed illegal under U.S. law otherwise.

With that in mind, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have decried Flock Security as dangerous and has started encouraging townships against using its traffic cameras. Some have listened and others have been inundated with local privacy advocates who do not want to see those (or similar) systems where they live. Hays County, Texas, has recently postponed planned implementation. The same is true for Norman, Oklahoma, and Oak Park, Illinois.

However, the Flock Security network is already incredibly vast and there are scads of other companies willing to do the same kind of work. There are also plenty of regions in America with city councils that do plan on moving ahead with adding more Flock cameras. Privacy advocates are livid and seeing some camaraderie with certain members of the right-to-repair movement. But the government still seems keen to push more tech like this through unless the public pushes back.

Keep in mind that these cameras are still being sold primarily as "license plate readers.” But the reality is that they’re building a massive database of vehicles that can be used by government actors to launch investigations without a warrant.

Flock addressed some of the accusations being made against the company over the summer, going so far as to call the abortion case misinformation. It alleged that the involved department stated that it was looking into the woman on behalf of the family, as a missing person, and that no formal charges were ever made.

In the other cases, the company threw the onus onto the relevant departments. Flock said it wasn’t responsible for the decisions made by law enforcement, who determine when and how federal and local departments collaborate. It then gave several examples of crimes that its camera network was used to solve while federal and local agencies worked together. But this again brings us back to government actors using commercial service companies as a sort of smokescreen because it doesn’t have to adhere to the same protocols that the individual departments would.

Ultimately, this is a very slippery fish. While we can certainly see how modern traffic enforcement technologies can very easily pivot to warrantless instances of mass surveillance, we can also see cases where that same technology was used to help mop up specific crimes.

It’s worth noting that we’ve seen a rash of vandalism or vigilante justice, depending upon your perspective, in the United Kingdom as countless speed and ULEZ cameras (below) have been damaged or destroyed in recent years. The latter devices were set up to police when and where people could drive in so-called “Ultra-Low Emission Zones.” But the locals have called them mass surveillance devices and have taken it upon themselves to destroy them whenever possible. We suppose it’s a similar story here and one’s thoughts on the matter likely have everything to do with how much they trust their government.

[Images: Flock Safety; Aaron of L.A. Photography/Shutterstock; Fela Sanu/Shutterstock]

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