The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department (LVMPD) quietly entered an agreement in 2023 with Flock Security, an automated license plate reader company that uses cameras to collect vehicle information and cross-reference it with police databases.
But unlike many of the other police departments around the country that use the cameras in their police work, Metro funds the project with donor money funneled into a private foundation. It’s an arrangement that allows Metro to avoid soliciting public comment on the surveillance technology, which critics worry could be co-opted to track undocumented immigrants, political dissidents and abortion seekers, among others.
“It’s a short circuit of the democratic process,” Jay Stanley, a Washington D.C.-based lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) who works on how technology can infringe on individual privacy and civil liberties, said in an interview with The Nevada Independent.
The cameras scan license plates as well as vehicles’ identifying details — such as make, model and color — plugging that information into a national database that police can use to search the location of specific vehicles beyond their own jurisdictions. Flock operates more than 80,000 of these AI-powered cameras nationwide, and the company’s popularity has exploded in recent years, with police touting it as a tool to solve crime faster and boost public safety.
Although taxpayer dollars fund Flock cameras in other jurisdictions, most of the cameras in the Las Vegas area have been bought with money from the Horowitz Family Foundation, a philanthropy group connected to the Las Vegas-based venture capitalist Ben Horowitz, co-founder of the firm Andreessen Horowitz.
The Horowitz Family Foundation did not respond to a request for comment at the time of publication.
Metro told The Nevada Independent that it operates approximately 200 Flock license plate reader cameras on city or county infrastructure and it shares its Flock data with hundreds of state and local law enforcement agencies throughout the country.
Since late 2023, Las Vegas police have made more than 23,000 searches of vehicles, according to the website Have I Been Flocked, which compiles public audit logs of Flock data.
As the cameras were not bought with public funds, Metro does not have to hold meetings with the public to comment on the technology, something experts say leaves citizens without any input on the policing method.
In other cities, Stanley said Flock is often brought up and discussed during city council meetings or other public forums. It’s not required to be on public meeting agendas in the Las Vegas area.
... continue reading