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Tech News
Surveillance company Flock Safety is reducing its workforce by roughly 18%, or about 270 employees, with departures effective at the end of October, according to Reuters. Flock says the reductions came through a voluntary separation program rather than layoffs, though Wired reported last month the company had asked some staff to leave to avoid mandatory cuts.
A former police officer argues that Flock Safety's automated license plate recognition cameras have replaced guesswork with instant, precise identification of stolen vehicles. The Atlanta startup, founded in 2017, installs solar-powered roadside cameras that photograph passing cars, log identifying details, and check plates against the FBI's national database in real time, alerting officers to matches.
Senator Bernie Sanders, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Jeff Merkley have introduced the Ban Flock Act, which would bar federal agencies from using automatic license plate readers and cut federal funding to state and local governments that deploy them. The bill would also allow Americans to sue the federal government over rights violations tied to the technology. The lawmakers cited reporting by 404 Media on Flock's camera network as a motivation for the legislation.
Officials in North Richland Hills, Texas, have requested a $2.3 million fee before releasing public records related to Flock surveillance systems. The city claims that reviewing approximately one terabyte of data would require 14 years of work at $15 per hour, a cost deemed excessive by the requesting group. Other cities have charged varying amounts for similar records, with some providing data free of charge and others demanding tens of thousands of dollars.
Officials in North Richland Hills, Texas, have requested a $2.3 million fee before releasing records related to Flock surveillance camera data. The fee was based on an estimate that reviewing the data would require 14 years of work at $15 per hour, according to the city. The request was made by the Texas Privacy Coalition, which criticized the cost as excessive and intended to hinder access to information about law enforcement's use of Flock systems.
Liz Lindseay Isaacs told a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee that a Flock Safety license-plate camera wrongly linked her Dodge Durango to a fatal hit-and-run, leading to her arrest and 13 days in jail, including time in solitary confinement. Prosecutors dropped the charges after realizing the vehicle identification was wrong, and she is now suing the Florida police department involved, alleging two officers falsely claimed to see damage on her vehicle. Flock told CNN the incident stemmed from human error unrelated to its technology.
San Francisco officials say car-related crime has fallen sharply in the city, pointing in part to the deployment of Flock Safety's automated license-plate-reading cameras. The report examines how much of that decline can be attributed to the camera network versus other factors like policing strategy and broader crime trends.
An investigation into Flock Safety's automated license-plate camera system argues that its core design, not isolated misuse, allows police and other agencies to query cameras they never purchased or deployed. The report cites a case in Georgia where a woman's ex-boyfriend appeared to track her movements via the network, suggesting data from local cameras can flow well beyond their intended jurisdiction.
Surveillance vendor VIDIZMO has told police departments it can integrate facial recognition technology into Flock's camera network. According to the company's own website, the system can sort individuals into seven racial categories and estimate age, and VIDIZMO markets this demographic breakdown as useful for both law enforcement and commercial marketing purposes.
U.S. District Judge Sara Hill ruled that a Tulsa County sheriff's deputy violated the Fourth Amendment by searching Flock Safety's license-plate database without a warrant, based solely on a vehicle having California plates. Because the search lacked justification, Hill ordered evidence from the resulting car search—including an alleged 91 pounds of methamphetamine—suppressed as 'fruit of the poisonous tree.' Hill also described Flock's camera network as a form of 'indiscriminate mass surveillance' that tracks all vehicles passing its cameras.
A U.S. federal judge ruled that Flock's automated license-plate reading cameras constitute 'indiscriminate mass surveillance' by continuously logging vehicle locations. The ruling threw out drug charges against a driver after finding that an officer's warrantless use of Flock's travel-history data to justify a traffic stop violated reasonable expectations of privacy, suppressing all evidence gathered afterward.
Lexington, Kentucky police surrounded the home of Will Penn and Robin Pen at 4 a.m. with guns drawn after automatic license plate reader data from Flock Safety flagged Penn's truck as resembling a vehicle described in a felony assault case. Officers confirmed the couple had no connection to the crime, but the raid occurred while Penn's 94-year-old grandmother was in the house.