Cities terminate Flock contracts at record pace in August

Last Friday, Flock’s top lawyer wrote in another blog post that its newly modified terms of use “expressly prohibit customers and their users from using Flock Services to mislead, harass, stalk, or otherwise impose upon or violate the legal rights of another person.”

Those efforts have done little to quell political scrutiny.

This week, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) announced that he was “investigating Flock Safety’s collection, retention, and dissemination of the data generated by its artificial intelligence surveillance cameras.”

Additionally, on Wednesday, after two Florida police officers were arrested for misusing Flock, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis gave a speech in which he said that Flock cameras were “out of control” in his state.

“When I see, like, a police officer using this to track, like, an ex-girlfriend, I’m like, you know what the hell’s going on?” DeSantis said.

Even advocates who have followed the pervasive expansion of automated license plate reader (ALPR) technology—which predated Flock—are surprised.

“Maybe in the past it didn’t feel like every red light cam really meant a pair of eyes was watching you, but with AI, that’s increasingly becoming the reality,” Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center of Democracy and Technology’s Security and Surveillance Project, emailed Ars.

“And we’re already seeing how AI can morph ALPRs into a mass surveillance dragnet,” he added. “Flock lets its cameras be searched for keywords and people, cities are incorporating real-time facial recognition into camera networks, Border Patrol is using AI to scan ALPR data for driving patterns [and] pulling people over whenever the AI deems their driving ‘suspicious.’”

The scrutiny has become bipartisan after numerous widely reported incidents. “A Texas Sheriff’s Office used it to search for a woman who had had an abortion, and federal agents proposed using it outside gun shows,” Catherine Crump, a UC Berkeley law professor, emailed Ars.

“It definitely does not help that this is yet another Silicon Valley product that no one asked for that threatens to reshape people’s lives.”

Update, August 28: Secure Justice has updated its data and now says that 93 jurisdictions (up from 90) have ended Flock contracts this month alone.