Stop Flock
Flock is building a national surveillance network. A protest movement is forming to tear it down.
This is nice to see: a grassroots protest movement against the proliferation of Flock cameras.
From the site:
“Flock Safety markets AI surveillance that goes far beyond reading license plates; color, bumper stickers, dents, and other features are used to build databases and identify movement patterns. These systems are spreading rapidly, often without oversight, and are accessible to police without a warrant. They raise serious privacy and legal concerns, and contribute to a nationwide trend toward mass surveillance.”
There’s little evidence that they do anything meaningful to prevent crime. But they do certainly create a surveillance layer, and help establish a culture of surveillance across law enforcement. 404 Media reported last year that ICE has been tapping into these cameras, although they weren’t established for that purpose; local police have been proxy users for immigration enforcement.
Not only does the platform read license plates and track individual cars, but it tracks associations between vehicles — cars that are often seen together, for example. Which, of course, reveals associations between people.
I would echo what Brandon Mitchell said on Hacker news:
“I don't want to stop Flock the company. I want to stop Flock the business model, along with all the other mass surveillance, and the data brokers. If the business models can't be made illegal, it should at least come with liabilities so high that no sane business would want to hold data that is essentially toxic waste.
Without that, we are quickly spiraling into the dystopia where privacy is gone, and when the wrong person gets access to the data, entire populations are threatened.”
The Take Action section of the website is pretty good, with some common-sense tasks that include calling your representatives and supporting civil rights organizations like the ACLU and the EFF.
Earlier this year, TechCrunch reported that some people are going a step further, ripping cameras off street lights themselves. In Oregon, protesters left a note that read, “Hahaha get wrecked ya surveilling f*cks”. I couldn’t possibly endorse.
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