> The Stop Flock Abuse Act would require a written approval process for each search; force agencies to delete driver data after ten days, with exceptions for active investigations; and ban ALPR networks from incorporating facial recognition technology
It also seems specifically geared to prevent the recent uses by ICE to document anyone attending No Kings or anti-ICE protests
I'd like to see a public-facing-camera-permit system where you have to disclose your data sharing practices up front and put some money into a whistleblower escrow account as a reward for anybody who can prove you've violated your data sharing policies.
...yup makes sense, no reason for federal governments to have unfettered access to this data.
>> "and block federal funding from state and local governments that use the cameras."
Wait..what? Why put this silly Poison Pill in the bill? So a city can't enforce its own traffic laws without having to put an over-zealous police force in the loop? The same guy that is handling drug dealers is stopping you for traffic tickets and people think nothing should go wrong?
Without cities adopting some massive road diet (fat chance) a reduction in ALPR's will kill people. Traffic deaths are at the same level as gun deaths in the USA.
As written, it cuts off funding from entire agencies. For example it cuts DHS funds, which would include Medicaid reimbursements to the state for its health services to low-income residents. There is no way to make a case that Medicaid funding is in any way related to ALPR regulation.
The bill also is way too loose in its definitions. As written if someone reported a stolen car, gave the license plate, an officer entered that into a database of stolen cars, later another officer pulled over a car for speeding, entered its plate into the computer in their squad car, the computer looked it up in the database of stolen cars and generated an alert--that would count as using an ALPR and be at odds with the bill.
It's DOA, it'll never pass. He has the mandate to actually fix the privacy issue and he's p*ssing it away.
Because then the states would install the flock cameras and "forget" to block the feds from accessing them:
> ...yup makes sense, no reason for federal governments to have unfettered access to this data.
In The Netherlands, we do have ANPR camera's but they are run by the police and there are strict rules about data retention (no hit on a licence plate means drop the data). ANPR cameras aren't used as dragnet surveillance. The NL situation is not perfect, but it's on a different playing field.
With the absolute unregulated situation in the USA, the outcome has been predictable: cops stalking people and innocent people jailed for weeks due to mistakes.
I love Benn Jordan's work, including the video where they went to a Flock office building, filming employees. They didn't like being filmed, but it did not teach them a lesson unfortunately.
If you (still) work for Flock, don't think of yourself as a moral, decent person.
Also do you have any guarantees that national security apparatuses aren't able to access this data if they have the right excuse (e.g. counter-terrorism, narcotics enforcement, etc)
I'm not clear the point of your post. Is it to say that what we had before is not guaranteed safe, so let's do this worse centralized thing because reasons?
In my city/state (Southern USA) you often see plain unmarked cars with multiple ALPR cameras mounted to the rear of the car. These are usually private companies patrolling streets & parking lots to build databases for REPO/Towing operations. Wouldn't surprise me if they are selling plate location databases to databrokers & law enforcement.
Plus Axon is already replacing Flock in some areas. Unfortunately there are multiple players in this game and Flock going down is only slowing their spread slightly.
Ban Flock Act Proposed in the US Senate
Settling for some minor reforms is not the answer to the US's exploding surveillance state problem
Joseph Cox (the author of this article) is mentioned directly in many of Benn Jordan's videos
Flock is despicable but after all the documented abuses of the system (assuming you don't accept that the entire system is an abuse) were enacted by cops (read: public officials).
I don't think a law making only ICE/FBI/etc able to access the data will do much to slow the rapid expansion of the surveillance state
What if you made the data only recorded for flagged license plates, for example? Where all information is discarded at the camera-level (not even sent to remote servers) unless it matches a specific target given by police with an expiration date, with an audit trail for every entry, and manual blind-solution human review to confirm any matches before an event is even recorded
...or ban them. Just ban them. Let's have less surveillance.
The pro surveillance side keeps ratcheting things upwards and moving the Overton window. Let's claw some things back.