A backlash is gathering steam against the Flock surveillance cameras used by police departments across the country. Some cities are terminating their contracts with the company; in other cases individuals are taking matters into their own hands by stealing or vandalizing the devices they say intrude on their privacy. How much surveillance is too much?
‘New norm’
Flock’s “original promise” was to provide an AI-driven system that “discourages speeding, hit-and-runs and right turns on red,” said Bloomberg. But its devices, known as automatic license plate readers, also work as a “crime-fighting tool.” The system is now a symbol of “government’s growing obsession with keeping a constant eye on those it exists to serve,” legal scholar Stephen L. Carter said to the outlet.
The Flock mechanism has reportedly been used to “stalk women, hunt down marijuana users, deport immigrants and surveil households,” said Bloomberg. The anger sparked by those stories has resulted in “dozens of police departments” terminating contracts with the company.
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“The fear of Big Brother watching you is not new,” Sara Pequeño said at USA Today. The Flock backlash “doesn’t mean these cameras are disappearing any time soon.” ICE has partnered with AI companies to implement facial recognition programs, stores are “implementing AI surveillance pricing” that uses your shopping habits to determine your grocery bills, Meta sells glasses that can record video and Ring cameras have made front porches “visible to the whole world.” The question raised: “Why are we just watching America become a surveillance state?”
Surveillance “puts public safety first,” Rick Pozniak said at The Boston Herald. The system saves police precious time “locating an abducted child or tracking a rapist, or recovering a stolen vehicle” and can also help investigators “reconstruct the movements of vehicles involved in serious crimes and accidents.” The information gathered by such systems should be “governed by strict protocols” but to entirely reject technology that is “imperative to safety and protection of local residents would be a mistake.” Police should be provided the “tools they need” alongside rules that offer the “accountability we deserve.”
‘Surveillance-saturated society’
Efforts to ban Flock systems are an “overreaction,” Charles Fain Lehman said at The Atlantic. The United States is already a “surveillance-saturated society,” but police cameras “can help make the criminal-justice system both fairer and less punitive.” The system can “help police catch criminals” and also theoretically discourages crime by “increasing the certainty” of being arrested when committing an offense. Dumping the cameras “would be foolish.”
The backlash is “becoming a cross-party political issue,” said NewsNation. Reps. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) have introduced bills to restrict license plate readers, while Michigan Democrats are trying to stop state departments from cooperating with federal agencies that use the systems. The public expects the government to “protect both their safety and their constitutional rights,” the Wolverine State Democrats said in a letter to the Michigan Department of Transportation.
