2 Bay Area cities ditch Flock, however surveillance is much from over

As controversies mount involving Flock Safety’s automated license plate readers, many cities round California and past have begun canceling their contracts with the corporate. But some locations amongst them, like Antioch and Hayward, have opted to ink contracts with one other firm that does basically the identical factor, making certain that quite a few cameras stay pointed at metropolis streets, gathering information every day.

The strikes cap a heated period the place residents, activists, and civil liberties advocates have spoken out about privateness issues and alleged police abuses of Flock’s databases. Some cities like Santa Cruz and Mountain View have responded to public stress by dumping automated license plate readers altogether, however others have moved with little fanfare from Flock to one among its opponents, like Motorola Solutions, Genetec and Rekor. Among these, Axon has emerged as a go-to rival of Flock, and critics contend that its cameras include most of the similar controversies which have surrounded Flock.

“Both Axon and Flock are ALPR producers whose merchandise are used for a similar goal, to indiscriminately {photograph} each automobile that passes no matter whether or not that driver is below any suspicion, after which doc that exact location, time, license plate, coloration, make, mannequin, and different distinguishing traits, like bumper stickers,” mentioned Lisa Femia, a workers legal professional on the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “It is form of like swapping Coke for Pepsi.”

Axon, primarily based in Scottsdale, Arizona, and previously generally known as Taser International, is not any stranger to controversy. It’s the corporate that has lengthy produced Tasers, an electroshock weapon chargeable for greater than 1,000 deaths, in line with a Reuters analysis, and that it now advertises as a “less-lethal technology.” The firm briefly thought of growing a Taser-equipped drone in 2022, but it surely deserted the thought after members of its ethics board resigned. Axon additionally sells myriad different police instruments, together with police software program, sprint cameras and body-worn cameras, which researchers have found don’t cut back instances of police violence. 

Axon didn’t reply to SFGATE’s requests for remark.

Police departments have been fast to defend ALPRs, arguing that the expertise helps officers remedy crimes. At an Antioch City Council meeting on Aug. 25, police Lt. Michael Mellone mentioned that after a automobile is concerned in a criminal offense akin to a capturing or theft, a license plate reader system can assist find a possible suspect.

“Vehicles are central to a big share of the crimes that the police division investigates,” he mentioned. “… A witness could have solely a partial license plate, a automobile description or a route of journey for the automobile, however a license plate reader system can flip that restricted data right into a targeted lead.” 

With the assistance of Antioch’s present Flock ALPR system, he mentioned that his police division positioned at the very least 42 stolen automobiles over the previous 12 months, of which 23 have led to arrests. 

During the assembly, council member Tamisha Torres-Walker acknowledged neighborhood issues about privateness, security, mass surveillance and threats to civil liberties, saying she needed “to get Flock out of Antioch.” Along with the remainder of the City Council current, although, she voted for the town to undertake a $660,000, four-year contract with Axon. Torres-Walker didn’t reply to SFGATE’s requests for remark.

Hayward, for its half, adopted a $2.9 million, five-year contract with Axon. Hayward’s communications officer additionally didn’t reply to SFGATE’s requests for remark. 

Flock and Axon additionally mentioned that their ALPRs cut back crime, akin to motorized vehicle thefts, due to the tech’s capability to trace license plates and, for instance, assist determine stolen automobiles. Though Flock’s automobile information and digital camera deployment are usually not typically accessible to researchers, making impartial verification of its claims troublesome, final month, it touted a not-yet-published study by a pair of researchers who’re former law enforcement officials. They discovered that, since 2017, cities with Flock have seen a drop in automobile thefts of 11% on common.

Ian Adams, a co-author of the research and a policing researcher on the University of South Carolina, mentioned he believes each those that say “Flock has no advantages” and those that say “Flock solves all crimes” will likely be upset together with his research. Though the expertise can assist remedy automobile thefts as a result of it’s designed to determine and observe down automobiles, the research discovered much less proof of an affect on different crimes.

“If Flock is having an impact on crime, the place we must always see it the strongest is in motorized vehicle theft,” he mentioned.

Nonetheless, different researchers view the research with some skepticism, together with Ángel Mendiola Ross, a sociologist at Stanford University who has studied how California police departments undertake sure applied sciences. A doable correlation between cities deploying Flock and a drop in automobile thefts doesn’t indicate causation, they argued.

Flock declined to supply a remark to SFGATE and as an alternative pointed to its webpage, which compares Flock and Axon license plate readers and promotes its digital camera expertise and protection throughout 49 states. The web page additionally says that Flock “blocks searches tied to prohibited makes use of.” 

The research Flock highlighted additionally ignores the prices and tradeoffs of ALPRs, Ross mentioned. 

“If they proceed to seek out this roughly 11% discount in motorized vehicle theft, does that discount justify creating and sustaining a persistent surveillance transport systems?” they mentioned. “This can be about, what else may very well be completed with the identical sources?”

Alex Vitale, a sociologist and policing researcher at Brooklyn College, additionally questions the research. “What analysis will get funded, what analysis does police cooperate with, is the analysis that reinforces a police-centered strategy to those issues,” he mentioned. 

Critics of automated license plate reader techniques aren’t impressed by the swap from Flock to Axon. “This strikes me as makes an attempt by police departments to get forward of the Flock backlash whereas nonetheless quietly transferring ahead with the expertise,” Ross mentioned. For instance, 404 Media reported that police have requested Axon to make their cameras look totally different from Flock’s so that individuals don’t vandalize them.

Bay Area activists, who protested Flock and its backers in San Francisco in August, are skeptical as effectively. 

“While Flock has emerged as essentially the most outstanding mass surveillance bogeyman, Axon ALPRs are similar to Flock’s and current most of the similar dangers — specifically unapproved entry by exterior businesses, incorrect license plate readings, and officer abuse,” mentioned Luc Bouchard, the Flock marketing campaign lead for Sunrise Bay Area, a local weather activism and neighborhood organizing group.

Both Axon and Flock work with police businesses across the nation, and although Immigration and Customs Enforcement isn’t a shopper of both firm, federal brokers have repeatedly gained access to Flock information, together with in California, despite a state law prohibiting it. Through Flock’s National Lookup device, police businesses can entry databases of all different taking part businesses, together with some that share information with ICE.

“The extra locations you ship this delicate information, the extra probabilities there are for it to get out to businesses it’s not purported to otherwise you wouldn’t need it to, or extra probabilities for it to typically leak in ways in which you couldn’t anticipate,” Femia mentioned.

Flock at the moment has greater than 120,000 cameras throughout most U.S. states and territories, and it mentioned it runs greater than 20 billion license plate scans monthly. Axon has fewer cameras for constructing the license plate databases that police businesses would need, but it surely collects other forms of information that Flock doesn’t, akin to police physique digital camera information, that are additionally accessible by shoppers on its Fusus platform, she mentioned.

Critics argue that Axon, Flock and different ALPR corporations have the identical privateness issues and dangers of abuse. Nick Hidalgo, a workers legal professional for the ACLU of Northern California’s Democracy, Speech and Technology Project, mentioned that the extra information these surveillance expertise corporations accumulate from individuals, the extra precious they’re to their legislation enforcement shoppers.

“Those issues are baked into the very commerce mannequin of surveillance expertise,” he mentioned. “All these corporations are attempting to extend their shareholder worth, and the one method they will do that’s by maximizing the quantity of non-public data they harvest from us and growing their capability to share that data with their different shoppers.”

Like different critics of ALPRs, Hidalgo doesn’t consider swapping Flock for Axon solves the issues that residents and civil liberty advocates have been talking up about. 

“I don’t suppose that the cities which might be ditching Flock and changing them with Axon and others are getting the message,” he mentioned.