EDITORIAL: How privacy is stolen on our community streets

It turns out there is a limit to how much supervision we Americans will tolerate.

We all know we are watched by digital cameras that are so ubiquitous our image is captured doing most of the mundane activities that make up our daily lives, from grocery shopping to walking in a park. We have become inured to this because it is so commonplace and because we believe it is aimed at security rather then gathering and storing individuals’ data.

Security cameras are one thing, but Flock is something else. It’s the trade name of a company that has sold contracts for the use of more than 110,000 cameras that read the license plates of passing vehicles in 49 states. And it has become the one-word identity of the rising wave of public dismay over the surveillance network it has created.

Flock cameras automatically record the license plates of every passing vehicle with a time stamp, GPS coordinates and vehicle description in high resolution images. The information gathered by the more than 11,000 law enforcement agencies and local governments that have installed the cameras is fed into a national database that tracks millions of individuals and can be shared with law enforcement agencies.

The Flock surveillance network hearkens to George Orwell’s warning in his prescient novel “Ninety Eighty Four”—big brother is watching. Flock is watching; its network differs from the surveillance state Orwell described in that it’s operated by a private company instead of the government, but it is facilitated by Flock’s government customers.

Since Flock Group Inc. introduced its cameras in a few U.S. cities in 2017 the company has grown to a valuation of $7.5 billion. Even as its cameras proliferated and its surveillance network expanded, much of the public was unaware their vehicles were being tracked daily.

Some of the first red flags were cases of police officers misusing Flock data to stalk innocent individuals. A Washington Post investigation found that more than 50 police officers, including two in Milwaukee, have been criminally charged or found guilty of illegal use of information accessed on the Flock network.

A number of Flock-using law enforcement agencies responded by limiting access in their departments to information gathered by Flock cameras. Some went further and investigated how data recording in their communities was used in the national Flock database.

One audit found that Texas police used Illinois Flock data to track a Texas woman who received abortion care in Illinois. It also discovered that ICE agents were accessing Illinois Flock data to track immigrants. Both uses violated an Illinois state law.

Revelations of misuse of data accessible in the national Flock network have led to more than 80 U.S. cities, including at least 10 in Wisconsin, canceling Flock contracts. A variety of responses to misuse of license plate data have been reported nationwide.

Dayton, Ohio, officials were so incensed they refused to wait for contracts to expire and ordered public works crews to cover each of the city’s  72 Flock cameras with black plastic trash bags.

In a number of states citizens are taking the matter into their own hands by illegally disabling or destroying cameras.

Some have chosen a legal approach by buying license plate camera blocking material. Amazon sells a kit for about $15.

Privacy advocates are pushing state legislatures to enact laws limiting the use of Flock data. New Hampshire responded with a statute that requires license plate data to be deleted within three minutes after it’s photographed if it’s not connected to a crime.

No one disputes that Flock cameras can be an effective policing tool, helpful in such uses as identifying stolen vehicles or responding to Amber Alerts. But at what price? If the price is a permanent record of every person’s comings and goings kept in a national database, it is too high.

Communities might consider the monetary cost excessive as well. Each Flock camera costs taxpayers about $3,000 a year, not including installation charges.

An exact number is not available, but it is safe to say scores of Flock cameras are recording license plate numbers in Ozaukee County.

A Fredonia Village Board member wants to prevent that in his community. Trustee Shane Van Roo introduced an anti-Flock resolution intended, he said, to “help trailblaze and spearhead this pushback against the corrupt and traitorous politicians who want to enslave us as much as possible.”

The trustee’s rhetoric may have been a bit over the top and unspecific as far the identity of those corrupt traitors and slavers is concerned, but it is an indication of the increasing intensity of the public revolt against Flock surveillance.

Representatives of communities that contract for Flock services should heed the public’s privacy and civil liberties concerns and ask themselves whether they want to continue to be financial supporters of a surveillance state created and maintained by a private company. Without strict new limits on the use and storage of license plate data, the answer should be no.