Have You Been Flocked

Those of you who have followed my blog know that I am against red light cameras and speed cameras. Mainly I am against who can see the data and how long the data is kept. The company behind those cameras says... screw the law that limits how long and who can see it! It is our data and we will do with it what we like!

This is what the ACLU has to say about them.

Flock Can Share Driver-Surveillance Data Even When Police Departments Opt Out, And Other Flock Developments

The company’s default agreement with police departments grants the company license to share people’s license plate data

There’s been more news recently about the driver-surveillance company Flock. The company has recently been feeling the heat after the revelation that data from its national license plate scanner network was (and likely still is being) shared with Trump Administration agencies including ICE. Recently my colleagues at the ACLU of Massachusetts carried out a broad statewide open-records project, and among their findings is that Flock’s default agreement with police departments gives the company the right to share data with federal and local agencies for “investigative purposes” even if a local department chooses to restrict data to its own officers.

Every community in the nation that is home to Flock cameras should look at the user agreement between their police department (or other Flock customers) and the company, to see whether it contains a clause stating that the customer “hereby grants Flock” a “worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free free right and license” to “disclose the Agency Data… for investigative purposes.” This is the language that will govern in a community unless a department demands changes to the standard user agreement that Flock offers. That is something we absolutely urge any agencies doing business with Flock to do — and, the ACLU of Massachusetts found, is exactly what the Boston police department did.

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Texas police lied through their teeth on abortion search

In May, 404Media reported that a police department in Texas (where abortion is banned in most circumstances) did a warrantless nationwide Flock search through data on millions of people, logging as the reason “had an abortion, search for female.” Alongside reporting about the sharing of driver-surveillance data with ICE, this story generated enormous concern and contributed to skepticism about Flock in many communities. The sheriff of the agency that performed the search told 404Media that the woman’s family “was worried that she was going to bleed to death, and we were trying to find her to get her to a hospital,” and that “it was about her safety.”

Now just suppose... that they asked for a list of all the data of cars pulling into a trans healthcare clinic?

Oh, and guess what? All you ring cameras owners out there are also tied into the Flock network!

Flock teams with Amazon’s Ring Cameras in sharing of home video with police

Flock and Ring Cameras (owned by Amazon) announced a partnership to facilitate the sharing of Ring customers’ video with law enforcement. It’s not great to see one of America’s biggest companies teaming up with a mass-surveillance company at this authoritarian moment in our history. As Ars Technica aptly summarized it, the announcement shows Amazon “increasingly positioning its consumer cameras as a law enforcement tool” after previously moving away from that. In addition to reflecting the times, Amazon’s deal also highlights the efforts of Flock and its competitor Axon (which already had a deal with Ring) to become police departments’ centralized “operating system.” Note also that Ring cameras have face recognition enabled.

We recommend that anyone who feels they really want to install a doorbell camera protect their privacy by storing their video locally or using end-to-end encryption (both offered by Ring, though inexplicably Ring forces customers to pay extra not to use their cloud service). Both of those options also forestall participation in the police-sharing program.

Smile Big Brother is watching!