by Jonathan Krall
Lately, almost everyone I talk to recognizes that their image, location, and other data are being taken against their wishes. In Alexandria, Flock automated license plate readers (ALPRs) have been deployed by the Alexandria Police Department (APD) to record residents’ movements whether or not they’re connected to any public safety concern. The system is designed to share that information widely without meaningful transparency or independent oversight. Of course, Alexandrians want a safe city. But where is the line being drawn, who drew it, and on what basis? Grassroots Alexandria joins Eyes Off Alx in calling for answers to these questions for ALPRs and every other surveillance technology the city uses. City Council can limit or ban technologies that erode public trust. Together, we can build lasting transparency, public input, and accountability into how these decisions get made.
Act Today: Please write to City Council to share your own views or with some version of this message: “I am an Alexandria resident who does not wish to be subject to continuous surveillance without a warrant. I did nothing to deserve such treatment. I deserve better. The people of Alexandria deserve a say in the implementation of any Alexandria government surveillance. We need a public process that will allow useful technologies while stopping dangerous, overly intrusive mass surveillance.”
While we applaud Mayor Gaskins’ statement that “I do not think there’s a role for Flock in this community,” mass surveillance is much bigger than Flock. We are asking Council to adopt rules that require Council approval before surveillance technology is acquired or expanded, adopt rules on data sharing, and publish an annual report on how each tool is used.
To understand why Flock is “too much,” I asked over a dozen people, including friends, neighbors, and strangers at community meetings and cookouts. Most said that traffic enforcement cameras, which read license plates and send out tickets (with human oversight), are OK, but Flock is simply too much.
In many respects, Flock simply automates traditional policing. Traditionally, an officer can observe anyone in public without a warrant. Flock also observes people in public, but it is seemingly everywhere. What makes it too much?
What do the activists say?
According to DeFlock, in many documented cases, “police have knowingly used ALPRs to commit crimes and put people in danger.” These include personal stalking, unauthorized data sharing, and leaking location data to support ICE mass detention. In the USA, over 140,000 AI-powered ALPR cameras have been identified by DeFlock. That’s 27 square miles per camera on average, which seems sparse. However, excepting the 153 jurisdictions that have cancelled, rejected, or deactivated ALPR systems, these cameras are heavily concentrated in cities and towns. Local Instagram channel deflockalx is asking Alexandrians to write to City Council. Of the 74 Flock cameras identified by volunteers in Alexandria, 61 are operated by the Alexandria Police Department. That’s 5 cameras per square mile.
What do my neighbors say?
I’ve been hearing about mass surveillance from my Alexandria neighbors for some time. Several of them recently came together to build the Eyes Off Alx web site. Following the lead of other small communities, their effort looks to the ACLU’s Community Control Over Police Surveillance model. As stated on the web site: “Governments and police forces should not be able to use surveillance technologies, like ALPRs, without informing and securing the permission of the people they serve.” In other words, it should be up to us, as a community, to say how much is too much.
What does Gene Demby say?
Gene Demby, who co-hosts NPR’s Code Switch (“fearless conversations about race”), talked with historian Matthew Guariglia about the history of surveillance. According to Guariglia, Flock cameras contribute to the “spectrum of surveillance” that, increasingly, makes up “the surveillance state.” In the past, police decided who to surveil, based on probable cause. In the surveillance state, everyone is watched and the police decide who to arrest later. Gene Demby sees the problem right away: “There are so many criminal laws on the books that if you just follow anybody for long enough you could probably catch them doing something in their daily life that breaks a law.” He asks, “how is this constitutional?” In response, Guariglia points out that the Supreme Court has said that attaching a GPS tracker to a car without a warrant is unconstitutional. He argues that comprehensive visual tracking is effectively the same.
Demby also asks if pushback is mainly coming from people who “are not used to being watched and over-policed in this way?”
What does Capitalism say?
In Is Flock a Trustworthy Company, Eyes Off Alx takes down Flock’s data stewardship claims, one by one. Contrary to their statements, Flock data is used by the ICE mass-detention machine, is obtained by unauthorized users, and is misused by individuals in ways that are not stopped by after-the-fact data audits.
The ACLU, noting that a “National Lookup” searchable nationwide database is “an inherently authoritarian infrastructure,” goes on to say that “Some communities may want to take into account the fact that this uniquely powerful commercial plate-scanning infrastructure is marketed to private companies, including auto financers and insurers.”
Because mass-surveillance can be used to develop valuable data products, commercial mass surveillance presents an inherent conflict of interest. Protect public safety or sell the data for cash? The record, to date, suggests that they’re taking the cash.