# Flock Cameras: ACLU Raises Alarm About Nationwide Surveillance Database
# Democracy Now! — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaro56lbLyQ

This is Democracy Now. I'm Amy Goodman
with Juan Gonzalez. We turn to a growing
movement against Flock, an automatic
license plate reader company used by
over 5,000 law enforcement agencies in
49 states across the country. Critics
have mapped over a 100,000 Flock cameras
in use on streets in rural and urban
communities and accuse Flock of a
nationwide mass surveillance system. Fox
cameras aren't like regular traffic
cameras. Their surveillance technology
records and tracks every car or human
that comes into view. And then an AI
algorithm catalogs the make, model,
color, license plate number, bumper
stickers, and even scratches. This
personal information is then uploaded to
a nationwide database that any law
enforcement agency with a flock contract
can search with little oversight on how
they use what they find. Flock is
marketed as a tool to fight crimes. But
the cameras collect data on millions of
vehicles regardless of whether the
driver is suspected of a crime. And as
President Trump's immigration
enforcement crackdown has escalated,
concerns are growing over whether the
local data from these cameras could be
aiding the deportation drag net. Flock
claims it doesn't work with ICE and that
ICE does not have direct access to
Flock's cameras or systems or data. But
an investigation from 404 media last
year found more than 4,000 searches that
may have been conducted on behalf of or
in partnership with ICE. This past May,
an audit by the Dayton, Ohio Police
Department found its cameras were
searched more than 7,000 times for
immigration enforcement purposes. This
is what Flock CEO Garrett Langley said
in a podcast just last month. And so
when the topic of immigration
enforcement comes up, I'm like, "Guys,
the company has no opinion on this." If
the state of Texas wants to enforce
immigration, they might use Flock, but
they're going to go enforce immigration
no matter what Flock does. And that's
the state of Texas's choice. That's the
city's choice. And it's tough, right?
It's really tough for my employees to
work at a company where they're like,
"Oh, I I don't like that law, but our
techn is used to enforce it." But we
can't make that our problem as a
company.
So flock is being used by universities,
by big box stores. Um, for more on it
and the movement against it, we're
joined here in New York by Chad Marlo,
senior policy counsel at the ACLU, where
he focused on privacy, surveillance, and
technology issues. He leads the ACLU's
efforts against flock. Explain what
we're talking about here and how flock
has been used, Chad. So, basically,
automatic license plate readers or ALPRs
are cameras that take a picture of every
single car that goes by it. Not just the
cars that are suspected of criminality
or have done something wrong, but every
single car. Uh they record the
information about the car, including
where it is and when it was there. And
then they put it into a database. And
this is where it gets really scary
because now you have pictures of every
innocent person who drives by in a
database that is kept for a month or
more and shared throughout the nation
with all of Flock's law enforcement
customers. And in fact, even uh
internationally with people associated
with Flock. And so essentially, you
know, even though in America, you know,
one of our core constitutional
principles is privacy, we have a company
working with governments to record the
comingings and goings of every single
person in the country as if you and I
and everyone else were potential
criminals. And that is a, in my opinion,
a very unamerican uh take on privacy uh
and the way that we engage in criminal
justice enforcement. And and Chad, this
company is less than 10 years old and it
spreads so rapidly. Could you talk a
little bit about how it was created and
also what's its business model? Does it
set up its c does it rent spaces in
private on private property to set up
its cameras or is it using public rights
of way or public streets? And if so, how
how is that permitted?
Yeah. So, the company was formed by uh a
an engineer, billionaire engineer named
Garrett Langley. Um, and what is really
interesting and very important about the
company is that it is backed by almost a
billion dollars in venture
[clears throat] capital investment. And
that is very critical because what those
venture capitalists invested in was a
company that basically trades privacy
for profits. And so they will record the
information about people. Flock always
says it doesn't sell data, but Flack
saying it doesn't sell data is like Ford
Motor Company saying it doesn't sell
steering wheels. Um, yes, I understand
the larger product is cars, uh, and it's
monitoring vehicles, but it's that data
that is part of Flock product just like
a steering wheel is part of Ford Motor
Company's car product. So then it
collects all this information um, and
the more information it can collect and
the more it can share, the more value
that their product is. And most
recently, Flock was valued at almost an
8 billion company. And so in order to
increase the value of their company,
they need to take more people's data,
invade their privacy more, and share it
more broadly. And although they may say
things like we have um certain methods
in place and systems in place to prevent
broader data sharing to make sure it's
not misused, that is all simple public
relations response. their venture
capitalist investors who want to receive
massive returns on their investment are
have forced Flax's hand um and say we
need to put the pedal to the metal
violate privacy as much as possible if
doing that will increase our profits and
there's a direct correlation between
more monitoring more surveillance more
data collection more data sharing and
more profits
but but again I wanted to ask you this
issue of how how do they do this set up
so many cameras are they for instance,
like cell phone companies that rent
their towers in buildings to be able to
create their network or how do they do
it? How does Flock [clears throat] do
it?
Right. So, what they do is they go to
your local police department and they
say, "We want to rent you the cameras
that you need. We will also take care of
storage. We will create a back system
that will take care of data sharing.
We'll do everything for you. All you
need to do is sign on the dotted line."
Now, what's interesting about Flock is
is this process of using your local
police department, your local government
to increase their network to spy on
everyone. Um, they have to keep pushing
that in order to get as broad of a
network as they possibly can. And so,
they sneak in these contracts. They do
it with their salespeople, but they try
to do it out of public view. And what
we've actually seen in the country is
once eventually it comes into public
view because their cameras are fairly uh
easy to recognize when you see them in
public, communities have risen up
throughout the country and demanded
those contracts be canceled. In fact, in
just the last 13 months, nearly 60
municipalities have either cancelled
their Flock contracts or have said do
not renew them. Um, and in fact, Flack
is going out in the country not only
promoting its products, but trying to
quash any efforts to promote
transparency and public engagement
before their contracts are signed
because they know the more the public
knows, the greater resistance to their
product will be, and they want to stop
that anywhere they can.
Talking about that resistance, I want to
turn to Tobias Halpern, a 19-year-old
student at California Polytenic State
University or Calpali in San Louis
Abyspo. Uh Tobias Halpern started the
website DFlock SLO uh in January to
inform people about Flock 17 cameras on
campus. Last month, the college
president confirmed Kalpali would not
renew its contract with the company
after the current one ends next May.
Here's Calpali student Tobias Halper on
Connect with Jacob Sober off on MS Now.
When you opt into Flock, when you buy a
Flock camera like Calpali did, you don't
just buy a surveillance camera, you're
buying access and participation into
this network. And so I think that's what
really bothers people and that's what
really bothers students. And that's what
bothered us at Kpali is that as a
Hispanic serving institution, they are
going out and entering this network that
has time and time again aided ICE in
illegal deportations and just created
this surveillance drag net that is
really uncomfortable to anyone when you
think about it.
One of Flock's loudest critics is Ben
Jordan, a recording artist, popular
YouTuber in Atlanta, Georgia, who worked
with technology experts and journalists
to expose Flock's security
vulnerabilities. They were able to
access cameras across the country
viewing not only live streams but also
30 days of recorded content with the
option to delete the footage. Here's a
clip from his YouTube channel
a few weeks ago using a commercial
search engine. I very easily found the
administration interfaces for dozens of
flock safety cameras. I shared this
information with 404 media and with John
Gain's help that number quickly grew to
nearly 70. None of the data or video
footage was encrypted. There was no
username or password required. These
were all completely public-f facing for
the world to see, [music] and some of
them still are. You don't have to be an
expert to find and gain access to this.
[music] You don't even have to type
anything in to see every single person,
vehicle, and activity that took place in
these locations in the last 31 [music]
days. Whether you wanted to watch this
footage live in real time or look at
footage from a month ago, you could just
point andclick your way to it like you
were watching Netflix. I mean, this is
really amazing. Um, and you have the CEO
of Flock, uh, Garrett Langley, uh,
talking about the activist group called
Deflock, uh, calling it a quote
terroristic organization, but because of
tremendous backlash, he was forced to
apologize. 20 seconds.
Yeah. So I would say in addition to that
being irresponsible, the great news is
is his attempt to combine defock and
Antifa failed because whether you're
libertarian, conservative, mega
progressive, everybody has an objection
to flock. And so in our disunited
country, we have united around our
opposition to flock, alops, and
government mass surveillance as a whole.
And so we've got a wave and we're going
to ride it until we get our goals
accomplished and end this mass
government surveillance of people in the
United States. Chad Marlo, senior policy
counsel at the ACLU where he focuses on
privacy, surveillance, and technology
issues. He leads the ACLU's efforts
against flock. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan
Gonzalez. Thanks for joining us. Thanks
for watching Democracy Now on YouTube.
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