Get the Flock Out: ICE Surveillance Is Not Safety

Thank you guys for coming and we're going to talk about surveillance in Santa Cruz County and what ALPRs are and what they look like. All right. So, what are ALPRs? So, automatic license plate readers are AI powered cameras that capture and analyze images of all passing vehicles, storing details like your car's location, date, and time. They also capture your car's make, model, color, and identifying features such as dents, roof racks, bumper stickers, often turning these into searchable data points. These cameras collect data on millions of vehicles, regardless of whether the driver is suspected of a crime. This wireless surveillance apparatus daisy chains thousands of cameras together to create, analyze, and predict the traffic and motion patterns of every single person who drives, walks, and bikes past these cameras. So, what do these cameras look like? You guys may have may be familiar with this camera. This is the most common camera that Flock sells. It's called the Falcon model. And one feature of a lot of these cameras is that they always almost always come with a solar panel. One of the few cameras that doesn't always come with a solar panel is actually the condo model, which we'll get to later, but this familiarize yourself with this specific camera because this is the one you're going to be seeing everywhere. All right. And then there's lesser known variants of the Falcon model which are known as the Falcon long range and the Falcon short range. So the Falcon long range captures high-speed vehicles across multiple lanes and long distances such as highways and it's pictured on the left on the left hand side. The short range excels in close quarters, capturing details in parking lots, campuses, and neighborhood entries, which is pictured on the right hand side. And I have not yet seen these in the wild, except in San Francisco. So, we don't actually have any of these here in Watsonville. These ones we do. So, this one is the sparrow. So, the sparrow, and you'll notice a theme. They're all named after birds. That's why they're called flock. Every single camera is a bird and they're a flock of birds. So, the Sparrow is a cheaper, lighter, and smaller version of the generic Falcon model. Typically used when law enforcement is testing out new locations for cameras. And it has the exact same functionality as the generic Falcon model. And also familiarize yourself with this one because there's a lot of these in Watsonville and there's actually a few of them in the Target parking lot right across the street. This one is the most dangerous of all of the cameras in the flock surveillance family. This one is called the Condor and it is specifically designed to surveil people. They're they're dubbed PTZ or pan tilt zoom. These cameras make full use of the AI neural networks allowing the camera to follow you or any motion that passes by. And actually Oakland has around like 60 of these that they just got and San Francisco has about like 30. So the these we don't actually have any here in Watsonville yet. That's the key word yet. This one is actually one that we also don't have in Watsonville, but it's very important that people familiarize with themselves with it. This one's not a camera. This one is actually um is not as common as the other flock models, but it is equipped and designed with the ability to record audio. This one's called the Raven, and it's almost always used together with a Sparrow or a Falcon camera. And Flock calls it their gunshot detection or human distress detection device. And a lot of this a lot of the data that is collected from these Raven models is actually sent overseas to the Philippines where they have overseas gig workers from the Philippines train the AI models by listening to the data and then um coming to conclusion and analysis. So, why are these cameras so dangerous? I want to bring to you guys attention an excerpt. It's a lot of words, but it's an excerpt from Flock's patent. So, Flock's patent that they submitted to the US Patent Office. So, they can't lie in it. That's the that's the important thing. They can't lie in this document. Their document clearly states that there are different neural networks for categorizing people for categorizing classes of people based on race and gender, height and weight, clothing, bicycles, and animals. So don't believe the city. Don't believe any jurisdiction when they tell you that these cameras are just for cars. They are not just for cars. and Flock's own documents prove that they are not just for cars. So what are the ways the pathways for ICE to access local flock data? So the first way is through what we call front door access, which is direct sharing and onetoone access. basically giving the cities that have the the cities that have flock on their it's basically what the cities have on their flock transparency form. It's when they share directly as if they're sharing with their friend. Not a lot of no agency in California shares directly with ICE supposedly. That's that's the thing. Supposedly they do not share directly with ICE because that is a violation of state law. So they supposedly according to what they say they do not share directly. However, we do share indirectly and I will get to those in a bit. So the second way that ICE can access this data is through side door access. An example of a side door search would be when someone at ICE calls one of their friends in local law enforcement and has that officer run the search on the system on their behalf. So basically, imagine I'm an ICE agent. I'm going to call my friend in Watsonville PD and I'm going to be like, "Yo, I don't want to run the search on your guys' system. You do it for me." And that's what that's what a side door search is. There's also what we call backdoor access, which occurs when outside agencies such as Border Patrol or ICE access this data without explicit explicit authorization. So that's actually what we've seen a lot of where jurisdictions in California say we have not shared with ICE. It's against the law to share with ICE and yet we've seen time and time again that agents have access to this system. Yes. Can you explain what you mean by there's no direct access but there is like you shown me request for information which says immigration as as the purpose that is given after that request is made. Yeah. So, uh the reason we've been able to find a lot of searches that say immigration enforcement on the audit logs is actually because of side door access. So, I will actually get to that in a bit as to why we've seen the side door searches show up in audit logs, but we haven't seen ICE themselves in audit logs. I will get to that shortly. Uh before I get before I get to that, I actually want to talk about hacked cameras. So we've been actually people that I'm organizing with in the national space. One of them is called Ben Jordan and he was actually able to figure out that these cameras were very easily hackable. So they were able to hack into the cameras with in less than 30 seconds. It it only took them 30 seconds and they pressed the button on the back in a particular manner that I will not say here because it is illegal. But they were able to access the system within uh 30 seconds because of the fact that the cameras run on a really old software or not really old I guess in the terms of data it's old but it runs on a system called Android Oreo OS which has not received any updates since 2021 and it has over 52 published vulnerabilities that anyone is able to just copy and paste on the internet and then use to hack these cameras. Some of these hacked cameras have also are also live streaming to the internet. One of these hacked cameras is actually live streaming a children's playground in the Bay Area. And for the safety of the people living in that park, I'm not going to say where the park is. Just know it's in the Bay Area. All right, next slide. So another way that ICE and federal agencies can access this data is through what we call a fusion center. So a fusion center is there's 81 fusion centers all over the country and I guess now 82 because I talked with an elected official and they said that there's six in California now instead of five. So now there's 82 fusion centers all across the country. But basically the mission for the fusion centers is to serve as the central point for the collection, coordination, analysis, and dissemination of intelligence to first responders, law enforcement, and the private sector. all of the data that is collected by not just Flock, all of the other ALPR vendors, as well as drone footage, body camera footage, CCTV footage, all of this foot and even door door doorbell cameras if they're sharing like if they opted into sharing with local law enforcement, their data is all going into the fusion centers and that data is accessible by federal agencies because these federal agencies agencies have office space in they have office space in the fusion centers. So even if they don't do the search themselves, all they have to do is walk over to their friend's laptop and run and do a search on their friend's computer. So how many fusion centers are there in California? I went over this already, but we have we no longer have five. Now there are six fusion centers in California. And the other ones that are listed at the bottom are regional are just intelligence centers for the cities. They're real time crime centers. But for our jurisdiction, our fusion center is known as the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center. And as I said before, it aggregates all surveillance data from all over the Bay Area all the way up to Sacramento. So now I want to get to the question that was asked earlier which is why have we only seen side door searches of someone else typing in immigration enforcement into the search quer query but they have not been a we have not been able to see ICE themselves as an organization in the audit logs. Well, the reason is because of the 2021 DHS policy which governs AOPRs. So, basically, hold on, I'm just going to give a little time for the interpreter. Okay, so basically, this is a lot of words up here. I'm not going to repeat it all, but what it summarizes to is that ICE can dip in and out of systems without showing up in any audit logs. And that's why we have not been able to see ICE inside audit logs, but we have been able to see cipher searches of someone doing a search on behalf of ICE. So, for example, I'm currently working with the Oakland auditor and they were asking me why is it that in our audits we have not been able to find ICE agents themselves or border patrol agents themselves in our audit log. Well, the reason why is because DHS requires every single vendor that sells AOPRs, not just block, all AOPR vendors to not leave a trail of ICE in any system except an audit logs made available only to ICE. So that means that if we wanted to figure out what systems ICE is using, we are going to have to do a records request directly to ICE. And as an undocumented organizer, I am not going to do that. And also they take two years to respond to record requests. So we're not that first of all I'm not going to do it because I'm scared and that's I'm not going to do that. And then second of all even if I did want to do it it would take them 2 years to respond to me. So it's not even worth the time. All right. So I'm actually going to show a quick video. It's about 2 minutes long and it's going to go it's a Financial Times uh video which goes over how we know that ICE and Border Patrol like how they've used this tech before and how they're able to bring the data together. This video shows the moment a Colombian woman was arrested at a daycare center in Chicago on the 5th of November following what ICE called a targeted traffic stop. In a statement defending the arrest, the Department of Homeland Security said the woman's car was registered to a female illegal alien. But that made me wonder how would they know that? They had to link vehicle registration data, which is held by the states, with citizenship data, which is held by the federal government. Documents show that ICE can use vast networks of license plate readers to locate and identify vehicles across the country, making this process possible at scale. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. The US is acquiring vast amounts of data to power it deportation efforts. An FT analysis of federal procurement data shows that the agency has spent an estimated 353 million on surveillance contracts this year, up 27% from 2024. Unbelievable. ICE agents now have the tools to let them do geoloccation, DNA testing, eye scanning, and facial recognition. A number of videos have surfaced where bystanders have filmed agents using smartphones to do this in the field. But many of the tools are less visible. ICE has purchased access to multiple data brokers, allowing them access to data from social media sites, utility bills, credit reports, and more. They have reached across the government to access records from the Social Security Administration and the IRS, all in pursuit of updated addresses to locate potential deportation targets. Silicon Valley giant Palunteer has stepped up to build immigration OS, a system to help ICE cross reference all of these data sets. DHS has traditionally used its surveillance capabilities to fight terrorism and crime. One large division of ICE, Homeland Security Investigations, used to focus on drug smuggling and human trafficking. Former officials told me that members of these teams have been redirected to Trump's immigration push, raising concerns that those other crimes might be going unressed. Yeah. So, basically their video just goes over the fact that through the fusion center, well, they didn't mention it, but the way that ICE is able to act to connect these dots is through the fusion centers and through their access of our systems without us even knowing. All right. All right. Before I go to the next thing, I actually want to talk about a specific story of a elementary school teacher from Chicago. So Chicago in Illinois, they have the exact a lot of the same exact laws that we do, a lot of the same contract language that we do. And their contract language and their laws state that they will not share information with Border Patrol, that they will not share information with ICE. However, we know of the story of a elementary school teacher named Marimar Martinez. She was followed by immigration enforcement agents for over a week using the flock system. And then when when they cornered her, they shot her five times. And then after they shot her five times, they labeled her a domestic terrorist and brought charges to her in court. Now, we were able to find out that she was being followed through the flock cameras because of the discovery process in court. And also in the discovery process in court, we were able to see text messages that the agents texted each other. And these agents texted each other saying, "I shot her five times and she had seven holes. Put that in your book, boys." They bragged about it. They bragged about shooting a legal observer. And for those of you that are legal observers here, as I know many of you probably either help out with Y or are with Y right now, thank you for thank you for being here. Uh but they they bragged about shooting a legal observer. And so not only is this a threat to undocumented people like myself, but it's also a threat to US citizens who want to do the right thing. Now, I actually want to get to how we were able to find a lot of this data and the importance of public records requests. So, if you ever want to file a public records request, you can submit one in person or digitally through the city's public records act online portal. That is actually how we were able to get proof that the cities of Watsonville, Santa Cruz, and Capola all violated state law, specifically SP34 and SP54 when we saw evidence of agencies outside of California accessing the system. In Santa Cruz, we were actually able to see that they violated California law 4 and a half million times. That's not an insignificant amount of of of times of violating state law. So when you get a records request, the first thing that we look for, the first things that we look for every time is violation of SB34, which is a policy that a state law that governs the use of license plate readers, and SB54, which is the California Fair Values Act, which states that we will not share data with outside agencies and federal immigration enforcement. And the third thing that we look for is actually the worldwide rights clause which I mentioned earlier. So a lot of contracts that I've looked at from Sacramento down to Monterey, even down to San Louis Abyispo, they all have a lot of the exact same language and I always wondered why. But then the city manager for Santa Cruz told us that they just copy and pasted the contract that Flock gave them. So a lot of these places are not even doing their due diligence and looking at the contract that they're being sent. They're just copy pasting exactly what Flock gives them and basically just being Flock's employees at that point. So here is the specific wording for the worldwide rights clause. It basically states customer hereby grants flock a limited non-exclusive royalty-free irrevocable worldwide license to use the customer data and perform all acts as may be necessary for flock to provide the flock services to the customer. Now why is this included? As I mentioned earlier, Flock includes this clause because it sends data to the Philippines so that offshore gate workers can review and classify footage. This clause contractually allows the data to go overseas so long as it's deemed necessary for FOP to provide FLOP services to the customer. The workers were tasked with reviewing footage in order to help train AI algorithms. Tasks these gig workers were assigned included categorizing vehicles, makes, colors, types, and transcribing license plates, and audio tasks. And the reason why they were assigned with transcribing license plates is because the system struggles with O's, D's, zeros, Z's, and twos. A lot of the times it'll mix those up, which goes into the efficacy of flock. If it messes up those five uh numerical figures, how many times do they misread it? Uh plates, but it's not hopeless. I want to make it very clear that we have beaten the flock already. After our victory in Santa Cruz, we received requests for help, assistance, pointers, and research from organizers all over the state. And the we took the lessons that were that we learned and got wins in Los Altos Hills two days later. And the Los Altos campaign was headed up by two people, just two people and and myself with research. So I guess three. But no, they were the locals. So I'm going to count them more because I just gave them some research. But we got wounds in Los Santos Hills. We got wind in Mountain View. And the win in Mountain View is actually pretty important because they took down flock and did not instruct city staff to look for another vendor. We also got victory in the county of Santa Clara and they directly told the sheriff's department that they are no longer allowed to use flock. Period. So that means that all of the all the cities that are unincorporated that were using flock through the sheriff's department had to either start doing it themselves and paying for it themselves and operating the system themselves or stop using it entirely. And they also listen to our our list of demands when it comes to guardrails when it comes to looking for the next vendor. And between you and me, none of the vendors are going to meet the guardrails. So, they're going to be looking for that magical vendor for a long time. We also got a victory at the Foothill Dansza Community College District. And that campaign was actually headed up by one person. Wow. One person and and myself because I help with research. But I'm counting the locals here. I want to make sure the locals get their space. And so to say that it is very much doable here. We have more than enough people to get the job done here. We have more than enough people to do our inside and outside strategy so we can get the cameras taken down. But I do also want to be clear about one thing. A lot of these cities where we won, they're predominantly white. They are predominantly wealthy. Why is it that we've been able to get victories in the jurisdictions that are mostly white or mostly wealthy? It's because the rich and white people don't want to be surveiled. They know the power of surveillance. And when white people when white and privileged people speak to power, power listens. And when it comes here in in Watsonville, we need to set a precedent. We need to be one of the first majority people of color communities to drop flock. And tomorrow is going to be a very very very busy day actually. Um I've been very busy with this last uh two weeks because we're actually mobilizing people to four cities in the Bay Area. technically five but not for flock but four cities tomorrow are voting on flock and we've been having to lobby elected officials and do press releases community letters all the good stuff because tomorrow east Palo Alto Sunnyale Alama County and the city of Elserto are all oing on flock on the same day so we can't like a lot of us can't be everywhere so we're hoping that the locals will come out in droves to their respective cities and get flock taken down. Sweet. And now I will pass it on to Nat who will be talking about local resistance to flocks and anti as an anti- ice strategy. Um, hi my name is N. Um, I am part of Tajaro Valley for Ethan Studies and Justice, but I'm also part of 18 Million Rising, which is uh a national level um organization that organizes like the Asian-American Left. So, um we're also we also work on campaigns and and one of them, you know, is relevant to this. So I just wanted to to um like follow on Manny's um work and talk about so we've seen that people at the local level can win against block. Now I want to talk about how that what we do here and what you know they've done in Santa Cruz um is part of actually of like a much broader strategy that that um people are doing that is is actually resisting ICE. So um the point I want to make first off is that the lo local battles against drug are a part of a much bigger fight specifically to target the the corporations um that enable ICE to to you know conduct its reign of terror against our people. And so I want to introduce you to this kind of strategic framework that we use in organizing um which is the pillars of support framework. And so, um, you know, like pillars, like the pillars hold up the top of the building. And so, the top of the building is ice. That picture is, um, an ICE agent slipping on ice from earlier this year. And the reason why I chose to put that there, besides the fact that it's funny, is that is to to point out that ice is not this not just this big monstrous thing in the background. It's also made up of people. people who need material support to be able to do the things that they do. And so the point that I'm making is that they eyes cannot function without these pillars of support. And so the key, you know, one of the key pillars that we're talking about today is information. Um they get information from Fluff. They get information from Palanteer. to get information from all these different corporations that sell them these this information, they need transport. And so we know that in Minnesota um enterprise rental cars were actually used by ICE agents to kidnap people off the streets. And so if you don't have transport locally, we can't do that. Um, so another example is is lodging. You know, the ice if if they're going to deploy ice to a place um they need a place to sleep. And so Hilton is one of the the the um the corporations that we know has has you know vented to ICE and and on a um consistent basis. And then um actual deportation flights like if you want to deport people you need the to put them on a plane and and send them to you know and so um you can see a is canled out there because they actually people actually got a to um cancel their truck their contract with us and so yeah this other is doing it like other smaller charter flight companies but the point here is that these are all corporations. These are all corporations that we know and these are all corporations that because they're they are profit driven entities, they really depend on their reputation, they really need to account to their shareholders. So they are more um they are more vulnerable to targeted pressure from the public. And so if you start chipping away at these different pillars like different people, different um cities and local communities, you start breaking down these pillars, you can get the building to fall. And so one example is that this happened if you remember you know a little not that long ago um Ring was going to have this contract with with Flock and basically turn everyone's little doorbell camera um into a surveillance uh system and feed into Flock and they ran this really deceptive um video at the Super Bowl that that was like trying to market this as like a way to find lost dogs and people were mad and this this didn't even involve any kind of coordinated organization. People were just angry. They wrote to them. They had there was a backlash and then Rain dropped its its contract. So this is the power of consumers against corporations. So I want to highlight a few of these examples. Um this is one big one. um that Availa Airlines had this contract to flock to to um you know carry out these deportations and there was 9 months of nationwide community pressure but especially in Connecticut um where it had a lot of um more local like this was this is not just like a charter airline but it also has regular passengers on it. So that was a way to pressure them. But they used boycots, they pressured the airports, they pressured politicians in uh in Connecticut to end the subsidies and state contracts if a government and after 9 months they won. So here are also some of these other um ways that people are finding ice through these material supports and one of them is run primarily by the sunrise movement which is a youthrun movement um and they targeted Hilton hotels and with their no sleep for ice which they've just gone to these places where they know that ICE agents are in those rooms and they have a big party and play lots of music and make sure that the ICE agents can't sleep. All the other guests can't sleep either. And so that disrupts both the ICE operations and Hilton's businesses. And that is one way of that they're applying pressure among others. Um and then this is these are others as well. So Enterprise as I mentioned before and Home Depot has kind facilitated this by first having a lot of lock cameras and also allowing their parking lots um to be used by ICE agents. And so these are examples of how people have used um their direct action as just regular people to disrupt this business activity. And so the first the first uh on the right that's just like a video of people lining up the all booked enterprise cars and then within the window that they can still cancel them, they cancel them all. So that kind of b like ties up the inventory of the car company and that clogs up their business because they're not they can't learn to ice because they have these reservations that are going to be cancelled. Um and it's just, you know, they're not they don't want this. Um same with Home Depot. There were a bunch of people who all went into Home Depot. They all bought an ice scraper for 19 cents and then they all turned around and returned it. And so that clogs up the stream of income. It clogs up the store. And then it also makes it really obvious to all the other people that these um corporations are complicit and actually directly supporting um ISIS terror. So I just want to point out these are different campaigns. The first one is um a more targeted campaign against enterprise um that's actually headed up by 18 million rising um and I will be working on some of the the research and political ad for that. But there's also the no tech for ice which is targeting places like Palanteer and other um big um big tech companies and then the schools drop ice campaign which is aiming at organizing different colleges to look at their contracts with these enablers of ICE. So including um enterprise including FL and all that. So this is, you know, we're here. Um, that's us. We are we're we're we're chipping away at that one pillar. Um, and Watsonville has its part to play, but like we're not alone. And this is part of a much bigger work. So yeah, we all, you know, go us. Okay, so now we've learned about the block cameras and we've learned what community activism can do. So now that we're in Watsonville, what can we do in Watsonville? So, um, so how many cameras do you all think we have here? Do we have 11? Do we have eight? 22? 37? How many people think we have 11? Raise your hand. How about eight? How about 22? How about 37? Next one. So, you're right. And we do have 37. And out of all the three cities here in Watsonville County, I mean in Santa Cruz County, we have the most. So, Santa Cruz had eight, Capitol had 10, and we have 37. Santa Cruz now has zero because they cancelled their contract. Capola, we're still working. We're we're ahead of Capola in that sense. Uh but we're still working on Capola and with Watsonville. Um we're we're going to be meeting actually with the chief of police on Thursday morning. It took us a month and a half to get that meeting, but we finally got that meeting. So, we'll be talking to him um and giving him some of this information because he doesn't think the information gets shared. So, we're going to uh educate him a little bit on that. Um, so mass surveillance, like we know, records every bicycle, every vehicle when you're walking. It's there 27 uh I mean uh 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, uh days a week. It records where you go, when you go, how often you go. And the worst thing about it is that there's no warrants. Anybody can get into it. as you heard from Nanny's uh presentation, anybody can access it. So, that's the dangerous part of it that's recording all this information about us and we don't even know. We don't know who's using that information. We don't know who's uh who for what they're using it. Um and as as as you saw in the video, they were able to track this woman going to work just because they were able to to figure out her patterns from where she went and where, you know, what time was she at work, what time did she leave. It tracks all those things. So like Luda said, you know, or and Manny said, the police department swear up and down that they do not share information. And technically, they're right. They do not literally physically share the information but the information is available because once it leaves it's not stored in a hard drive. It's not stored in some file room. It is on a network and that information is transferred to uh Flock's database or their server farm in Georgia. And so that information is shared um with Flock and Flock can give it to anybody that they want. Or you know other agencies you know there is a one of the counties in California unfortunately has been known to actually take information or get information from other jurisdictions and share that information directly with Homeland Security and ICE. And so when you, you know, when the federal government gets this information, it puts our people at risk. You know, um there are 16,000 approximately 16,000 undocumented residents of Santa Cruz County. The majority of those undocumented residents live in the south county in Watsonville. 35% of our population is foreign born and their family their the the families that they've established here in the United States. But as we've seen, ICE doesn't care. They take people because they're brown. They take people because they speak with an accent. They take people because they look Mexican. and they take people because of where they're working or where they're shopping at that moment. As you guys may have heard, we've had ICE here a couple of times. They've they've arrested someone or hassled someone at Target and you know, they've been around. So um you know every time jurisdictions sign a contract with flock makes sure that they can use that data for whatever they want for advertisement for you know negotiations for the next contract and so our information is not secure and if our information is not secure then we are not secure. So um so one of the things that we that was actually pretty alarming is to see um where wherever these cameras are people can look they can look in your gym they can look in the park they can look wherever those cameras are pointing whatever it's capturing it some some hacker can look at it. Um so if there's a park with a bunch of little kids and you know they're playing there by themselves files can have access to that. So we we never know who's looking at it and because we don't have control of the data, that's what makes it scary. But the way that it's sold to us, it's safety. Uh how many of you have seen uh uh police departments say, "Hey, we use flock to catch this person, right?" And so we're like, "Hey, great. We we don't want that criminal." But the thing though is that those stories are like this big compared to the amount of information that they use and how often we use it. And I tell people, you know, I'm I'm a therapist. If I was 2% successful, how many of you would come see me? Right? But yet, that's about the rate of of success that we use these cameras that they're they they're capturing uh or they're solving crimes at a 2% rate of what they're using them. Is it worth it? To me, it isn't. Not for my privacy, not for my safety. So, but whenever you see those stories, think about how often you're seeing them. I don't see them every day. I see them once in a great while. So, they're actually not really as helpful as they claim they are. And um and a lot of the times they do need the the um the license plate anyway. So, if you already have that information, why can't you do it the old way where you had the information, you go and spot the person, you don't need these cameras? The the the danger is so much worse than what it gives us. It's really not worth it to have it. So, just think about that. It's really like a 1 to 2% success rate that they're using these cameras for. But the way that you that you hear about it, you think like they're using them all the time. They're really not. So, I was talking to one of the people that was here earlier. And you know, we are not anti- police in the sense that, you know, we want to they're horrible people, but they work for a corrupt system and that system is based on racial profiling that impacts people of color the most. So, you know, as Manny was talking about earlier, uh the neural networks and the AI that are using it's scary stuff. You know, I remember uh when I was a younger man watching a movie called Enemy of the State where it was about, you know, it was a thriller. It was a spy movie. It was about a secret plan that the government cooked up using satellites to surveil people and they could get into your credit cards and stuff like that. And it was a fun movie because, you know, you didn't think that that technology was available. Well, that technology is now available and it disproportionately impacts people of color. The the the criminal justice system already has a strong bias against people of color. Watsville is primarily people of color. You do the math. And and one of the things that um one one of the things that's important to remember is that this all this AI um technology is very poor when it comes to people of color. It often misidentifies us. So um you know even though they'll say like oh we can capture this but a lot of the times it's it's it it does a really poor job with us. you know, um it's probably like what happened in the 60s, uh when, you know, Kodak was creating um it's color film and people of color came out really badly and it's because they were not using people of color to make that film. So, um I think it's probably something similar is happening with AI. So, we get misidentified all the time. Um and just think about that. What if you get wrongly identified? You get thrown in jail by the time you get out. I mean, everything that you have to go through to clean up your name. Um, and you know, as we see on the slide, there's no accountability. Um, our movements are stored. They can be accessed by anybody. And, um, it there's no way to, um, to account for for any of that. So one of the reasons why we believe that this technology is being rolled out especially at this time is because not it's not primarily for solving crimes. It's for promoting order. It's for silencing disscent when you're constantly under surveillance. Uh, one of the things that Manny had introduced us to was I think it was the gentleman, the hacker that you were talking about, Ben Jordan. Ben Jordan, who uh did an investigation, and it's up on YouTube. You guys should really watch it. It's It's really sad. Uh but one of the segments of this investigation showed this, you know, gentleman looked like he was in his 30s just kind of strolling around the park, walking around, you know, and he looks like he's kind of nostalgic and he starts to play on the swing set. You know, how many of us have gone to a park at our age now and said like, "Oh, I'd love to go down that slide. I'd love to play on those swing sets. So, when you're under surveillance, it changes your behavior. When you think people are watching you, you you control yourself a little bit more and you don't feel as free. And that's what I think one of the purposes of these cameras are. You know, I actually didn't notice just until about two weeks ago all of the cameras that are in the Target shopping center. Like I I looked up and I saw, oh shoot, that's a flat camera. I went to the next like 10 15 ft away, another one. They are all over that shopping center. And again, the argument is well if you're not doing anything bad, then why do you care? you know, because it's none of anybody's business. As long as I'm not hurting someone actively, it's nobody's business what I do. But the other thing too is um you know, sometimes people will say, well, you know, this doesn't affect me. Maybe now it doesn't affect you. But what if what if um in 6 months from now they they decide, you know what, anybody who was at that protest, we're we're going to come after you. So now things that you didn't think you did anything wrong, now you're going to be charged for it. So we got to be really careful about those things. It's it's like that that poem says, you know, first they came for these people, then they came for these, and then there was no one else to come, you know, to protect me. So we always got to think about that. Um, so I'm going to skip to this because we kind of already went through this the data breach. Um, and so this is this is where we want to talk about like what are we doing? So um, yeah. So May 2023, the Watsonville City Council approved a two-year contract and 20 cameras for the city of Watsonville. In September of 2025, that two-year contract was extended or renewed. And every Flock camera contract is automatically renewed unless the jurisdiction, the city council, county board of supervisors writes to Flock 30 days prior to the expiration of that contract saying that they do not want to renew. And so this is important when you guys are reaching out to your uh electeds. So 60 people went to speak at the city council, but they ignored us and they renewed that contract and they added 17 more cameras. And the reason they ignored us is because they said that everybody who went there was from Santa Cruz, which is not true because we were there. There were people sitting in this room who were there. So it wasn't everybody, but that was the excuse they used. Um, so it's really important that we contact people um right now. So So Vanessa Pos and Maria Rosco already voted no. They didn't want the cameras. Yes. We we met with Eduardo Montesino and he was surprised and his comment was well nobody complains to me about it. And I said because they don't know they're here. When people know they're there, they're not going to want them there. So that was his excuse like, well, people don't complain to me about it. So this is why it's important to write to our city council members. Um uh we we got in contact with Jimmy Dutra. He refused to talk to us. He said, "Go talk to your city council members." Said, "We already did. We want to talk to everybody. We want everybody to be informed." and he said, "Yeah, I I don't want to hear it because um my constituents Yeah, you're not one of my constituents and my constituents voted for Measure M and Measure M was about safety. It was about safety, but there was nothing there about cameras." So, um and then uh Casey Clark was one of the first ones to say, you know, after we all spoke, he was like, "Okay, let's just vote for it." And he went for it. But now he's having second thoughts because now he's actually becoming informed and aware of how these uh cameras violate his privacy. So now that it's affecting him, he doesn't like them. So um Casey Clark and and he's also up for reelection. Um as well as Ari Parker. Both of them um are now kind of having second thoughts. So we're going to try to meet with them um and see if we can get them to put this back on the agenda and uh vote them out. So, what we want for people who are here is please, please, please write to your city council members, get your neighbors to write to your city council members, get your friends, put it on Facebook, wherever you can because that's what's going to help. The QR codes, the QR code at the top will pull up a web page of all the city council members, their email addresses, their phone numbers, and the districts that they serve. So again, we were told by at least by Jimmy Dutra that he will only speak to residents of his district. So if you live in Jimmy Dutra's district, please make sure to send them an email or a thousand and let them know what you think about FL and if you can get a meeting with them, we're well we're very happy to accompany you to that meeting and help explain that information. We're always happy we're always happy to accompany anybody who gets meetings with any other city council members. Um, but just be sure that you're one of their uh constituents so they can't say you don't matter. What if you work in their district? They might be willing to repeat the question. So what if you're what if you work in their district? Not that you necessarily live in their district. If you're Yeah. If you conduct your business in their district, then you know, I think that they'll listen to you. So what whatever you can do, try it. So, we're going to open it up for questions in just a bit. But, um, the second uh, so attend city council meetings. It's important. You know, recently there have been a lot more people attending, but typical city council meeting is maybe 10, 15 people just kind of sitting waiting for their business. Like I said, we took 60 people when we heard that the contract was up for renewal. I think it's probably one of the biggest meetings that they've had. They kind of didn't look like deers in headlight, but unfortunately it didn't stop them from doing what they, you know, were going to do. This second QR code here will take you to the Get the Flock Out website. There's a lot of information on how to organize. Uh there is a map of the cameras in Santa Cruz County. So the cameras uh in Capola, in Watsonville, uh in some of the unincorporated places up in the valley and things like that. So um take a look at that. And so thank you for keeping us on time. Buenos, my name is Diaz Gonzalez. Uh here just have a couple slides to talk about genuine community safety. I think Gabriel and Ludas were already referring to that, right? But really when we're talking about redefining for me it's really about redefining safety right and that safety narrative out there right now currently it's about law enforcement right and that's what we think about when we think about safety even some of our elders and parents think about safety as police for us really as folks working in the community safety means investing in our community right acknowledging that there is systems that have created harm for us and that we need to reinvest back into our community our young people our elders our million as a whole, right? It's really about um creating that paradigm shift, right? Creating that paradigm shift to look at safety as something that we can actually do, right? Not something that is forced upon us, but something that we're doing in the community. So really, again, looking at that paradigm shift to step away from law enforcement. Again, I think said it earlier, we're not anti police. We are pro community, right? We're about the community and ensuring that our community is having those needs met, right? So have to say that, right? Because a lot of times we'll come across like you're anti police. No, none of that, right? Uh police have healthy budgets. We want to make sure that those budgets are transferring over to our community. That also defines safety. So really, when we talk about safety, that's what we're talking about here, right? Uh what is community safety? Ensuring that our community has those needs met, right? If we have food, if we have shelter, if we have health services, all that, we're not going to be doing things. If we're not having our basic needs met, things may happen in the community, right? We're also talking about connection, right? Family and rel relationships across the board, right? Whether it be family, neighbors, and community, right? We like to say we're all related. We're all interconnected somehow, right? So, in that good way, we're trying to build community. This is also safety. Coming together, building, having conversations sometimes that are tough, right? That's those tough conversations. We have them at home sometimes. Sometimes we need to have them in the community, too. How do we have those tough conversations? Uh, and not doing this no more because we've been doing a lot of that. Right now, we have to do more of this, right? There's a lot of that happening out there. So, how do we come together to actually build community to come together to do something radically different because what we have done is not going to help us no more. We have to find different solutions to keep moving forward and doing things differently. So really again when we talk about safety it's that whole this whole bandit approach is not going to work no more right it's been a banded approach all this time. So really what we need to do is acknowledge the systems that have been creating harm for our communities. So when we talk about safety that's in a nutshell how I define it. Um and then we can go on to this next slide. Um, this next side here talks about some of the alternatives, right? And I won't go too much into them because I think I'm looking at the crowd and some of the crowd here can probably teach me some of these things too, right? But really, when we talk about root cause mitigation, again, no bandit approaches, we need to look at those root causes, right? Some of these systems actually are not supporting our communities, right? And these systems are put in place for certain reasons, right? So the systems have been in patriarchy all the way from colonialism all that has literally not been in the best interest of our community. So, how do we start acknowledging those root causes, not abandoned approach? And I tell people, we're not going to program ourselves out of this, right? A lot of times, oh, here's another program, here's another program, and then that problem gets cut like in a year or two, right? So, really, how do we actually address the root causes that are impacting our communities? And that's tough, right? Um, again, nonp police crisis intervention, what does it look like for us not to be calling the police, right? We can police each other. we cannot and I said we call our litas and the grandmas and they'll police us real quick, right? Uh but again, it's really goes back to how do we build those relationships, right? But how do stabilize each other? How do we work in community to start doing things different? Because again, police a lot of times show up after the fact. Nothing against police, right? But they usually show up after the fact and they're not preventing the crime. Let me jump in really quick. So what like one of the nonviolent crisis intervention that that uh is online that people really uh go after is mobile crisis. I I work for the mobile crisis team and right now a lot of the calls that went to the police now come to us. Um so so the police was dealing with a lot of mental health issues that they're not trained to do and unfortunately whenever there's an issue we call police. They're not they're not there to do all the different kinds of problems. So that's one thing that really helped the community is having this mobile crisis team. Thank you for that. Um, and again, police has become the go-to all, right? Literally, we go to police for everything. There's mental health, there's restorative justice. They're trying to do it all. When in reality, it's like, well, actually, we just need you to do that one thing. Let the community take care of the rest, right? Restorative justice, building, connecting. Those are the things that we do as a community. We don't need law enforcement doing that. Unfortunately, that's where a lot of the funding is going and that's why the rest of us are kind of struggling to figure it out, right? And we're doing this on our free time, a lot of us, right? Because it's the need. The need is talking to community, building, but for them, I think it's something else. So, really just building with the community connected. Um, the next one I see here is violence prevention through land use policy, right? And really, that's really going back to just investing in public spaces for me, right? investing in public spaces that are going to create support our young people to do the things that they need to do, right? Creating those I say safe brave spaces. We want safe but we want brave spaces too, right? But we're actually going to challenge, grow, and learn together, right? That's what we're trying to do. Again, what do they look like to have a space where instead of I know currently as a commissioner, we know that they are building a new we know they have one juvenile and they're building two extra facilities up there at Juven Hall, right? So for me, when you only have 10 people up there, why are we doing that? Why not reinvest into the community where our young people are at and give them the spaces to thrive? Instead, we're investing more millions of dollars in a space where we have only 10 young people and 30 plus staff. So for me, reinvesting in land use in that way to give especially in Watsonville where there's I think we said Target. Why there's so many cameras at Target? Cuz that's our only shopping center, right? There's no nothing else here in Watson. So that's what happening. And lastly, neighborhood watch, right? Neighborhood watches, think relationship building. How do we work with our relationship? I think there's this concept of dynamic security, right? Where if we take care of each other, there's no reason for things to happen in our community, right? We are protecting each other. We are nurturing each other and we're providing that loving community for each other. So, what does it look like? And again, and even working with the police. I know sometimes we don't want to work with the police, but I think it takes building with everybody in the village, right? We have to deal with everybody. And sometimes I know that I don't want to work with police. It's all that. But again, it's that trauma still there for me. But we have to be inclusive of all community, right? Not just the folks that we want. We have to include everybody in the community. And that means all stakeholders and figuring that out, right? Cuz again, like I said, I got my own trauma with police. At the same time though, I have to move past that trauma so that we can find those win-win scenarios for our community, right? So really, it's about looking for alternatives around safety. How do we actually, you know, redefine safety and actually start thinking about those most impacted, right? Usually, it's people and communities of color. So, when we talk about redefining safety and community safety, I think that's what we're talking about, but also looking at the alternatives so that we are not impacting those most impacted already. I think that's it, right? I think that's why and and the thing about neighborhood watch that actually does show that it reduces crime. So surveillance cameras have been shown to reduce crime. And by the way, Edasa is writing for supervisors and person. So now I want to introduce Dr. CHRISTINE HONG WHO created an excellent study guide that she wants to share with you to take away from this event. Thank you. Um so you know we've this is our seventh freedom school if you can believe it and for virtually every single one we've created um an a a study guide right and I want to say something about our organization. So we're all wearing our our t-shirts. It's Aro Valley for ethnic studies and justice and um I wanted to just say that we came together as a coalition and we came around uh came together around struggle for ethnic studies and um what we realized was for it was actually almost two years we were butting heads with PBUSD school board and we realized that um it was like talking into a brick wall. And at some point, it was so much so the case that there was a high school student who turned his back to the people who were on the board and started addressing the people in the audience because that felt so much more generative than trying to speak to these people who were not responsive at all. So that was the original impetus for us coming together. But we realized that we couldn't just keep showing up at these schoolboard meetings. We had to create a space of political education here in the community. And this is in no small part because ethnic studies, especially during a time when ethnic studies is under attack, during a time when ethnic studies is under fire and a lot of people don't have the courage to defend it and its possibility and are caving right and left in so many different ways. It's so important that the only site for ethnic studies not be institutionalized forms of education, which is why this is the Freedom School. And we created this to honor this long legacy of freedom and liberation schools that are aimed at doing the work of clarifying because so much of what we actually get in our educational spaces is confusing. It's inverted. It's a lie. It's evasive. And so, you know, there was a famous anti-colonial uh thinker France Fanol who said that basically education in the belly of the beast when you're in the heart of empire that it actually bewilders you and political education is aimed at clarification. Tonight was aimed at clarification. So, I want to just like walk you through just some key points here. And this I tried to draw upon all the presentations to just summarize and to capture some of the points. But I wanted you to just note like you know flock you know as Maddie was saying flock actually you know it's suggestive of birds but this kind of flock is more like um an Alfred Hitchcock horror show. Okay. So like you have the raven, the falcon, the condor and in congruously the sparrow. Okay. But you know so this is what is flock. I mean flock in bah valley no less. You know this like sort of term bird you know was something that was used birds of passage was a kind of literary term to describe migrants and birds of passage. Ralph Ellen has this amazing passage about how birds of passage are so far from the recorders of sound that they don't even like make they they they can't even be recorded. And so it's almost like the nobodies of the world are the birds of passage. And this is an area that historically has had so much structural discrimination because it's tied to the a industry and it's had a revolving door of agricultural labor. So against birds of passage you have raptors being deployed. Okay. And raptors are basically you know raptors come that term raptor comes from the Latin word repairing which means to seize or to take by force. So let's take this name very seriously flock. Who is flock seizing and taking by force? Right? Who is the intended target of flock? So, we should ask ourselves that question. And I want you to see the next page too because very interestingly earlier this year in February, the interim police chief David Rodriguez stated before Watsonville city council that flock is quote a true force multiplier. Force multiplier. What kind of jargon is that? It's military. It's military jargon. And in the military, the US military, a force multiplier is something. It could be a technology, form of technology like flock, a tool, it could be a tactic that increases the lethality, the lethal capability of a combat unit against an enemy target without requiring more boots on the ground. So we have to understand that when the intra police chief is saying that flock is a force multiplier, there is a construction that is implied of local residents of Watsonville being an enemy population that's supposed to be targeted. And so, um, we might ask them like, "Wait a second. So, Flock is worth $ 8.5 billion. It's built, it's a police surveillance company. It's done remarkably well for a relatively new startup. And it's built itself as an automatic license plate reader company." But we that's like, "Wait a second. We know the answer to this. Isn't it just a technology that reads license plates?" And not at all. As Manny was saying, it's not just vehicles. It's not just vi bicycles. It's classes of people according to race, perceived gender, height, weight, all of these different kinds of categories. Um, and that's according to its patent. You could see here too that the ACLU basically stated, yeah, no, don't be fooled. It's not just for reading license plates. Um, instead what it they said was Flock's aggressive expansions go far beyond simple driver surveillance. I want us to think about what happens when Flock is in place because it's only the starting point and it's a slippery slope to more authoritarian intervention into everyone's lives. And so this is what I was saying like it's actually a force multiplying police surveillance company that strengthens the repressive organs of the state. It works interoperably with homeland security. That's the purpose of the um the fusion centers homeland security like when it came about and if people recall like you know if you were around then you know some of you might be too young but if you recall um the US declaration of a war on terror and the creation of homeland security it was the biggest federal reorganization of the government since the creation of the national security state and it did something that the national security state did as well, but it said it overtly. The purpose of Homeland Security was to wage multidirectional warfare, not just abroad, but against domestic populations as well. And so, you could see that it's part of Homeland Security, ICE, and what Nat was calling corporate pillars of support. It supports the deportation machine. So, what are some of the dangers? You could see that in Oakland, a law firm basically filed a classaction lawsuit against Flock. It described the company as creating Orwellian mass surveillance sur infrastructure and that enables it to track millions of Californians daily movements and then illegally share that information with outofstate law enforcement agencies violating to the tune of millions of times as Burgess was saying California law privacy law. And so I wanted to just say something here too and I'll just go through this really quickly. This is you can use this as political a um education and we'll have downloadable forms as well as well as bilingual ones as well. So some some of uh the people who spoke spoke about Ben Jordan and actually just spoke about this that you could easily hack this and you can watch in live time. It's not just police surveillance. Bless you. It's anyone's surveillance. Okay. And um I want you to see the last part too because I was talking about the implicit militarized logic. Look at what Flock is doing right now. Okay. Flock has created another product called Aerodome. This is not minority report like just a fiction, right? This is actually what Flock has created. So, it creates drones as first responders. Okay, this is a law enforcement tool that not only surveills the hell out of everyone, but uses drones as firstline responders. This dystopian reality is here. And I want to say something and this is old school, but you know um this is the month when LA 1992 happened. And you know um one thing that people said who were growing up in South Central is they said that as kids time and again cops would stop them in the streets and just take photos of them. Just take photos of them doing nothing. But just the mere act of taking a photo put them in a system that had basically constructed them as future criminals. Okay. So this is right now like this is something that the theorist Ray Chow said from Hiroshima onward the act of sight the act of sight is so wound up with military technology technologies of mass destruction the atomic bomb so from World War II onward to see is not to believe to see is to destroy and that's what flock does. So, I just wanted to just go I'm almost done here and I'll just say you're doing good. So, this a Watson's little exception and this is something that people know so well here too. And so, you know, this is something that Bernie, who's in the house, actually stated I thought it was so eloquent that basically that it's no coincidence that Glock is disproportionately deployed here and it's deployed. It's military technology, right? And that, you know, Scots Valley doesn't have cameras. Santa Cruz got rid of theirs, but the place South County, which has a majority of people of color, and Bernie said, "You have the audacity to block 37, right?" Speaking to the city council, it's like, "Fuck you." Seriously, because you you in doing that, how dare you condescendingly say that you know what's right and you know what's best. And so you could see that Sandy Leiden said that Watsonville has always been treated as an economic and political um colony and you could see what Gabe Barza said about undocumented people. that the question that we should ask is who gets to decide and define what constitutes safety and whose interests are served by that definition. And so you can see here too that um I want to just go to the new police chief Brian Shaw. So Brian Shaw came in. Where did he come from everyone? San Jose. San Jose. How many flock cameras over there? 500. Almost 500. Okay. And he came in. He's like, "I'm not going to make Watsonville a mini San Jose." Okay, that's exactly what he's doing by pushing for flock. And he also, this is what he said. I can look you in the eye and tell you that I'm confident that our data is not and will not be used for immigration enforcement. This is one of the things he said. Here's another thing that he said. There isn't a single case where flock was used during a civil immigration investigation by ICE. So I want us to see something here. The people of San Jose filed a lawsuit against this, claiming that precisely what Chief Sh says has not happened has happened. Okay? And then also look at what the ACLU says. quote, "The company's surveillance data is being used by ICE." End quote. And that also even when police departments try to opt out, Flock can share that data. So just the last thing that I'll just say is like who's ruling Watsonville here? Um, this is what Ben Jordan, that YouTuber, suggested. If you're in touch with your county or city council, keep a record of your correspondence with them. Call them, but also email them, right? Let them know and fully realize that if someone gets stopped, robbed, harassed, abducted as a result of a reported security vulnerability by a third party surveillance vendor, they'll be on record for having known about it, but having approved it anyways. And they can explain that to their voters and constituents. Monteino F. Kuros Carter A. Orosco Aceto F Casey Clark F Dutra F Ari Parker F minus she just so this is just to say I want to end by underscoring Elas Gonzalez because we need to have people who have the imagination and the vision and the trust that the community can create its own safety. Okay? And this is what Eliia said. If we're serious about safety, don't spend money on these these basically weaponized forms of technology. Invest in community, youth, families, and resources, okay? That make life possible. Safety isn't just about responding to problems. It's not just about criminalization. It's not about locking people up, right? It's about building a community where those problems are less likely to happen in the first place. And so, yeah, with that, I'll end with last word to Edas Gonzalez whom we should all support. Heat. Heat.