Challenging Flock Cameras At City Hall

So today I'm just going to be reviewing uh what was said at the city council meeting. There was a lot that was said and some good, some bad, but I'm just going to go over it and give my thoughts on a lot of it. Good afternoon. Um my name is Timothy Pitman and on July 6th I came here and presented some concerning details about the flock safety cameras that were recently installed. And in the time since, public concern has grown significantly. Uh, with change.org support, we launched an online petition that has already gathered over 400 signatures from citizens who share the same concerns. Through further investigation, I learned that Flock manages its own hardware installations. And right here in our community, a resident's private um, a Flock camera is pointed directly into a resident's private yard. And I spoke with that homeowner directly. He confirmed that there was no notice given to him that this camera was being installed right near his house or that it was looking into his yard. Um, and I asked him if he felt his privacy was being violated. And he said he did feel as if his privacy was being violated. Um, and ironically, while Flock places cameras facing private homes that have been trying to guard their own privacy, when a reporter recently attempted to interview the company at their listed headquarters, they were informed Flock had moved and could not disclose their new address due to privacy concerns. It is extremely hypocritical for a company profiting off of public surveillance to hide behind the very privacy rights that our residents are being denied. And we are not alone in recognizing these dangers. The Los Angeles Police Department recently decided not to renew their contract with Flock over these exact privacy and operational issues. And if one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the nation recognizes that Flock is a liability, then why are we ignoring the red flags here? And that's all I have. When you say we are not alone, who is we? Who me and every me? I'm representing everyone that does not want flock here and believes that it is a privacy violation. Well, we have done a lot of research. Chief, [snorts] do you want to say anything? Okay. So, I'm going to stop right here real quick. First of all, I don't know. It just me personally, and again, this is not like this is just how I felt like I felt like his response going like, who are you? Like, who are you repres? I felt like that came off as really like, you know, really passive aggressive. And I and I don't know that could have just been me, but like I felt like that could have came off in a way nicer way. You know, I like I'm going up there and presenting genuine concerns and this is my second time doing so. And I feel like I'm being met with a lot of malice instead of like genuine intent to try to see where I'm coming from. Well, we have done a lot of research. Chief, [snorts] you want to say anything? And we're well aware of the restrictions and we're very comfortable that we are not infringing on anybody's privacy [snorts] uh in this is not the only place these exist. Okay. So I want to I want to address that real quick. So he said that they have done research on it and I believe I believe that they have done research on it to an extent and I'm going to I'm going to touch back on that at the it's at the end of it where I cannot read their names but I believe this councilman right here asked if any of the cameras had like video and audio capability and I feel like that is something that you would find out as you're doing the research, you know, like that is a I felt like that was an odd question to ask if they had done the research on it. You know what I mean? And we're we're well aware of the restrictions and we're very comfortable that we are not infringing on anybody's privacy. Uh in Okay, so he says we are well aware of the restrictions. I'm I'm kind of confused by I don't know what he means by restrictions. Maybe he means restrictions as in like what the officers are able to do with the cameras. I'm assuming because I don't recall mentioning any restrictions. And he also says that we are not infringing on anybody's privacy. And he would be correct. Uh the city of Gulf Shores is not infringing on privacy. It is flock because flock are the ones that you know where all this data is being stored and everything. It's their cameras, their hardware, all that. I feel like him just saying, "Nuhuh. We're not infringing on privacy." Whenever I can go to this guy's house and see a camera pointing directly into his yard. Now, I could go take a caveman or not a caveman. I could go take someone that's been on a secluded island and bring them to Gulf Shores and I could ask them, hey, do you think that this all that this seeing eye that is pointed directly in the direction of this point person's yard, do you think that this is a violation of their privacy and that person that has never seen any technology in their life would go, "Yeah." So, I'm not a lawyer. I'll preface it with that, but I'm going to talk about the Fourth Amendment a little bit. I've put together a few bullet points simply for to address the flock cameras as as they relate to here in Gulf Shores. First of all, so and this is another thing uh before we get into his bullet points. I found it kind of odd that these bullet points were prepared beforehand, but they weren't put on the agenda or anything. This whole thing, the way that the contract happened and how it was decided that we were going to imple or that Gulf Shores are going to implement it, the whole thing is really weird to me because I I know in a lot of your cities, if you have flock, you're probably paying for them with taxpayer money. But in Gulf Shores, we're using our asset forfeite fund. So, the way that stuff is approved depending on if it's taxpayer money and if it's asset forfeite money is different. And I don't know the exact way that it works in Gulf Shores. That's something else I'm going to have to look into more. But I do know it it's it's like a different process. And because it's not directly using the citizens money that they kind of circumvented that route of like asking the citizens like, "Hey, is it okay if we spend your money on this?" And which I found is very weird. Like I feel like this is something that the citizens should have had a say on. And on that note, like this was approved back in my city in September and I know a lot of this new a lot of this information is now coming out in this year. So a lot of this information wasn't available to be presented then. And a lot of stuff like new flock products like Flock Nova and the the Ravens, I don't know if they existed um back then or if they were as mainstream as they are now. So there's just a lot more stuff that needs that couldn't have been brought to the table back then. Also, I couldn't have done this back or potentially, but I was, you know, I was in high school still. So, I was focusing on school instead of doing this. We have flock cameras here for one reason and one reason only, and that's public safety. These things have proven time and time again to be deterrence to crime. This is this is their stance. Their stance is that it is on public that it is for public safety and the main thing is like yeah okay you can say it's for safety but like is that up the cost of like surveilling everyone 24/7 and adding them to a database crime and alo also increase the solvability of crime in in all virtually every city they have with regard to LA let's be honest that's about data sharing with ICE right okay now I'm smarter than this so I knew knew that. But this was this was a trick question that he was asking me because spoiler alert, Alabama's a red state and California is a blue state. So, of course, they didn't really like that they were sharing their things with ICE. I'm pretty sure Baldwin County has an agreement to like share the flock data with uh ICE. And personally, like I'm just going to say I I don't think sharing it with the sharing this with the feds is a good like or it's literally the government seeing everything you do. Hey, let's install these cameras in our city and give the federal government access to look at these cameras. Uh, okay. Sounds kind of weird to me and definitely not just uh government surveillance on everyone. But yeah, he he was trying to trick me here because if I were to just say yes to this, then it would have thrown out the whole thing about the whole LA thing because they know they know that's a good point that the third largest nation is not deciding not to renew their contract over these concerns. They know that is a very very valid point and they don't want to directly address that. So they're just going to go well isn't that one of the elements. Okay. Yes sir. Just one of them but that's one of Yeah. So I just said well it's just one of the many reasons but but again I've been saying privacy privacy privacy. So um that that's what I want to put out some bullet points about facts. First of all here in Gulf Shores we have had cameras there are two types of cameras with regard to flock. There are license plate readers and PTZs. Those are pan tilt zoom cameras. They're no different than a camera that is down at the beach. We have them near the schools to protect the kids. We have them. We're monitor. I'm going to keep pausing because there's a lot of things I want to get through and it was a lot of information. So, whenever he says these are no different from cameras at the beach, I think he means like minus the AI is the same thing. But yeah, you could make that argument about every single camera on Earth. Um, but no, there's a pretty big difference between a Flock Condor camera and a just a regular old security camera. The difference is that the Flock AI camera zooms in on your face and your phone. And like I don't want a random AI camera zooming in on my face and phone and then being able to be accessed by let's let's just say the federal government in this instance. Like that is weird. That is weird string here with cameras. We have them in this room. Um the pan, tilt, zoom c, all of the cameras are located in public places. I'm getting off my bullet points here because I wanted to address some of the things that he said. Everyone is in a public place. There are no mo a majority of what we have here are what's known as a license plate reader. A license plate reader is the same thing that records your vehicle and your license plate when you go through a toll zone. not the same thing. So, let me just say I have not looked into a like the nitty-gritty of a traditional toll thing or toll bridge camera, whatever. But the difference between the toll bridge and the flock cameras is that, you know, the toll bridge, they're trying they're trying to make sure you pay to like get over there. And if you don't pay, then like, you know, then they should be able to, you know, send you a fine or something because you didn't pay. Now, I could be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure that PBridge cameras don't use AI and put every single tiny nitty-gritty detail of your car into a database that's accessible for like 90 to 30 days and that the federal government can access and that the local uh police department can look back at. Like, these are not the same thing through virtually any area. It takes a picture of the car and a zoom in of the license plate if you've had a toll notice before. Also, one more thing about the toll cameras. I'm pretty sure they only look for your license plate. They don't like again, they don't store all these other extra details like stickers, decals, dents, make, model, year. It's like just the license plate because that's all they need to send you the ticket. That's all we're getting from the LPRs that are located throughout most of the city. The the other places where we have where where he's talking about that is a license plate reader that is pointed towards the road. There is no data being gathered on that resident. So, in this particular camera that he's talking about, that's the one that I referenced where it was facing at a homeowner's house. This is another thing that I wish I I could have asked them and I would really like some elaboration on is was the city involved in the placement of these whatsoever because whenever I did my research, I found that Flock handles the installation and all that. So, the city doesn't have to do anything and it's marketed as like as a weight off the city's back. You know, Flock's like, "Hey, let us handle this. we got you. We'll install these in these key locations. But to me, you know, the cameras are one thing and the installation is another thing. And I've also seen videos of of the same exact instances happening in other places in some where the cameras are installed in places that they shouldn't be. For example, I saw this one. It was installed behind a guard rail and but the camera was installed with concrete at the base. So, if a car went through the guard rail, they would hit the camera and it would potentially kill them because like the camera's in concrete and all that, but if the camera wasn't there, then the guardrail would do its job and all that. So, it's just there's a lot about the installation that also needs to be said here. Also, I'm pretty sure if I could see the feed from that camera, you could blatantly see that that person's yard is taken up like 90%. I'm going to say probably at least 50% of what you can see from that camera is that person's yard. And that's just being generous and giving the person that installed it the benefit of the doubt. It's probably more than that. There's no data being gathered on the inside of that resident's house. Before we continue, I would just like to say regarding the installation, I haven't seen a lot of people talk about this. Again, Flock manages their own installation and they say that they put these cameras in key locations. I don't know how they determine what's a key location. And from the sounds of it, they don't communicate with the city on the installation of these cameras. So, I don't know how they find out where to put them. I don't know if they just send a guy to just go drive around for a day and go, "Okay, here, here, here, here." But it is very weird. And again, specifically this camera. So, the road that this camera's on is really weird. So, like, let's just say I'm coming down from a specific road. I turn left to go down the road that has the camera in 100 ft. There's a stop sign and the speed limit is also 25 miles per hour. So, I don't really understand what the purpose of that camera there. There's actually two of them, but the but the other cameras facing the forest, they can't see into anybody's home. There's none on. So, like for example, whenever I said that I take a left to turn onto this road with the cameras, the road that I'm on to take that left, that is way busier than this road. There's like a hundred like there's probably like a thousand cars that go down that road every single day or probably more than a thousand. And it just makes no sense. It's like if anything that road would be a key location, not this tiny strip of road where you can see into this person's front yard. Like it just makes no sense. It is simply a camera located in a public place. So since we're talking about I'm talking about public places for a minute, let's talk about that. The fourth amendment. You hear a lot of that person's house is not a public place. things where people say this is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment, and again, this where I say I'm not a lawyer, but I've been in law enforcement for 38 years. The Fourth Amendment covers unlawful search and seizure. There there are multiple exceptions to the Fourth A provisions in the Fourth Amendment. One is plain view. Every one of these cameras is located in plain view. where every one of these cameras is located. There could be a police officer sitting there writing down every license plate that goes by, which is no different than what the camera does. It is just doing it more efficiently and more effectively to in the protection of public safety. Uh it is actually very different because that police officer that police officer's brain is not linked to like a 100 thousand others police officers brain and can um telepathically communicate with that other police officer and go where was this car? Where was this car? Where where have they been? Where are they going to go? That is very different. Um I see I see where he's coming from but fundamentally two very different things. The pan tilt zooms are what we have on the beach. We've had these on the beach for 10 years. Those are the cameras that are there. We have No, they're not the same thing. At the dog park. We have them at the school. Since we put the PTZ up outside the dog park, we haven't had one abandoned pet abandoned in the dog park, which you all know the people have come in here on a regular basis complaining about the the way we we are handling the dogs. We have not had one dog abandoned in that ball in that dog park. That's the effectiveness of these flock cameras working. Okay. So, let me just say these cameras are not proven to deter crime. Let me just say that there are some cities that have had flock or can or currently have flock and they have reported that and some of those cities have reported that their crime rate has actually gone up. And flock themselves, of course, they market that it gets rid of crime. You know, it's supposed to deter it. But the camera itself does not prevent crime. A lot of people still don't know about Flock. So, they might just see that camera and go, "That's just a regular old security camera." But no, I do not think that the that these cameras alone are like the sole cause for crime to not be committed or dogs to not be abandoned at the dog park in this example. But the cameras are not physically doing anything. They are not stopping anyone from abandoning their dog there. Now, with regard to the data, there's a lot of lot of noise out there about data. This data meets the standards of the FBI's National Center, National Crime Information Center. Let me fact check that. So, this right here, I know it's the AI overview thing. Just bear with me here. So, right here, Fox data hosted on Amazon Web Services GovCloud is encrypted using AES 256. We know from Ben Jordan's video that that is not the case because it was streaming like unencrypted feeds. So this is just not true. It is it is strictly adhered to. It is strictly protected and there are provisions in the law that char that that provide for an officer or a public official who uses these in an unauthorized fashion to be prosecuted. And I can guarantee you here in Gulf Shores, if that happens, they will be prosecuted. We are fully transparent about this. Our policy is on the website. It talks about the retention period. It talks about how long we retain it. And flock also mirrors mirrors that. And it also is subject the only way you can use access a flock data. The cam the data from the camera is for a specified law enforcement purpose. So, an officer can't just go in and check a plate. They have to go through our our rigorous review in order to show whether or not they have a specified law enforcement purpose to review that plate. And then we grant that. And afterwards, we audit to make sure that nobody is using it improperly. This I'm actually very intrigued by. So, in I believe this was also in one of Ben Jordan's videos, it showed that, you know, all the officer had to do to look up a plate was just give a reason. And also, police officers are abusing this because they're just putting invest in investigation. Like, that's not a reason. You have to be more like descript than that because like you are going or you are accessing a database that is literally like spying on tons of tons of people. You can't do that. So, I want to know what is so different about Gulf Shores flock. I want to know what makes it rigorous compared to other police departments that have flock. It better be a game of like 21 questions or something because I I'm not sure I believe that just based on the evidence that Ben Jordan gave. I just don't believe that. Or maybe that's what he means by rigorous is it ask the officer that like what they're accessing it for and all that. And of course, they know has the login with their account so that they can potentially trace back who made the search. But I want to know what's so different. What makes it so rigorous? And also he says if someone abuses it, we will prosecute them. What is preventing an officer from abusing it? Is it this? So is it this mystery rigorous lookup? There's there's a ton of questions here that I would love answers to because I'm very very intrigued. So, uh, with that being said, um, the, you know, as they're they're they're here. They're for a specified law enforcement reason, and we believe they're of value and should remain unless the Supreme Court says otherwise. Thank you. Yes, sir. There's your answer. If you've made it this far in the video, you know, you can already tell that there's a lot of holes in what was said in these bullet points. I'm not making this video out of malice. I'm making this to bring awareness and to hopefully get these things removed and because I believe that this that this response was not satisfactory. Like for example, the LA point I made that was a very very good point and that was just brushed off with do you mean ice? Um a little bit I had some questions if that's okay. Um, so first regarding the similarities to the red light cameras, as far as I know, the red light cameras that you mentioned before that have existed for like a dec like decades. Um, don't they only track the license plates that actually run the red lights whereas Flock, they enter like for example like my car just going down the road even though I'm not doing anything wrong. Sir, with all due respect, we have no red light cameras here in Gulf Shores. Yes, sir. But I'm just talking about in general because you compared them to or the the toll cameras. My my bad. So what what is um Don't the toll cameras only send you a ticket or like for log your license plate if you are um like for example you don't pay the toll whereas Flock it'll log your vehicle and your license plate no matter what. Yes. Every car that goes by is logged on Flock. Yes sir. And with the toll cameras, it only logs the cars that don't pay the toll or is it I believe every car is logged, but it it logs whether you have a um a responder in it that allows you to pay, but every every vehicle is photographed as it goes through a I'm going to have to look into this more. I just I wanted to get a bigger understanding of that because I don't really understand toll cameras, but I do know that fundamentally a flot camera and a toll camera are not the same thing. I was just trying to get a little bit more elaboration out of that. And the thing with the toll cameras, it probably depends on who makes them. We don't have them here, so they it doesn't apply. Yes, sir. They are not cameras. They are not writing tickets. They are uh they are simply logging that. Now, just to give you some numbers, we we now we had a public safety meeting a couple weeks ago and and uh we we did a just an update of where we were in Gulf Shores at that time on July. Now, this is very interesting. We had logged 38 million license plate reads in Gulf Shores. Those are individual cars [clears throat] that drove by a flock camera. Of that, we have queried right at a thousand and a lot of those are multiple reads on a specific incident. If somebody shop, for example, uh we had a stolen car come into town and we it started pinging on every camera as we went in. We had a it turned into as officers rolled in where that vehicle was located, it turned into a pursuit. And in the interest of public safety, rather than pursue a car and risk somebody, an innocent third party being hurt or injured, we pulled off the pursuit. And that flock that car continued to hit flock cameras throughout the city until it pulled into Walmart, at which time we moved in [clears throat] on him. The person ran out of the vehicle, fled into the woods. He was later apprehended and there was evidence of other crimes in that car. That was a stolen car that came into Gulf Shores. That is a typical example of what we are using these cameras for. Again, I don't think they're using the cameras maliciously. All it could take is one person to mess that up. I'm going to go back real quick just so that we can rehear this again cuz whenever I heard this, I was like, what? We had logged 38 million license plate reads in Gulf Shores. Those are individual cars that [clears throat] drove by a flock camera. of that we have queried right at a thousand. Okay, so right here this is like the meat and potatoes. 38 million is a lot. That is a lot a lot a lot a lot of people in one area and he says that they were able to query a thousand people. That's just looking them up in the system. And this is not accounting for the hallucination on Flock's part. Decisions to actually pursue people that were here um arrest or anything like that. It's just a thousand people that they were like, "Hey, we're going to look up." Which is still crazy. It's just that they could just all these people can come in here and without their consent, they're just put into this database. So my thing is, is the privacy of 37,999,000 people? Is their privacy worth less than catching these? Let's just say a thousand. Let's just say all 1,000 of them were committing a crime. Let's just be generous here. Is is the privacy of those 37,999,000 people is that worth less than catching these people by other means? And I understand that it is used to help catch people, but maybe instead of flock, maybe we get red light cameras. Multiple reads on a specific incident. If somebody shop, for example, uh we had a stolen car come into town and we it started pinging on every camera as we went in. We had a it turned into as officers rolled in where that vehicle was located, it turned into a pursuit. And in the interest of public safety, rather than pursue a car and risk somebody, an innocent third party being hurt or injured, we pulled off the pursuit. And that flock that car continued to hit flock cameras throughout the city until it pulled into Walmart, at which time we [clears throat] moved in on him. The person ran out of the vehicle, fled into the woods. He was later apprehended and there was evidence of other crimes in that car. That was a stolen car that came into Gulf Shores. That is a typical example of what we are using these cameras for. Okay? And again, you could do this without logging 38 million people. If we just got rid of the flot cameras and instead got red light cameras and these other security measures that weren't so invasive, then then I would be on board with that. But this is not the way to do it. Sacrificing privacy without looking at Flock as a company and all the stuff that they've done. Doing all this at the cost of security and private or at the cost of privacy is not it. That exact instance that he named could have been solved with another officer phoning in, hey, there's a stolen vehicle heading your way. um played as this and then installing red light cameras and then some and then like they could still build that building but then just for the red light cameras, you know, and then they're just watching out for that vehicle. That is way less invasive and yeah, it does it takes a lot more work and I think a lot of police departments really like flock because it does a lot of work for them. And also another thing I've noticed at least here in Gulf Shores, I never never see a police officer like on the side of the road anymore watching for people. Ever since these cameras got installed, like the police officers are never out on the road anymore watching people. So I want to know what exactly they're doing with all this time. Are they just are they all just watching these cameras? Nothing more. Yes, sir. Thank you, Chief. you made a very lengthy presentation before the council voted to approve the purchase of these cameras. And that was exactly one of the great benefits for public safety that I saw that there's a database of of license plates tied to crimes that when they come in our area, your your department knows it. Those cameras know that they're here. And you know this a really big issue I have is just police departments in general. I don't know why they think they need to have more faith in themselves. They think that they're so incompetent and just incapable of solving these crimes without these cameras. Transient uh uh push that we get in this small town. I mean, we're we can be an easy prey uh for those kind of folks that want to do wrong because there's just so much traffic and transit traffic and it's hard to keep up. I saw that as one of the great benefits. I had been asked a couple of times about your license plate reader cameras. I would not say that Gulf Shores is an easy target. From the um numbers I read from 2025 last year regarding the police department's arrest and everything, they were very efficient. So, no, I would not say that Gulf Shores is an easy target. Do they have any video or audio function to them? No, sir. They're strictly they take a photo of the car and a license plate. the LPRs. That's what the LPRs. That's what Yeah, that's what I'm asking. Yes, sir. Okay. Thank you. [clears throat] And I think we have concluded that the public safety issues given the safety of these cameras far outweigh any concerns. I'm going to go back real quick. I think we have concluded that the public safety issues given the safety of these cameras far outweigh any concerns. So yeah, we have concluded that the public safety issues outweigh any concerns which is at least I believe to be a crazy statement because I have given them an email with like categories of different reasons and this is just the tip of the iceberg of some of the stuff. You know, I can't go in there and talk for an hour and so I'm only able to present a little bit of information at a time and they're claiming that they've done research and all this. But me, a 19-year-old, I can go on the internet and find all this information, all this like terrible information about what these cameras can do, what people have done with them, what the com what Flock themselves have done as a company. And me personally, if I was a mayor or a city council member, I would say, "Hey, wait, maybe we shouldn't do this, you know, cuz there's a lot of concerning stuff about these." Or at the very least would have let the citizens vote on it. Like this is ridiculous, sir. And um I'm sorry, but regarding the the last question you had um I'm as of recently, Flock is or Flock did recently announce an update where these LPRs can become cameras. It's an optional upgrade, of course. So currently, unless the police department chooses to activate it, but they do technically have the functionality to turn into cameras, but we're not using them in that. Not at this point. And and unless I see a reason to go to something like that, I'd be for you asking the same thing just like I was when we got the initial grant. I just don't believe that research was done or Okay, let me pause. I could see how, you know, they could have done their research back then and how they would have like, you know, really liked it, but that's because all this stuff wasn't discovered yet. I think it needs to be it needs to be revisited. They need to look at the emails that people have sent the initial installation. But like I said, we've had these cameras here for 10 years. [clears throat] They've been a benefit since since day one, and you know, I fully support him as long as the person that you trust to protect this city. You know, if if we had 18,000 people and we're in the middle of nowhere, maybe we wouldn't have the need for them. It depends on your crime rate. We we suffer. We suffer. We benefit from a very significantly low crime rate. And this allows us to be more efficient the way we deliver our public service to the citizens. Again, already significantly low crime rate. Why? Chief, Mike, you mentioned the data storage and I know it's on the website. Could you mention what it is? So, in case we don't have So, every every plate is logged for a period of 90 days. If if we don't So, 90 days is a while. I believe I've seen most places stored for 30 days. So, this is triple that amount of time, which means that a greater footprint of in of each individual person is made. query a plate. If a plate comes through, it's there for 90 days. If we query it, and I guess the best way to phrase this is flag it for an investigative purpose, it would be able to remain for up to five years. And or five years, it would be dumped through the system. It's kind of like your your home video camera. Hold on. So, I'm also going to rewind just to like understand some things a little bit more. like your your home video camera, you know, they have like a 30-day window and and that's the same as this. Once we hit 90 days, if we don't query a plate, they get dumped out on the back end at 90 days. If we don't have a law enforcement purpose within 90 days, it's gone. We we know to get on it right away. Everybody in the police department is will is trained or will be trained if they haven't been yet. And it comes with a very stern warning for me that do not abuse these. We know the controversies that exist exist elsewhere and there would nothing get rid of this tool in our belt faster than for somebody to misuse it. Thank you, Chief. Thank you so much for watching. If you've made it this far, please consider like, subscribing, and sharing. All of this helps get this out there more. And please sign the petition. Even if you're not from Gulf Shores, every signature matters.