A lifetime of support for law enforcement gives me a natural inclination to smile on technologies that help police do their jobs. Every story of a captured criminal or a rescued child is a win for safer communities.
But what if a wave of technological advancement draws pushback from citizens concerned about privacy, or worse, outright abuse of an otherwise useful tool? Welcome to the summer of hot debate over Flock cameras.
Flock Safety is an Atlanta-based manufacturer and operator of surveillance hardware and the software that makes it a vital tool for local police, specifically the automated license plate recognition that can find or track a car with efficiency human eyes could never rival. Law enforcement agencies point to thick case files filled with stolen vehicles, wanted fugitives and missing persons, all solved with this modern wonder.
But other fingers have begun to point toward more ominous things. Privacy advocacy organizations have raised concerns about a dense, searchable record of vehicle movements, giving rise to broader misgivings among the general public about the capacity for such technology to be misused by an overcurious and even punitive government.
Such scenarios might seem like a plot for a conspiratorial pulp novel, but the COVID lockdowns were real, and viewed today as a chilling example of what can happen when government realizes how much power it can exert over our daily lives.
It is against this growing skepticism that local police departments are sensing a need to reinforce the benefits they realize from the cameras. Fort Worth police chief Eddie Garcia took to TV this week to ease fears, telling WFAA that since 2020 he attributes 2,200 arrests to assistance from Flock technology.
While there have been random nationwide stories of officers tapping into cameras to track current or former wives and girlfriends, the prime public concerns are not current domestic dramas. The strongest objections right now involve the potential for future abuse.
Those passions have been heard in Hood County, southwest of Fort Worth, where Constable John Shirley taunted Flock in a Facebook post. “Mass surveillance isn’t how we do things here,” he wrote in a post covered this month in a Dallas Express article. “Come get your garbage out of my county.”
So what is “mass surveillance?” To what degree is it already a factor in our lives? In major cities at least, if there is a violent crime or a gas explosion, you know there will be video on that night’s TV news, thanks to cameras on virtually every block. Some are privately owned by residents or businesses, but others are city property. Robot eyes have been on us for a long time.
But there is something about the license plate tracking that gives a lot of people justifiable pause. While there is no apparent tribunal of tyrants snooping on political foes at the moment, history is littered with examples of government stooping to its lowest instincts in the face of citizen resistance. Many communities are seeing an uptick in people unwilling to wait around until an Orwellian nightmare unfolds.
There is also a limited appetite for the old adage that we have nothing to worry about if we are doing nothing wrong. While that may be technically true when government behavior is at its best, we are in a season of defiance against the imagery of a surveillance state, however benign or even beneficial we are told it can be.
While the Flock cameras are not in our homes, and it is true that electronic eyes on us may constitute fair game when we are in any public place, the sheer volume of tracking is the trigger for the current controversy. A police detective can follow you from your job to your bank if there is a specific suspicion, but the web of Flock cameras is like an army of detectives following you around wherever you go at all times.
Hood County has unplugged and covered its cameras. The company, sensing a PR crisis and a hazard to its revenue stream, has reduced its default retention for license plate data from thirty days to seven.
An increasingly uneasy public is going to need stronger assurances than procedural fine-tuning from the company. If the source of the unease is an overcurious government, it is government which should show preemptive restraint. Cameras in high-crime areas are more defensible than those strewn throughout safe suburbs and rural counties. And ultimately it is voters who should decide whether they want this technology in their midst.
The benefits of Flock camera technology are real, and most of the concerns stem from worst-case scenarios. But the history of government is replete with stories of bad actors at every level creating nightmares through misuse of power. Those risks do not warrant the abandonment of a technology that can absolutely continue to protect and save lives. But it will require vigilance from a public that has every right to manage how fast it spreads.
Mark Davis is a talk show host for Salem Media: 660amtheanswer.com. X: @markdavis
