Everybody Hates Flock. Now What?

Around the country and across the political spectrum, people are pushing back against Flock cameras. After years of license plate readers quietly proliferating on our streets, dozens of communities have terminated their Flock contracts in 2026 alone. >> Joining them are Texas and Florida, which recently announced state action stepping back from these surveillance systems. But what comes next? And how can we make sure that today's backlash leads to lasting change? I'm Hudson Hongo. >> And I'm Jason Kelley. This is a factor from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. >> Later, I'll be quizzing Jason on the companies not named [music] Flock selling license plate readers. >> We'll also let you know about some upcoming opportunities to connect with the EFF. >> But first, we'll be talking about the national increasingly bipartisan push to stop license plate readers from tracking our every move. So Jason, uh you and I work for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights nonprofit that, among other things, fights mass surveillance. Uh it isn't always easy to explain what these technologies are and why they're dangerous, but I feel like that's changed significantly with the Flock moment. >> Yeah, you know, I think this is something I think people just viscerally understand and physically can see. >> I think that's true. I think that's a a big part of it. A lot of the time talking about these uh digital privacy issues or mass surveillance issues, I end up talking about something that happens in a computer and then affects people in real life down the line, right? >> Yeah. >> Especially long after it's adopted is a little tough. But with the Flock cameras, there's more of a one-to-one. You can go out, you can see one of them, and then hear about how this could be used against you and make people's lives, you know, worse in the real world, and it's just all it's all meatspace. >> It's all meatspace. And I think, you know, it happened at that at the same time that ICE agents started entering cities in some cases and then people sort of learned that Flock cameras can share with federal agents. Basically, people I think recognize that if the Flock is sharing data with the government, Flock kind of equals mass surveillance. Like, government mass surveillance. It's not quite a one-to-one, but I think people just saw a lot of things happening all at once. For sure, people are using >> [laughter] >> extensively using just the company name Flock as a shorthand for all different kinds of mass surveillance. Um so, in the past, this would probably be the part of the show where I would explain what automated license plate reader or ALPR networks are, um how they're these the tens of thousands of roadside cameras that photograph vehicles and their occupants, uh let police warrantlessly track where we go and where we've been. But, >> But, you don't need to say any of that. >> [laughter] >> Everyone knows. >> Yeah, right. Um so, instead, I'm just going to share a statistic. So, this is according to a recent survey from the National Policing Institute. They found that 54.4% of all US adults oppose ALPR programs in their communities, and just 34.6% support this. Does that feel about right to you? >> Yeah, this moment it does. I mean, I think it really would depend on sort of how you frame the question. I think a lot of people might still not know what ALPRs are, but definitely know what Flock is. And if they do know both, then any more they more and more do know both. But, like, so yeah, that's those numbers seem right to me. 54% oppose, 34 support. Yeah, that sounds right. >> Yeah, I mean, I guess actually even more surprising than either of those numbers is that just like 11% of people were not sure. Which is like, I don't know [laughter] any question you can ask every person on the street and have like less than 20% of them be like, "I don't know." >> Yeah, it's like, uh pie? Cake? Do you want cake? Like, yes or no? They're like, "I'm not sure." No, you either do or you don't. Yeah, that's really interesting. People have opinions on this. >> So, recently the governors of Texas and Florida announced moves to step back from ALPRs, which I think really demonstrates how universal opposition to these cameras has become. To dig deeper into that and what it all means, I recently chatted with our colleague Adam Schwartz, privacy litigation director at EFF. Let's listen into that. Well, hey Adam, thanks for dropping by. >> Thank you for having me, Hudson. >> So, today I wanted to talk about what's become a real nationwide movement pushing back against automated license plate readers and the ALPR vendor Flock Safety. Over the past year, we've seen really dozens, I don't have the latest count, of communities cancel or reconsider these cameras at a local level. But, I was hoping you could tell me a bit about what Texas and Florida recently announced. >> Yeah, the automatic license plate readers are a privacy nightmare. And they have become the police surveillance technology that is the greatest concern to people across the country. And there's a lot to say about what these cameras are and the national picture of how people are resisting. The most recent development is that the governors of two states, Florida and Texas, have taken very strong action to limit the license plate readers in their state. Texas Governor Abbott issued an order that the state was going to stop paying for license plate readers being used at the city level. And this was upon the heels of some investigative journalism in Texas that showed the state had been spending $30 million on this. And soon after that, the governor of Florida, uh, DeSantis, got into, um, this, um, this resistance to license plate readers, uh, by announcing that, uh, license plate readers, uh, no longer could be placed on the state roads in Florida. Now, to be clear, that's the roads owned by the state, as opposed to the many other roads owned by, you know, counties and cities and and whatnot. So, between, um, Texas ending its state funding for the plate readers, and Florida ending its hosting on state roads of the ALPRs, we have here, uh, governors leading the way and showing showing the tools, uh, that a, uh, a governor has at their disposal to, uh, fight back against ALPR mass surveillance. >> Yeah, right. I mean, one of the reasons that I wanted to bring this up is that the use of executive branch powers here is interesting, right? >> Absolutely. Um, uh, there are many, many levers to pull, and we can, you know, walk through all of them, but but in summary, um, there is the, uh, city council level, uh, where you say, "Hello, city council, don't purchase these uh, cameras or stop paying for these cameras." Um, you can go to courts and say, "Place, uh, enforceable limitations, such as get a warrant, uh, to access the data." You can go to a state legislature and say, "Pass a law that that bans them, or that, uh, places safeguards, such as, you know, delete the data, you know, within a week." Um, and we have been lobbying California Department of Motor Vehicles to stop hosting, um, kind of, um, camouflage license plate readers that are, uh, owned by uh, Customs and Border Protection. Uh, so, that is us lobbying a a state agency. Um, and so it is uh really wonderful to see this kind of new um uh kind of um theory of change where you can go to governors and say stop paying for it and stop posting it on state roads. >> Many levers uh to choose from, many at play. Exciting to see this one being used. But another reason that I wanted to talk about these states is that these are actions by Republican governors. Uh what do you think it is about these cameras that has resulted in uh bipartisan opposition during what can feel like a very divided time? >> Yeah, I I I want to uh underline uh kind of one of the the points in the question before answering it, which is uh resistance to the license plate readers is very much bipartisan um and universal across uh political parties and uh political ideologies. And the reason for this is that uh license plate reader mass surveillance is a threat to our fundamental liberties in the Bill of Rights, uh our privacy, our freedom of speech, um our ability to just go about our day without uh other people knowing uh what we're doing it. Um, and of course this is not the first time um that this resistance has been uh bipartisan. Um, you know, it goes back to the American Revolution, not wanting Redcoats busting down our doors and going through our drawers to find untaxed tea and, you know, news articles that were critical of the king. And we've seen it with a lot of other uh mass surveillance technology. Um, in terms of why is it um that the um license plate readers um and Flock in particular um are um the thing that has burst open? You know, that that that's a great question. I would say an answer is that um the license plate readers are um as bad as any form of mass surveillance and they are very visible. Um, you you know, drive around and you see these things on your street corners. Um whereas perhaps some of the other surveillance technologies um are are less noticeable as we you know, walk around uh our cities. >> I sort of get the sense that this is a moment where a lot of people are finally seeing the consequences of the surveillance technology and its infringements on our privacy and having seen those consequences maybe reconsidering the arrangements that we've all sort of implicitly agreed to. Do you think that's right? >> I I do. Um I think there has been a lot of investigative journalism in the last 2 years uh by reporters across the country. Um and that includes um investigative activists who uh work for the uh Electronic Frontier Foundation that have exposed um police misconduct and abuse of power in connection with the license plate readers. And so perhaps most you know, infamously there are police officers who are using the cameras to stalk uh their potential and past romantic partners. Um but it's also um the use of these plate readers to go after immigrants. Um they're also used to go after uh gun shows um and to see whether people are crossing state lines uh to visit gun shows which is very alarming to um another sector um uh of the American society. Um they're being used against protesters. They're being used to enforce very minor things like traffic offenses or investigating whether somebody um has improperly crossed school boundary lines to to send their kids to school. And so there's been a steady drip drip drip um about the license plate readers. And so I think in addition to it being just intrinsically like many other things a mass surveillance technology and in addition to them being very visible, you have this um snowball, this avalanche of, um, of news reports about, uh, police abuse of this surveillance technology, um, affecting people of every audiology, you know, the gun shows and the abortion seekers and the immigrants, um, that has, um, made the license plate reader, um, kind of, um, the most despised of all of the surveillance technologies. >> I think it's a good point to call out all of the great reporting that's been done, especially over the past year or so. I think anybody can look at the news and see how frequently these misuse incidents are discovered. >> That's absolutely right. I think that there are dozens of cases of misuse, um, and, um, it's not that hard to lift up the rock. Um, in many states, we have strong public, um, access to government records laws, sometimes called FOIA, for the Freedom of Information Act, sometimes called the PRA, for the Public Records Act, and, um, you send the FOIA or the PRA to your city, um, and you say, you know, give me the records about your use of, um, uh, this technology. Often there are au- are audit logs, um, and the audit logs, um, need to have for every, uh, police search of the data, the reason for the search. And you just run down that column, reason for search, and you see a lot of bad things. Um, and so EFF has done this and found racism against the Roma, uh, surveillance of protesters, uh, etc., etc. We have at least five blog posts up, um, about this kind of investigative activism, and reporters across the country, um, are doing the same thing. Um, and then, of course, you have so many police officers who are using it to check out their ex-girlfriends, um, that there have been complaints filed, and then those become, you know, open and notorious uh, news stories. I have probably seen stories in at at a majority of of the states, um, and I think that is probably a contributor to this this kind of riddle why the ALPR of all of the terrible surveillance technologies that is so despised and on a bipartisan basis. >> Something else that I've noticed is how closely a lot of this opposition has been tied to the Flock brand name. I I realize part of this is just that a brand name is convenient shorthand, but I did want to ask you um what do you think are the some of the downsides to this sort of ALPR equals Flock equals mass surveillance? >> Yeah, so so first I'll address kind of the fact of the question and then the question. So the fact of the question is that there is like a terrible avalanche of surveillance technologies, of which one piece is the license plate reader. And then there are many many license plate reader vendors, including Axon, including Vigilant, including DRN. There are probably dozens of others, of which one is Flock. And so Flock has become a signifier for at least ALPR and in some ways, as you say, it has become a signifier for surveillance technology generally. And so that's the fact. So then I think the question is what does this mean for anti-surveillance advocacy? And I think it creates opportunities and challenges. Clearly, the opportunity is that when you have, you know, one syllable becoming an immediately recognizable term for everything that's gone wrong in the world with government spying on people, that's a powerful thing. So, you know, you see these things like, you know, age verification is the Flock of the internet. Um it's kind of like how you know, the Patriot Act became like a signifier for all the bad stuff. Um and so that's that's a useful thing for anti-surveillance activists that it has been a a vehicle for many, many people to tune in to the problem that had not previously tuned in such that we have these two governors who have done these incredible, you know, at one blow attacks on on surveillance technology. Of course, this opportunity comes with a nested challenge, which is that for some people all you have to do is like excise Flock and the mission is accomplished. You know, don't worry about Axon, don't worry about Vigilant or DRN, Flock's the problem. And then it's like, well, maybe we won't use ALPRs, but of course we're going to keep doing, you know, biometric surveillance, location data surveillance, you know, all these other kinds of surveillance. So, you know, in our messaging, you know, we just put out a video a week ago that literally is called it's not just Flock talking about where this company fits into the kind of larger archipelago. I will just say that, you know, I don't feel bad for Flock that they have become the scapegoat for all of the corporate vendors, you know, their their hands are not clean. They have created a technology that is custom built for police officers to use it to, you know, check out their girlfriends or hand data over to ICE. And so, you know, the the the chickens have come home to roost. But but if if listeners hear one thing in my my diatribe here, it is yes, go after Flock and also go after all the other license plate reader companies and also go after all of the other mass surveillance technology. Flock is the beginning, Flock is not the end. >> Important point well put, which also leads into what is kind of the big question I have been hoping to get at, which is what's next? Right? It seems like there's a growing bipartisan consensus around these ALPR systems. How can people who care about privacy seize this the very unique moment? >> Yeah, I think um the first thing for everybody to do is to figure out who in their city, and if not their city, uh the next city is resisting uh the license plate readers. And this is, you know, just thousands and thousands of cities across the country. There are clubs of every uh possible um configuration. Uh some of them political, from the left, from the right. Some of them aren't political at all. And you know, find that club and hook up with it. And uh then um you know, you get on their action alert system and you start uh showing up in city council meetings and you start sending uh emails to your city council members saying, "I don't want uh license plate readers in my community. Um stop buying them, and if you are, uh stop uh you know, break the contracts. Stop spending this money." Um the next thing people can do is figure out uh who in their state is uh fighting the license plate readers uh at the state level. So, in all 50 states, there are um statewide organizations showing up in the statehouse uh saying, you know, "Senators, uh representatives, assembly members, we want you uh to ban Flock in our state. And if we can't get that, we want you to place enforceable constraints. Delete the data in a week. Um require a warrant for police officers to search their data. Uh mandate meaningful audit logs and audit those logs uh every single year. Um etc., etc." Um there are many groups uh in the fight. Uh Electronic Frontier Foundation is proud to be one of them. Um people can tune in at eff.org uh for one of the many ways um that they can um get informed and uh support this fight. I will now note that um eff.org also a great resource if you want to start thinking about mass surveillance technologies that aren't ALPR and your city, community, state, uh country may be adopting. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. It's not just Flock. It's not even just the license plate readers. It is mass surveillance technology and uh there's a lot to fight. >> Well, thanks again for making the time to chat, Adam. >> Thank you so much for talking to me, Hudson. >> This is a quick break to remind you that EFF is a member-supported nonprofit and your support is what makes this work possible. If you want to help EFF fight mass surveillance like well, like Flock, but also like ALPRs and everything else. Head to eff.org/podfan. For as little as $10 a month, you'll get our latest member t-shirt and join the community of over 30,000 EFF members fighting to make sure technology works for everyone. That's eff.org/podfan. One more time, eff.org/podfan. All right, back to the show. >> Okay, Jason. So, uh one thing I talked to Adam about was how much of the attention right now is tied to one particular ALPR vendor, Flock Safety, uh when there are lots of other companies selling this technology uh with basically all of the same problems. How well do you think you personally know the other companies selling ALPR? >> I actually think I know them pretty well. Um I I Yeah, I actually think I'm going to ace this if you're going to ask me company names. Although the company names change over time as they like get bought up and, you know, change Anyway, yeah, so I think I know them pretty well. Let's try it. Um let's see what happens. >> Cool. Well, the way I've structured this is that I'm going to give you the names of two companies. Um your job will be to tell me which one is a real company selling license plate reader products and which one is a fictional evil megacorp uh from like television or video games. >> Okay, so they're both real, but one is fictionally real. Like you're not you didn't make it up. >> These are not I did not make these up. These are drawn from other places, which maybe you'll recognize those. Maybe it'll be a very easy quiz, but we'll see. >> Yeah. Yeah, is it is is it Big Brother? I'm pretty sure I know which one that is. Go on. >> Okay, let's do this. Uh we're going to do four pairs. First pair, which one is the real ALPR vendor? Cyberdyne Systems or Rekor Systems? >> Okay, I know it's Rekor because Cyberdyne is from something fictional, right? >> That's correct. Cyberdyne Systems is from Terminator. >> That's why. Yeah, yeah, I was like Skynet? Is that Yeah, okay. But I wouldn't I actually didn't know Rekor. Like I get it because tow trucks also have ALPRs on them, so Rekor. I don't know why >> they call it that. I Also, I want to make sure >> I don't Yeah. >> You should feel very empowered to ask for spelling on any of THESE COMPANY NAMES. >> OH, is it not spelled Rekor like a car wreck? >> No, it's it's obviously it's bizarre. It's r e k o r. >> Okay. Well, >> [gasps] >> uh okay. I was wrong about maybe why or maybe they just thought we're like it came up in like the teens as a startup or something. >> [laughter] >> Okay. Cyberdyne, not yet real. Just give it a minute. Rekor, real. >> All right. Second pair, uh Vax Tor Technologies or Honka Robotics? >> Okay. >> [laughter] >> Okay, I was wrong. This is hard. Um that >> [sighs and gasps] >> Vax Tor sounds realer a little, but only because robotics is What am I How am I doing? >> Good. Good. Vax Tor is realer. Honka Robotics is from Ghost in the Shell. Uh >> [laughter] [gasps] >> Ah, okay. Okay. I have not seen Ghost in the Shell in a long time, so that makes sense. >> Okay, ready for three? Okay, three. We have Genentech Security or Mayweather Security. >> Goodness. Uh Mayweather is real. >> I I'm I'm sad to report that Mayweather Security is from Grand Theft Auto. >> I haven't played Grand Theft Auto in like a couple of revisions. Oh, that's funny. Um okay. Wow, this is a good this you I actually like I always thought there were like five LPR companies. I thought you were just going to get them all right. >> Oh. >> There are so many more. There's so many more. I I yeah. I already said some of the most famous ones. >> There's so many more. I I yeah. I already said some of the most famous ones. This is This one should be tough. Uh okay, which one is real? Third Eye Inc. or I Omniscient Corporation? >> Well, neither of them should be real. Why would you name yourself that? >> Okay, I I do want to give you a little guidance, which is that >> Okay. >> Uh you didn't ask, but the way that the that third eye is spelled is numeral three, lowercase d, e y e, Inc. >> Okay, then Okay, well then that one's real. That's how they do it in Silicon Valley, right? Right? >> You are correct. In this case, THEY'RE BOTH REAL. >> OH GOD. WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS? They're both One of them is Third Eye and the other one's What? >> I Omniscient Corporation. They're not hiding it. It It's not a secret. >> No, apparently not. I mean again, I I thought you were going to say Vigilant, which is like a very well-known one that I think now is Motorola, I'm not sure. >> Let's just give some some shout-outs. Shout-out to Axon. >> Just shout-out to Axon, also in the running here. Uh >> [laughter] >> maker maker creator of the Taser, Axon. Um that was really fun, and that was a lot harder than I thought. And you rigged it at the end, so >> rig it. Yeah. Uh but you got three out of four, which I think is an excellent showing. >> Thank you. >> [music] >> Thank you. >> And now, events and opportunities. Here's how people can connect with EFF in the weeks to come. Tomorrow, September 17th, be sure to catch our Affecting Change livestream, How to Build a Decentralized Web That Truly Works for All. On the stream, we'll be talking about the Fediverse and what it would take to build an internet where people and communities have real choices. In October, you can spot EFF at TechCrunch Disrupt. We'll have a membership table where you can learn more about our work. Be sure to use our discount code TCEFF numeral two numeral five disrupt if you grab a ticket for yourself. Later in October, you can also find us at BSidesPDX in Portland, Oregon. Stop by our table, where we'll be spreading the word about our efforts to protect digital privacy and free expression online. 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