Flock cameras need constitutional guardrails
Flock Safety cameras are spreading rapidly across American communities, giving police a powerful new way to identify vehicles and reconstruct where people have traveled. Supporters see an effective crime-fighting tool. Critics see a surveillance network expanding faster than lawmakers and the public can establish rules for its use.
Public resistance is growing, too, with residents in some communities damaging the cameras, as happened recently in Havelock, North Carolina.
HaveIBeenFlocked.com and DeFlock.org are two sites s helping citizens scrutinize the spread of automated license-plate readers. The first is making police audit logs searchable and the second is mapping camera locations across the country, while providing plenty of commentary on the threats these cameras pose to rights and individual privacy.
Critics argue that the Fourth Amendment should protect Americans from having their daily movements tracked and stored by the government without a warrant. Some critics have gone so far as to compare these camera networks to the surveillance state of the former East German Stasi.
Clearly, there is evidence the technology can help police but the consequences can be dire or even deadly when they get it wrong.
The video below reveals why those questions matter.
Also, Connor Boyack recently raised the broader concern in his essay, “Flock’s CEO Said the Quiet Part Out Loud.” Boyack acknowledges that these systems can help solve crimes. His warning is that the understandable desire for safety cannot become a blank check for building a nationwide surveillance network. He calls for warrant requirements, short data-retention periods, and public audits of how these systems are used.
—Ray Nothstine
— The Federalism Beat