EFF on license plate reading cameras

Flock surveillance cameras used in the United States have been under fire recently . Flock Safety, the embattled mass surveillance technology provider, has announced a series of new reforms aimed at calming the justified national outrage that has led dozens of cities to cancel or suspend their contracts with the company for automated license plate readers (ALPR).

The reforms are a combination of overdue changes along with some cosmetic fixes that do not address the fundamental risks of this technology.

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Reacting to Flock's "reforms," ​​an EFF statement reads, "Too little, too late."

The EFF reports

To be clear, our position has long been that police, at a minimum, must have a warrant, signed by a judge, in order to search historical ALPR data for specific vehicles. To us, it’s common sense: if police want to delve into historical ALPR data as if they were going back in time to track your visits, they need a warrant.

Also, nothing is stopping Flock from undoing these latest reforms.

All of this leads to the biggest and most important issue:

We shouldn’t let companies decide how much privacy we deserve… It shouldn’t be up to Flock or any other ALPR vendor to decide how long police can collect and retain data on millions, if not hundreds of millions, of innocent citizens. We need lawmakers to step up and pass laws that limit police use of surveillance technology.

After all, the surveillance business model is the problem, and a few spontaneous reforms imposed by companies are not going to change that.

At city council meetings, citizens flock to protest the cameras being installed. In Huntington, West Virginia, a small town in the heart of the Appalachians, a man went viral online when he stood up at a city council meeting and said , “I’m not going to waste your time. I’m a little hungry. But one last thing: Each Flock camera has about 2-3 pounds of copper and about 1-2 grams of gold. Do whatever you want with that information.”

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Although the press releases will range from very select to rare, I said I'd pass...because sometimes the editors hide.