Flock Security likes
to describe its national private network of cameras and license plate scanners as a public safety boon. “I can think of no greater mission than rescuing our children,”
tweeted
Flock CEO Garrett Langley, sharing a promotional company video. “Another child rape suspect located and arrested with help from Flock,” chief strategy officer Rahul Sidhu
posted
last month. Last week, venture capital firm and Flock investor Andreessen Horowitz
put
the company’s benefits in civilizational terms: “Flock eliminates crime. Decline is a choice.”
Though Flock’s investors and executives insist its surveillance dragnet thwarts the most serious of crimes, it turns out police are also using the company’s technology to go after some of the pettiest possible offenses: curfew violations, loitering, and simply being homeless.
License Plate Surveillance, Courtesy of Your Homeowners Association
When police seek footage from Flock’s more than 120,000 cameras nationwide, they select a category of crime corresponding with the alleged offense they are investigating, such as hit-and-run or burglary. Among the choices is the supposed crime of being suspicious in public, formally categorized by Flock as “Curfew/Loitering/Vagrancy Violations.”
Records obtained from the police department in Plano, Illinois, reveal that law enforcement agencies nationwide have tapped into cameras in that small town — and thousands more cameras elsewhere — more than 1,200 times while investigating alleged “Curfew/Loitering/Vagrancy Violations.”
As this data set reflects only searches of Flock cameras operated by Plano police alone, this is assuredly just a tiny fraction of the total number of “Curfew/Loitering/Vagrancy Violations” investigations using Flock nationwide. Records hosted by the website Have I Been Flocked? — which aggregates such logs — show
hundreds more
of these loitering searches in other states.
The Plano searches were conducted by police depart
… [more]
