Cops Using Flock's ALPR Network to Surveil Protesters and Activists

> camera:type fixed

> direction 340

> man_made surveillance

> surveillance:type ALPR

Which results in "Operated by: Unknown, Made by: Unknown". What am I supposed to do with that info I wonder. How would I find out if it's actually Flock or if law enforcement would actually have access to this particular camera.

And in most cases, the ones at home improvement stores are the only ones in the city. Salem (the state capital) only has them at Lowes. Eugene is an exception with many cameras (including Home Depot and Lowe's).

I'd be interested in when these cameras were placed. If recent, I'd wonder about an ICE/immigration response.

Just zooming around the map, here's a handful of citys I've seen...

Lowe's: Albany, Salem, McMinville, Vancouver WA, Fairview, Eugene, Bend, Redmond, Medford

Home Depot: Sherwood, Hillsboro, Beaverton, Cedar Mill (Beaverton), Tigard, Vancouver WA, Portland (multiple), Gresham, Oregon City

* Edit * Ah here's an article about this: https://www.404media.co/home-depot-and-lowes-share-data-from...

This is totally configurable inside Flock. It's very easy for a police department to do. Sometimes they'll argue that they need to keep sharing open because sharing is reciprocal --- that's not true (in fact, you don't even need to have Flock cameras to get access to Flock data; that's a SKU Flock has!).

We piloted Flock with open sharing (my commission got consultation for the police General Order for ALPRs in our municipality, we pushed for no sharing alongside a bunch of other restrictions, we got most of what we wanted but not the sharing stuff). When the pilot ended and the board needed a go-no-go on deployment, another push got made on sharing and we got out-of-state sharing disabled as a condition of deployment. Then at contract renewal, when the writing was on the wall that we were killing the contract†, our police department turned off all sharing.

Even if you're not worried about stuff like reproductive health care (you should be), it doesn't make sense to allow departments that don't share your General Orders direct access to your telemetry.

† I wasn't a supporter on this for complicated reasons.

https://www.cehrp.org/tags/flock-safety/