(The Center Square) – Thousands of AI-powered Flock cameras across Florida track drivers’ locations and identify features of their vehicles every day. But smart phones’ data collection often goes far deeper. Where do consumers draw the line?
DeFlock, a project that maps ALPR installations and advocates against their use, has identified more than 8,000 Flock cameras in Florida.
ALPRs photograph passing vehicles and extract information including license plate numbers, time and location.
Over 5,000 law enforcement agencies, 1,000 businesses, and 6,000 home owners’ associations have employed their use according to Flock Safety, the company that sells the technology.
In Florida, some of the places that first welcomed Flock are having buyers’ remorse. Sumter County suspended the use of Flock cameras after it came to light that a detective had abused the databases.
Elsewhere, a Lake City Council Member tried to push for a nonbinding referendum on the ballot to let voters weigh in on their use. His resolution was shot down after the police chief told the council the Flock system had made a significant contribution to reducing gun violence in the city.
Still, concerns over abuse and privacy have led to Flock Safety announcing updates this month designed to improve privacy, accountability, and security.
But while the battle over Flock cameras is waged, there’s a smaller and much more prevalent source of location tracking and data farming that is not facing the same debate: the smart phone that approximately 91% of Americans use every day, according to Pew Research.
While it’s widely known that smart phones track users’ locations, privacy advocates say consumers are generally unaware of how their location data is shared with third parties and could be subject to increased surveillance when that data is shared with law enforcement, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Flock cameras can collect information while a driver goes past them, but the smart phone riding inside the vehicle can reveal the driver’s location data through mobile signal tracking from towers, cell site simulators, wi-fi and Bluetooth tracking, and location information leaks from apps and websites.
One important distinction is how police obtain the information. The U.S. Supreme Court has generally required warrants for law enforcement to obtain historical cell-site location information from wireless carriers. Police searches of existing ALPR databases have not traditionally carried the same warrant requirement.
“The most prevalent threat to our privacy is the slow, steady, relentless accumulation of relatively mundane data points about how we live our lives,” wrote Managing Director of Electronic Frontier Foundation Gennie Gebhart and EFF Special Advisor Bennett Cyphers in a report on the technology of corporate surveillance. “This includes things like browsing history, app usage, purchases, and geolocation data. These humble parts can be combined into an exceptionally revealing whole.”
The comparison doesn’t downplay privacy concerns tied to ALPRs. The company points to examples of crime prevention and case solving. Critics like the ACLU argue less than 1% of cars scanned by ALPRs are connected to any crime.
When Flock recommended cutting down data retention periods from 30 days to just 7 days along with other changes, CEO Garrett Langley went further saying legislators need to do their part to steward the technology.
“Mandate real auditing on every law enforcement data system. Raise the penalties for misuse,” Langley said.
