With cheese, spray cans and saws: vandalism against flock cameras in the USA

The cameras from Flock are installed all over the USA and capture cars and even people.

Abuse scandals and the persecution of innocent people are commonplace.

As discontent among the population grows, vandalism of the cameras increases.

The USA is a country that is extremely politically divided.

But there is one thing that seems to irritate Republicans and Democrats alike: it is the increasing surveillance in public spaces.

The company Flock Safety has been setting up so-called ALPRs throughout the country for years.

The abbreviation stands for Automated License Plate Readers.

This refers to cameras that are located on various poles throughout the country.

According to Deflock.org's incomplete count, there are 130,000 ALPRs set up in the states and they record up to 20 billion vehicles per month using AI.

Mainly the license plate, the date, the place and the time are recorded, but also the model of the car, the color and other identifying features such as damage to the car and stickers, which can then be searched for by police officers in a US-wide database - all without major effort and without a court order.

The license plates that have already been recorded are then compared with the data from the flock cameras.

The first camera from Flock was set up in 2017.

Since then the company has grown rapidly.

In 2022 the company was worth 3.5 billion US dollars, today it is already 8.4 billion.

Flock is not the biggest player on the market, as Axon Enterprise already has a market value of around 40 billion.

However, the license plate capture business is continuously growing and works via a subscription model.

Setting up the cameras is included in the subscription model and is taken care of by Flock.

More surveillance?

Certainly not!

All just to prevent crime?

Although Flock does everything it can to create a good image and aims to end crime, Flock cameras have become increasingly unpopular among the population in recent years.

This is due to various factors: In addition to constant surveillance, scandals repeatedly became public.

At least 50 police officers are said to have abused the system to stalk their (ex-)partners.

In addition, the software is not error-free when it comes to recording license plates.

In a period of just two months, there have been over 161 cases in which the LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) alone stopped innocent people.

For example, a 23-year-old Florida woman spent 13 days in jail for driving a black Dodge Durango that was linked to a hit-and-run accident through the Flock system.

The company itself always sells Flock as pure ALPR, i.e. as a system that only records the license plates of the cars.

However, the news site 404 Media pointed out that at least a hundred officers did not simply search for license plates, but also wrote terms in the search bar that they wanted to use to search for people instead of cars.

The migrant background or characteristics of a political attitude played a particular role in the terms.

AI video surveillance at Kottbusser Tor: The next step towards a surveillance state The mood is changing Many Americans have changed their minds recently.

According to a YouGov survey, 46 percent are against the use of the cameras and 38 percent are in favor.

In the previous result, 33 percent were against and 45 percent were in favor, i.e. exactly the opposite values.

Speaking to Der Spiegel, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) senior policy analyst Matthew Guariglia said: “Automatic license plate recognition systems are gateways to a surveillance network.

The cameras are used not only to fight crime, but also to track down people who behave completely lawfully.” According to the US civil rights organization American Civil Liberties Union, some participants in anti-Trump demonstrations mask themselves or leave their cell phones at home so as not to be identified.

There is also solid resistance to the flock ALPRs: ALPRs have been directly attacked in at least 36 of the 50 US states.

The cameras have been dismantled and stolen, destroyed or the lens spray-painted, the pole on which they are mounted has been sawed off or driven over, the cables have been cut, and even the solar panels have been smeared with cheese to stop the power supply.

Congressional candidate Adam Lee Heimerman of Lenoir City, Tennessee, is said to have shot four ALPRs with a shotgun and then raised $14,000 for legal costs through a solidarity campaign. “Gotham” – Surveillance and discrimination on a whole new scale Vandalism on TikTok There are also numerous videos on social media that humorously explain how you can destroy flock cameras.

However, these postings are being tracked by authorities and police presence near ALPRs is being increased.

All the pressure from the population is also bearing fruit.

Because Flock recently announced that the data will be deleted after 7 days instead of 30 days.

A checking system is to be introduced that reports suspicious queries by police officers, and cities should in future be able to decide for what purpose other authorities are allowed to search their cameras.

It remains to be seen whether these changes, which are due to come into force by the end of the year, will appease the population.

In particular, the question of whether and when the immigration agency ICE will have full access to the data remains a cause for concern for many.

In Denver, there were more than 1,400 immigration-related queries in 11 months, prompting the city to cancel the service and switch to Axon due to suspicions that ICE was using the infrastructure for its own purposes.

But it is questionable whether it is enough to simply change provider.

Dave Maass from the Electronic Frontier Foundation warns against this.

He said: Anyone who gets rid of Flock and switches to Axon or Motorola has gained nothing - Motorola may even be more problematic: A subsidiary of the company sells license plate data to lenders, insurers and debt collection companies.

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