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Liberals and conservatives can agree to hate Flock cameras. Passionately.
Caitlin Deweyis a senior writer and editor at Vox, where she helms the Today, Explained newsletter.
I passed five Flock cameras on my drive to work today, entirely without realizing it. The AI-powered license plate readers have metastasized on light poles and roadside posts across the country over the past few years, building a vast national database of vehicle movements that law enforcement agencies can access with few restrictions.
What are they doing with all that data? Who has access, and for how long? We don’t have clear answers to these questions — and lawmakers on both the right and the left increasingly want them.
Yesterday, Senate Republicans opened an inquiry into Flock’s data “collection, retention, and dissemination” practices — a first step that could eventually lead to federal regulation. State officials have also called for restrictions: The technology is “out of control,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said during a Wednesday press conference.
It is one of maybe three times, I would hazard, that DeSantis and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders have agreed on anything. Earlier this month, the independent senator also warned that Flock knows when you’re going to the doctor or dropping your kid off at school, among other things.
For many Americans, his warning was no exaggeration: There are now 120,000 Flock cameras on US roads. You can use the crowdsourced map DeFlock to check your area.
Go a little deeper #
As the existence of a crowdsourced anti-Flock map might attest…people really do not like these cameras. In Tennessee this month, one conservative county commissioner went so far as to call for the hanging of Flock’s CEO. Even data centers rarely attract that level of vitriol.
But as with data centers, both sides can find something to hate here, the longtime tech reporter Jason Koebler recently told Vox. On the right, critics typically attack the cameras as government overreach: “‘This is invasive government. This is Big Brother. Don’t surveil me,’” Koebler paraphrased.
On the left, critics frequently link the cameras to corporate surveillance, racist policing, the erosion of abortion rights, and immigration enforcement: “This protest is about more than license plate readers,” one progressive activist recently put it. “It’s about…mass surveillance as a tool for fascism and political persecution.”
The issue has surfaced in midterm races in states including Florida, Ohio, and Michigan, where some candidates have sought to link their opponents — fairly or unfairly — to Flock. In Michigan, for instance, Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed released a campaign video last week that suggested voters could “thank” his opponent for the proliferation of the cameras. That video includes footage from a hearing Rogers chaired in 2013, before Flock was even founded; Rogers has not publicly responded.
Political responsibility for the cameras is complicated, of course: Flock typically inks its contracts with cities, counties, and local police departments, which state and national lawmakers don’t approve.
But they could certainly limit the use of automated plate readers in other ways, like requiring warrants for accessing data, limiting how long information is saved, and banning the cameras near schools, churches, abortion clinics, and other sensitive places.
One link for later #
**➨ Put your phone away. **Clubs, bars, music venues, and other social spaces are increasingly hosting “phone-free” gatherings — an attempt to break free from the distraction and surveillance of our screens. These things are popping up everywhere, so chances are you can find one somewhere near you. But if not, it’s pretty easy to throw your own phone-free game night or book club, too.
Before you go… #
Did you know… that women experiencing cardiac arrest are 14 percent less likely than men to receive CPR? Bystanders are apparently less comfortable performing the procedure on people with breasts, whichhas prompted callsfor better-endowed CPR training manikins.Today’s trivia: What city serves as the headquarters of the National Collegiate Athletic Association? (You can find this and other brain puzzlesin Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.)Yesterday’s trivia: Yesterday we asked you for the stage name of the singer Paul David Hewson. That would be Bono, which isshort for “Bono Vox”— a childhood nickname inspired by a Dublin hearing-aid shop.