Dear Commissioners / Council members:
Flock cameras and automated license plate readers were approved by our commissioners or city council and installed in our communities. Since then, they have been used alongside ICE and federal agents to carry out clearly unconstitutional immigration "enforcement." They have been used to track women who had abortions. Officers have even used them to follow former partners and to stalk other people for personal reasons.
Recent audits of our local data confirm what national reporting has shown all year. The information these cameras collect is available not only to police departments across the country, but to ICE. We are turning into a mass surveillance nation. Is that really what we want?
Residents across the political spectrum already feel their data is exposed, both to every level of government and to private companies, some of them based overseas. In Norfolk, Virginia, residents are now suing their city, arguing that installing ALPRs violates the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches.
Flock is a private company with one goal: to make money. It is partially funded by Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, which also bankrolls Palantir, a surveillance tool used by ICE and Border Patrol to target migrants. Flock has been caught in national reporting making one false statement after another about its technological controls and security. Researchers have shown Flock cameras can be hacked with simple tools in under a minute. There is no way to secure the data this faulty technology collects, and handing the current federal government more of our private travel data is dangerous and unacceptable.
Your job is to protect the people who live here. That means protecting our constitutional rights, our privacy, and our safety, including our travel data. The only acceptable option is to cancel the contract and remove the cameras. Doing so protects residents' privacy and spares the city a costly civil liberties lawsuit like the ones already underway in San Jose, Oakland, and Norfolk.
We have to stop building mass surveillance infrastructure, especially under a government that leans this far toward authoritarianism. Please cancel the Flock contract right away and take the cameras down. If they cannot come down at once, cover them, and hold public hearings on this urgent question of data security and civil rights.
Yours truly,
[Your name]
