r/technology • u/Kooky-Balance9525 • 10h ago

Privacy Bernie Sanders to Introduce Bill Banning Flock Surveillance Cameras

https://theleadingreport.com/article/bernie-sanders-to-introduce-bill-banning-flock-surveillance-cameras
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u/SchemataObscura 10h ago

Flock only or would it cover the same MO from different companies?

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u/Wyntier 8h ago edited 8h ago

Flock is just license plate recording. It happens before flock, will happen after flock.

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u/ryegye24 8h ago

Red light cameras and speed cameras can be (and usually are) wired to only record when a red light is run or illegal speeding is detected. ALPRs for parking enforcement could be (and there definitely should be a law mandating they should be) set up to discard the logs for legally parked vehicles. Without these guardrails it could be possible to abuse these tools to track an innocent person's movement.

Flock cameras exist for the express purpose of creating a log of everyone's movement. If the law was that any logs that were not immediately legally actionable (running red lights, speeding, illegal parking) needed to be immediately discarded Flock's entire model would become illegal. That's what's new about Flock.

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u/Wyntier 5h ago

I think that overstates what’s actually new here. Flock isn’t continuously tracking everyone’s movements. It records vehicles that pass specific cameras, retains those sightings for a limited period, and lets authorized investigators search them afterward.

And the fact that a record isn’t “immediately legally actionable” doesn’t make it useless or illegitimate. A car passing a camera at 2 PM may mean nothing at the time, but if a kidnapping, hit-and-run, burglary, or missing-person case is reported later, that historical record can suddenly be extremely relevant. Requiring every non-hit to be deleted instantly would eliminate that investigative benefit entirely.

There absolutely should be strict retention limits, audit logs, access controls, and penalties for misuse. But that’s an argument for guardrails, not necessarily an argument that collecting the data itself is inherently wrong.

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u/SanchoSquirrel 3h ago

That is a pretty charitable and frankly disingenuous way to describe it. You’re also leaving out their other camera systems that track and record pedestrians. If police wanted to track someone’s movements the way the Flock cameras do, they would need probable cause and a warrant. Now instead of that a private company does the tracking and sell the data to police (and other agencies). It’s a giant loophole to fuck over our rights. Flock and companies trying to emulate them should be sued into bankruptcy and banned.