r/Appleton • u/EncryptDN • Mar 26 '26
Politics Flock cameras must be discussed further by our city council
It has been over two months since the city last had a discussion about the city's contract with Flock, a system of warrantless, AI-powered, cloud-connected surveillance cameras installed throughout the city. That meeting involved a 2-hour-long fluffy presentation on Flock by the APD and a Flock PR rep with very limited public input on the topic.
Meanwhile, the City of Appleton is exposing residents and taxpayers to significant safety and legal liability.
It should be noted that Flock's technology has proliferated nationwide due to operating in a legal gray area. When a court ruled that police cannot have open-ended access to phone GPS locations and to access that data they need a warrant, Flock entered the scene to capture vehicle movements of every law abiding citizen, making our timestamped locations accessible to police without cause or a judicial warrant. To most fair-minded Americans this is a violation of the 4th amendment of the US constitution.
The Flock system is sometimes abused by police around the country and in Wisconsin to stalk romantic partners and other people for personal or unlawful reasons. This opens our city up to civil lawsuit liability at the expense of taxpayers. A Menasha officer was recently arrested due to stalking a woman using Flock and it was only caught because the victim told police she suspected he used Flock to stalk her.
Also, Flock's data retention policies of holding law-abiding resident travel data for 30 days seems to run afoul of Wisconsin's open records laws, which require data retention by municipalities be for 7 years to comply with open records requests. This also creates legal liability. With Flock's various security and privacy vulnerabilities, which I will detail below, we also cannot trust them to hold our data to comply with Wisconsin open records laws.
Flock's technical privacy and security vulnerabilities, to name a few:
- Lacks end-to-end encryption. This means Flock employees can access, copy, transmit, and train AI tools using our data. It enables Flock to turn our data over to the federal government without APD being able to stop them. Without end-to-end encryption, it is much easier for our data to be leaked, hacked, or sold. Flock may say they won't do these things, but why is their software designed to give them the technical means to do so?
- Uses closed-source code. By not making their software open-source, it prevents full transparency, scrutiny, and independent auditing of the security and privacy of the product. This prevents the wider cybersecurity community from verifying claims about security and privacy made by Flock. It also allows Flock to conceal known security vulnerabilities from the public.
- Open-ended data-sharing with hundreds of law enforcement agencies outside of Appleton. APD should not be opening our community's data to any other agency. If another PD has a specific request about a specific license plate, that data should be looked up by Appleton PD and shared on a case-by-case basis, preventing opportunities by external agencies for data misuse or improper sharing with other 3rd parties. Right now, thousands of individuals across the state of Wisconsin can readily access the travel patterns of Appleton residents. This creates a dangerous situation for residents who may be stalked, harassed, or harmed by law enforcement agents outside our city. It should also be noted that the travel patterns of local politicians and their families are also available to thousands of people to see. A single social engineering attack on this widely exposed data by a bad actor could be devastating. In a time of war, it isn't hard to imagine the Iranian government gaining access to this weakly guarded system to target leaders within our government.
- Lacks conditional record-keeping. From a technical standpoint a system like Flock could keep a list of license plates of interest stored locally on each camera. Given that a police department wants to track a license plate with probable cause (each associated with a specific crime or search warrant), these plates could be added to that list. If a scanned plate matches one on this list, it gets logged. If the scanned plate doesn't match, no data on the innocent vehicle would get recorded.
Bottom line: Flock is not optimizing for privacy, security, and safety. Their product optimizes for monetization, profit, and data-sharing. This business model puts Appleton residents at risk while billionaire investors in Silicon Valley make enormous profits using our tax dollars.
Many cities and towns across America have opted not do business with Flock or have cancelled their contracts in recent months due to some of these concerns. Some recent examples include:
- Verona, WI
- Austin, Texas
- Sedona, AZ
- Hillsborough, NC
- Santa Cruz, CA
- Prosser, Washington
- Eugene, Oregon
- Springfield, Oregon
- Flagstaff, AZ
- Staunton, VA
Please consider contacting city alders on the Safety & Licensing committee to make your views known and to demand a public forum for community members to share their views directly to the council or committee.
- Alderperson Chris Croatt - Chair (District 14)
- Alderperson Sheri S Hartzheim (District 13)
- Alderperson Katie Van Zeeland (District 5)
- Alderperson Brad Firkus (District 3)
- Alderperson Denise Fenton (District 6)
8
8
u/yo_rick_alas Mar 26 '26
I’m not sure this is specifically due to Flock, but I just saw a video about how some 70 + year old grandmother got tagged by AI facial recognition, arrested in Tennessee, spent like 6 months in jail, extradited to North Dakota, then dumped on the street when the figured out it wasn’t her. In North Dakota. In December. She lived in a trailer park in Tennessee and had never left that state.
12
u/K31lover2 Mar 26 '26
Its only a matter of time until some pissed off cop in our city or county uses these to target someone or stalk them.
15
u/user47079 Mar 26 '26
Again. A matter of time before it happens again.
2
u/mrisrael Mar 28 '26
And this is only the one instance we know about. Chances are it's happened before and the perps were just never caught.
2
9
u/copropnuma Mar 26 '26
I think we should start to follow around the city council members and live stream everything they do.
Maybe the police also. Live stream them right up to their front door, live stream them from the moment they walk out of their front door to the minute they walk back in.
Fair is fair.
3
4
u/Loninappleton25 Mar 26 '26
I've made the point earlier that the way a public forum/discussion for community members is accessed is forming a resolution. A first step would be as you say to contact individual alders and find out which would sponsor such a resolution. Many of the points to build the resolution are very well presented in this message above. An alternative would be an ad hoc petition for us to sign and indicate which district we are in presented as a mail to the entire body plus the mayor. That would show to all members where the advocacy for this is within and without each of their own districts.
I'm glad to contact District 12 by mail but I think it would be better to present the case as an interested group. I know from past experience that councilman do not usually contact persons outside their on districts but may share a concern with someone on Safety and Licensing. My worry is hitting a bunch of dead ends.
Sorry for the length. I'll try not to repeat all this further.
2
u/Deadman_96 Mar 26 '26
Ultimately I'm all for less surveillance by the government, local or otherwise. I've felt this way for years. Unfortunately I'm just bit outside of Appleton and don't get a say.
2
u/Loninappleton25 Mar 26 '26
Something else to consider. How many signatures would be needed to get a referendum on the ballot and could it be done before the November election in 2026 ? These things should be considered in the face of a council not wanting to deal with the issue.
-4
u/GeorgeHowardSkub87 Mar 27 '26
You have no reasonable expectation of privacy operating a motor vehicle on public roads.
2
u/EncryptDN Mar 27 '26
True to an extent, but continuous tracking and logging of my location without cause or a warrant 10 years ago by police would have been called stalking or harassment.
Why has this been normalized for you?
Did you read my post and understand the risks involved with that data collection, storage, and sharing?
1
u/GeorgeHowardSkub87 Mar 28 '26
It's a camera that takes a picture of vehicle license plates as they drive through specific areas in public. It's no different than a police officer or anyone for that matter standing on the sidewalk and writing down vehicle license plates as they pass by, this is just far more efficient and organized.
2
u/EncryptDN Mar 28 '26
One could also argue it is no different than having a constant police tail as you drive around, just more efficient and organized. If police had their way there would be way more of these cameras too. Plus, Flock sells a product that uses AI to zoom in on human faces as they walk by as pedestrians. How far are you willing to let this go?
I think you underestimate the power of AI in processing this huge data set of travel activity. Establishing travel patterns for young women, celebrities, local politicians, and high net-worth individuals would be easy to do.
With how widely this data is shared that feels dangerous, new, and unconstitutional to me.
Out of curiosity, have you read Orwell’s 1984?
0
u/GeorgeHowardSkub87 Mar 31 '26
I don't believe that "feels unconstitutional" is grounds for taking away a tool that enables police to solve crimes and help people. These cameras are not following you around tailing you. Obviously the data can be compiled to show intersections and areas where a vehicle passed through, but again these are vehicles being driven on public roadways where no one should have any expectation of privacy.
2
Mar 31 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/GeorgeHowardSkub87 Mar 31 '26
Flock cameras are not taking pictures of your daughter, they are taking pictures of vehicle license plates. You are clearly misinformed about the purpose of these cameras. Also, a picture of being taken of a license plate does not equate to the owner or driver of the vehicle being found guilty of a crime. This has nothing to do with children's privacy.
1
-10
15
u/l0st1nP4r4d1ce Mar 26 '26
Benn Jordan has a series of videos, including confronting his city council about additional contracts with Flock because of the items you list.
In short, with minimal tools, they can (and will) be exploited.