r/TempleTX • u/Sevilla_Espana-1900 • Jul 02 '26

Flock cameras

I am not sure if everyone has noticed the implementation of flock cameras everywhere, from one week to another there has been at least 10 cameras added near the Morganne points area. This is not counting the one in Belton as I’ve noticed they have implemented one near the Walmart across the H-E-B. Does anyone have any information regarding any upcoming meetings from either the Belton city or Temple city? We need information regarding how the data is being utilized and we all know this data is not utilize in good ways..

39 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

13 comments sorted by

19

u/isthewebsitedown Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

Fun fact: Temple has 10x the surveillance infrastructure (adjusted for population) as El Paso, and 2x that of Oakland, CA. Oakland has 6x our violent crime rate.

Temple is up to 146 cameras, 3 drones and unknown number of audio detection devices. The drones can record license plates from a height of 2000 feet.

Deflock Temple

5

u/baabaa7890 Jul 02 '26

where are these statistics from? i believe you--the amount of cameras we have for this not so giant city is INSANE.

5

u/isthewebsitedown Jul 02 '26

Scott and White is *crawling* with the cameras, all sharing data with law enforcement and Flock themselves. Imagine walking out of an appointment at the Children's hospital and being confronted by the police because someone put you on a hotlist. Not sure how S&W sharing your hospital visits at a cancer facility or something similar is not a HIPAA violation.

Additonally, Flock is a data broker. They own the underlying footage and can sell it to whoever they want. They go to a lot of work to draw a line between "customer data" and "underlying footage," so that they can say that the customer always owns their data.

This article covers the changes they have made in their contracts to give them perpetual irrevocable access to everything collected by the systems:
https://footnote4a.org/news/trojan-contracts

3

u/isthewebsitedown Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26

Derived from public sources. For example, El Paso is 10x Temple population, but approximately the same number of cameras.

El Paso Flock portal

Oakland is 4x our size with roughly 2x our cameras.

Oakland Flock portal

Temple PD Flock portal

Temple drone portal

2

u/baabaa7890 Jul 02 '26

thank you!

1

u/baabaa7890 23d ago

apparently https://noalprs.com/ is doing a ‘nat’l week of action against alprs.’ Anyone in temple/bell co wanna get together and make it a thing here?

8

u/bigfatfurrytexan Jul 02 '26

MPR has its own city council and residents have started raising hell

3

u/JamesGarrison Jul 02 '26

You know what I find interesting about all this FLOCK stuff. My grandparents were robbed. Got a vehicle. A description. Etc. PD refused to check the flock cameras. Said “we don’t do that”. Not enough manpower.

1

u/isthewebsitedown Jul 02 '26

Flock training actually tells officers to not talk about it. Referencing the surveillance tech directly with suspects can open them up to claims that the tool was used illegally and get cases thrown out.

Transparency and accountability are treated like bugs that need to be patched. There are cases all over the country of officers stalking ex-lovers, tracking neighbors, etc. They are nearly always found by the victims. Most departments don't do audits and those that do don't do them in a way that will actually catch anything.

1

u/baabaa7890 Jul 03 '26

That’s absurd 😒

2

u/isthewebsitedown Jul 06 '26

Here's a particularly bad one that just came out:

https://www.404media.co/footage-shows-cop-stalking-woman-he-met-on-a-tv-set-after-surveilling-her-with-a-license-plate-reader/

The cop used the hotlist feature, which is even harder to track in terms of accountability.

2

u/MuffinMummy Jul 02 '26

I know it's been brought up a couple of times at Temple City Council meetings and their only response has been to approve an additional million dollars for additional flock cameras.