Frequently Asked Questions About ALPRs
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The City has placed cameras at most major intersections, highway access points, parks, libraries, rec centers.
Other places using Flock or ALPRs include HOAs, hospitals, apartment complexes, universities, and major retailers. Those solar arrays in the parking lot of your local home improvement store? Yep, that’s an ALPR.
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We’re disappointed with the lack of transparency too.
Carrollton has published very limited details about the contracts with Flock Safety. All contracts have been pushed through as part of the Consent Agenda at various city council meetings, with no public comments; limited information has been shared in those meeting minutes or on the City websites.
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We’d like to know this too! Carrollton has not disclosed any data retention policies related to ALPR tracking. Flock’s website says they only retain 30 days of data, but cities can opt to retain this information for longer.
Normally, obtaining this much data about someone’s whereabouts would require a warrant (example: tracking your cell phone is not legal without a judge’s review and approval).
US Supreme Court justices have already described how automated surveillance “evades the ordinary checks that constrain abusive law enforcement practices: limited police resources and community hostility.” (Sotomayor, US v Jones (1/23/2012)) and stated that “a person does not surrender all Fourth Amendment protection by venturing into the public sphere.” (Roberts, Carpenter v US (2018)).
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Not many!
Flock makes clear that the data their systems store is not theirs, but their subscribing agencies’.
Each agency that uses Flock sets their own policies. Carrollton has not disclosed any policies about whether there are ongoing audits of the database searches CPD and other users perform. They also haven’t disclosed whether policies exist describing what activity is considered appropriate/not. Of course, enforcing policies to safeguard citizens’ data is completely up to the individual agencies.
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Other local jurisdictions have a Flock Transparency Portal, while Carrollton Police Department has not published data on the programs.
When asked via email “Is there data [from CPD] demonstrating the effectiveness of this program in the past year?”, a representative from CPD responded “We don’t have any data on this.”
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The Flock system is designed to encourage data sharing among all agencies, and there’s no way for CPD to guarantee that the users in other agencies are following best practices.
Officers have used Flock software and cameras to stalk ex-partners and romantic interests in jurisdictions such as Orange County, CA; Louisville, KY; Shelby County, TN; and Milwaukee, WI.
Other questions you may have:
Why should I care? I don't have anything to hide.
Location data is a treasure trove for advertisers, bad actors, foreign governments, and more.
Even with only 30 days of data, you can readily track when someone’s home/away, attends church, when their kids are at school/camp, if you’re home alone - it’s a clear safety issue, with no way for us to opt out.
Really, everyone has “something to hide”. Whether it’s a trip to the doctor because you’re worried about that weird flutter your heart’s been making lately, a discreet trip to the divorce lawyer after you found those text messages, a meeting with a therapist or your pastor when you’re in a difficult season…. everybody has moments, decisions, and conversations that are just plain nobody else’s business.
What happens if Flock gets hacked?
While Flock advertises its security and data privacy, its cameras are easily hacked. Really easily. Your information is not safe with Flock.
Even if Flock’s cameras were properly secured, your data is still at risk. Any user with a login at the local police department is a potential target for shoulder surfing or credential phishing.
Plus, most PDs don’t have the robust cybersecurity infrastructure needed to defend their systems against a targeted attack, whether the attack is coming from a foreign government such as China or an ordinary hacker.
Unfortunately, because Flock is designed around data sharing, we can’t control for this risk. When another entity using Flock is hacked, Carrollton citizens’ data will be exposed too.
Are we safe without ALPRs?
According to the City’s own website, yes!
The FBI says we’re a safe place to live too! Carrollton has among the lowest rates of violent crime in the entire state. The linked report uses data from before Carrollton rolled out Flock - we’re already safe.
More here.
And here.
But I keep seeing that I “have no right to privacy in public”?
This is a common, dismissive, argument that ALPR supporters like our very own police department use to push back on concerns about these surveillance systems. It really misses the point, though.
No reasonable person expects that they’ll never be seen, photographed, or videotaped in public. We all understand that the officer driving by us will check out our plate, and of course you can be seen when you walk down the street.
But there’s a heck of a difference between being seen or photographed once, and being tracked over time. An officer seeing your car once is materially different from a system capturing your vehicle’s location repeatedly, on every trip to the dry cleaner, grocery store, school run, work, church, and more - and then storing all of those timestamped, geolocated photos just in case they need it later.
A reasonable person understands these two things aren’t the same. Take a look at our page about trends at the Supreme Court, and you’ll see that we aren’t the only ones who understand this difference.