ALPR Maker Flock Broke Laws Repeatedly While Installing Cameras, Courting Cop Shops

(Mis)Uses of Technology

from the this-actually-isn't-irony dept

Amazon’s home surveillance tech acquisition, Ring, wanted to be all things to everyone. But mostly, it wanted to be BFFs with law enforcement.

Providing homeowners with an easy way to surveil their own doorsteps and driveways was enough for Ring for a little while. Then, following its acquisition by Amazon, it began to portray itself as an essential addition to government surveillance networks. Ring promised cops easy access to recordings captured by devices mounted on private residences, giving officers “free” cameras to hand out to taxpayers — each one bearing the implicit suggestion that any footage gathered by “free” doorbell cams should be considered property of citizens’ government benefactors, rather than their own.

Flock, the private sector purveyor of automated license plate readers, followed the same pattern. It pitched its products to gated communities and homeowners’ associations, promising them an effortless way to deter those not paying HOA fees from passing unnoticed into the interiors of their walled gardens.

While Flock was initially happy to increase the assholish nature of the inordinately wealthy, it soon developed a thirst for real money. It started pitching its ALPRs to government agencies, hoping to secure lucrative contracts that contained the potential to generate revenue streams unlikely to be interrupted any time before the turn of the next century.

Public money is often steady money. Flock recognized this. And, according to this report by Thomas Brewster and Cyrus Farviar for Forbes, it knew exactly how to ingratiate itself with law enforcement: by breaking a few laws. After all, few entities have less respect for laws than those enforcing them.

Company communications with state transportation agencies obtained via public records requests, and interviews with more than half a dozen former employees, suggest that in its rush to install surveillance cameras in the absence of clear regulatory frameworks, Flock repeatedly broke the law in at least five states. In two, state agencies have banned Flock staff from installing new cameras.

The company claims it’s on a mission to “reduce crime” in this country. Not its own, apparently. In its hurry to expand it market, Flock tended to ignore regulatory requirements meant to discourage companies from installing cameras where they weren’t welcome, or where they couldn’t be installed safely.

With its general disregard for applicable laws exposed, Flock has gone on the defensive. Its statement to Forbes suggests it’s doing its best but laws are just so darn complicated these days.

Responding to a detailed list of questions, Flock spokesperson Josh Thomas told Forbes that the company has nearly 50 people dedicated to permitting and “operates to the best of our abilities within the bounds of the law.” He said that since jurisdictional boundaries are not always clear, Flock didn’t always know when and where it should be applying for a permit. “For the tens of thousands of permits we have applied for, and the tens of thousands of locations that do not require permits, we have certainly not been perfect,” Thomas said. “But we try to respond and fix any issues, or we make the effort to retropermit as needed.”

Some sympathy is warranted. Regulatory laws are generally referred to as “thickets” or “impenetrable wall of text boilerplate nightmares.” There are a lot of hoops to jump through, plenty of boxes to tick, and a variety of other red tape analogies to satisfy. That being said, if you’re a tech company that’s decided to fully embrace the government business of law enforcement, you should be going above and beyond to ensure you’ve got everything locked down on your end.

Flock, despite its alleged “50 people” dedicated to the task of performing regulatory hoop jumps prior to deployment, has failed often enough it’s now attracting national attention. Sure, no person or entity will ever be without sin, but Flock wants to help cops cast the first stone. That’s the sort of thing that rarely goes well when you’ve decided to cast these stones from the interior of your glass house.

Sure, it’s one thing for me, a private citizen and contributor to Techdirt, to have exceeded my regulatory allowance of mixed metaphors. It’s quite another when a public company decides to mix its business and pleasure by bedding down with any cop shop that will have it while failing to ensure it’s complied with all applicable laws. At best, it just looks sloppy. At worst, it looks like the sloppiest form of collusion — the kind that assumes all will be forgiven because Flock is now (by extension) in the business of law enforcement.

Haste makes waste, Flock is now learning, presumably after promising agencies in compromising positions that it would be the best thing that has ever happened to them.

In South Carolina, State Transportation Secretary Christy Hall told Forbes that since spring 2022, her staff has found more than 200 unpermitted Flock cameras during routine monitoring of public roads. In July 2023, the agency put a moratorium on new installations and ordered a safety and compliance review of all Flock cameras across the state.

I’m no business talking guy, but it’s pretty hard to expand your market when you’ve been locked out of it after pissing off regulators, including state representative Todd Rutherford, who told Forbes Flock is apparently “willing to break the law to install these cameras.”

Directly north of this state, things aren’t going any better for Flock. As Brewster and Farivar report, Flock was hit with an injunction forbidding it from installing new cameras after it was sued by the North Carolina Department of Public Safety over its refusal to obtain licensing for its camera installations.

Not that this constant illegality appears to bother those in the literal business of law enforcement:

But as state officials grumbled, cops raved — and kept buying. Tim Martin, a former police officer in Huntington Beach, California, was an early user of Flock’s surveillance cameras and described them as” one of the greatest technological advancements” of his career. 

And that’s the bigger problem — one regulators won’t easily be able to change. It rarely seems to matter to law enforcement agencies if their preferred tech providers violate laws. All that really seems to matter to these agencies is whether or not the tech makes it easier to engage in mass surveillance or enables performing more police work via keyboard and monitor, rather than by actually going out and engaging with the people they serve.

The truth is cops are as antagonistic towards over-regulation as the average small business owner. The difference is law enforcement agencies will look the other way while companies they like bypass regulations. Then they’ll go out and enforce these same laws against businesses they don’t like. Police officials will complain about red tape slowing down their valuable work (and, far too often, this “red tape” includes such things as constitutional rights) but are always willing to wrap others up with it because it gives the impression they actually care about laws and enforcement.

Flock is simply reading the signals being sent by its preferred customers and acting accordingly. And, no matter what’s happening now, it will lose ZERO law enforcement customers because it thumbs its nose at regulators. If anything, this demonstrates to cops that Flock is one their own: willing to respect the law only when it works in its favor.

Filed Under: alpr, law enforcement, license plate readers, surveillance
Companies: flock