Lexington’s Flock safety cameras a wolf in sheep’s clothing in more ways than one | Opinion
Lexington Fayette Urban County Council is set to vote Thursday night on a five-year, $1.6 million contract for automated license plate readers (ALPR) through Flock, a venture capital-backed AI surveillance company with a penchant for overselling its accomplishments. First installed as a pilot program in late 2021, 100 ALPRs are currently situated throughout Lexington. They’ve been heralded as essential in helping Lexington Police Department (LPD) solve crimes, and indeed, if we are to trust LPD’s reporting on the matter, they’ve aided in the recovery of a lot of stolen vehicles.
But therein lies one of many problems. Because council and the mayor have not required an external and independent audit of the system and its use, we — the ones being surveilled — have to trust law enforcement that they are using the Flock system as they say they are, that it’s helping in the ways they claim, that the system is doing no harm in the process (the readers are wrong almost one in 10 times and cases of mistaken identity happen), that our personal data is protected, and that no officer is abusing it.
For a city that crafted the Mayor’s Commission on Racial Justice and Equality as a result of massive protests regarding police violence in 2020, such a laissez faire attitude to accountability and transparency in policing is deeply disappointing.
But there’s more.
At the council work session on Tuesday, District 1 Councilmember Tayna Fogle spoke to the reality that Flock cameras are disproportionately placed in her district and in other places with a high number of racialized and vulnerable people. LPD and Flock proponents will shrug and say, “That’s because this is where crime happens.”
Well, it’s also where the people most in need live, where redlining occurred, where there is demonstrably less economic investment, more chaotic schools, more poverty, fewer jobs, more houselessness and more housing insecurity. You know—the things that we know lead to what we call crime. Crime happens where people have been exploited and are still being exploited through private enterprise, institutional harm and government policy. That our city is choosing to invest in surveilling this reality in order to punish the results of it instead of investing more to change it upfront is also deeply disappointing.
But there’s more.
Flock has pinkie-promised to keep such data for “no more than 30 days”, but they are not legally bound to do so. What happens when the company goes public and its investors want to make bank? Flock can rewrite their privacy policy at any time, changing how they access, use, store and sell our data. I’ve never given permission to Flock (or to LPD or LFUCG) to gather any data on me when I’m out and about. Nor would I. That my elected officials deem such violations of my privacy and yours (and, arguably, the 4th amendment) fine is also deeply disappointing.
But there’s more.
Laws are rapidly changing. Accessing reproductive healthcare and trans healthcare is increasingly illegal. Book bans have made a comeback. Undocumented immigrants face increasing criminalization. ALPRs up the likelihood that vulnerable people just trying to live their lives—or save them— will lose their freedom. For a diverse city that prides itself on its progressive ways, why are we making it easier for police to pick off trans people, abortion providers or seekers, librarians on the run or undocumented immigrants? When it happens, which it most certainly will if the city moves forward with this contract, the terrible irony is that we might not even know, because our electeds don’t require an external, independent audit of how the system gets used.
In short, the Flock readers create more problems than they solve, and paying to create problems is decidedly foolish. Call your councilmember and ask that, at the very least, before they sign us up for five more years, they demand an external and independent audit of exactly how LPD uses ALPRs and our data.
Reva Russell English is an organizer, farmer and artist in Lexington.
