Deflock Williamsburg

What is Flock?

Flock Safety provides automated license plate readers to police departments across the nation. These cameras are spread across high-traffic junctions and capture millions of photographs of cars as they drive around, tracking every car and license plate. These are then made available to the police department for searches without a warrant.

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Why is Flock bad?

Everywhere you drive is being tracked in a police database with little to no oversight and a huge amount of data sharing. Every drive you make is tracked, recorded, and analyzed, accessible to Flock's vast data-sharing network.

Within Virginia, these logs are searchable by any Virginia police officer, no matter the reasoning - there's been dozens of examples of password-sharing, which can enable stalking or silence of political dissent. Your driving patterns can be deemed as "suspicious", and used as pretense for further investigations.

This warrantless mass surveillance is bad for privacy, liberty, and democracy.

To be clear, this is beyond "you have no expectation of privacy in public". Federal courts have already ruled in Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department that constant public surveillance is unconstitutional. This is a problem for today, because the creation of these tools are ripe for abuse, whether that's today or in the future.

Some articles:

  • Flock Safety uses overseas gig workers in the Philippines to build out their surveillance AI. Photographs and videos of you and your family, annotating and categorizing vehicle makes, colors, types, "audio tasks" like screaming or crying, and even race. Source
  • Flock Safety had logins exposed in malware infections, triggering calls for an FTC investigation. Source
  • ICE, Secret Service, Navy All Had Access to Flock's Nationwide Network of Cameras. Source
  • Flock Safety violated state law by allowing federal officers to access ALPR data. Source
  • Flock Cameras illegally used for immigration enforcement by ATF officials in Richmond, VA. Source
  • Flock Cameras illegally used for immigration inforcement across Fairfax, Chesterfield, Isle of Wight, Loudoun and Stafford, VA. Source
  • Research showed that Flock's cameras misread 1 in 10 plates scanned. Source
  • There have been many cases of Flock camera readings mistakenly reading plates, leading to families being held at gunpoint on the asphalt by police. This is rarely rectified and leads to costly settlements.

How bad is the CEO of Flock Safety?

  • He told the Staunton, VA Chief of Police that criticism of Flock is merely people trying to “turn a public records process into a weapon against you and against us” (source). Under no circumstances should a vendor be telling local police not to listen to the communities they serve, nor to treat valid government transparency requests as malicious.
  • He also called a group of concerned citizens just like us, who are merely critical of widespread warrantless surveillance and track the spread of these public, tax-funded cameras, a "Terrorist Organization" (source). Yes, that's right, Flock Safety is permitted to surveil Americans' every move, but when we do the same to the cameras, we're terrorists.
  • He has been known to "lie to the face" of City Councils about vendor details (source)
  • He claims to be able to "eradicate almost all crime in the US" within 10 years, as long as everyone signs enormous contracts with Flock Safety (source)

How bad is Flock in Williamsburg, VA?

Very bad. The worst in any other county in Virginia by a wide margin. Within just Williamsburg's small borders, there are at least 30 Flock cameras. According to public contracts, Williamsburg was an early adopter of Flock, starting out with a free pilot program in 2021 before signing a $57,000 yearly contract, expanding to $74,000 a year in 2023, finally signing a 5 year contract at a grand total of $370,000. In 2024 there was an additional addon signed, at a yearly extra cost of $12,000. As Flock Safety continues to expand, they will push to upsell and use more of your tax dollars to spy on you.

See some stats below on how many homes cannot reach each amenity type without crossing at least one Flock camera (source: ALPRAnalysis.com analysis for Williamsburg, VA)

What can I do about it?

You can reach out to your local Williamsburg City Council to voice your disapproval for this surveillance method, and ask for the City of Williamsburg to cancel their contract.

Click the link below to write an email to the relevant parties. Simply add your name and address to the first line, and click send.

Draft email to councilpeople