Florida, Man!

Fock surveillance has become so toxic that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was forced to ban the cameras from state roads.

The fact that hizonner found the stalker company too toxic to support, despite the opportunity of lucrative bribes from Flock says something.

Florida ordered Flock cameras and similar license-plate readers off state roads late Monday and by Tuesday law enforcement agencies in Osceola, Lake and Seminole counties had begun dismantling networks of the high-tech devices in their jurisdictions.

The cameras, most often manufactured by Flock Safety but also by numerous other companies, had become ubiquitous on Florida streets and, officials have argued, one of law enforcement’s most valuable tools.

But citing instances of misuse and fears of creating a surveillance state, the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday kicked off the “De-Flocking” of Florida.

“The recent exponential increase in deployments along our roadways, coupled with concerning reports of misuse, data privacy concerns and surveillance schemes merit immediate action to preserve Floridians’ sovereignty and quality of life,” the Monday memo from the Florida Department of Transportation states.

By Tuesday evening, Lake County Commissioners voted to remove license plate readers from their streets, and sheriffs in Seminole and Volusia counties said they’d pause their use, too. In Seminole, officials in Altamonte Springs, Casselberry, Lake Mary, Oviedo, Sanford, Winter Springs, and in Lake, those in Clermont and Groveland agreed to stop using them as well. In Osceola, the sheriff’s office and St. Cloud’s police department both said they’d pause using them.

When a company is so unpopular that Republicans are forced to refuse bribes, it's game over.

Grand Jury No-Bills

For once, this is not the Trump DoJ that f%$#ed this up.

In this case, the grand jury was in Ohio, and they refused to indict a man who sawed down a Flock camera.

Good.

A grand jury in Ohio has declined to indict a man charged with felony vandalism for allegedly destroying a Flock automatic license plate reader camera.

Police in Union Township, a Cincinnati suburb, accused Cody Morelock of disassembling the camera, its support pole and solar panel on June 13.

Investigators, according to WKRC-TV in Cincinnati, identified Morelock after obtaining surveillance footage from other cameras near the scene as well as information linked to a credit card and a customer rewards account.

Police estimated the damage at more than $1,000. Morelock posted a $10,000 bond and was released from custody shortly after his arrest.

A Clermont County grand jury, however, opted not to indict Morelock, and the charges were dismissed.

It is said that a prosecutor can indict a ham sandwich.

It appears that a ham sandwich with a side order of flock vandalism is a different kettle of fish. 

Today in Very Bad Fashion for a Very Good Cause

If you wondering what could motivate such an ugly sartorial statement, the answer is pretty simple: The pattern f%$#s up the ability of AI to recognize the target as a human being.

Hopefully, this isn't just someone blowing smoke up our collective asses.

Designer Simon Weckert has created a colourful camouflage shirt that cannot be detected using AI video systems.

Developed in response to a pilot project to use artificial intelligence (AI) video surveillance at Berlin's Kottbusser Tor, which starts this month, the shirt was designed to stop the user being recognised as a person.

Named Digital Camouflage, the shirt aims to confuse the AI-powered object-detection system by subverting what the system recognises as a person.

………

The shirt uses a combination of bright colours and patterns to confuse the AI systems so that it doesn't recognise what it is seeing as a person. 

 Make it so.

 

Frog March Them Out of Their Offices in Handcuffs

Once again, Flock Safety has continued to operate a camera system after their contract was canceled.

If this ain't illegal, it should be. 

The easiest way to tell that Flock Safety doesn’t really care that its massive network of ALPR (automatic license plate reader) cameras is being abused by cops to stalk their exes and harass residents is to judge it by its actions. When confronted with court case after court case detailing these allegations (and those are just the cops who actually got caught!), the company says two things: first, we’re not personally responsible for the actions of “bad apples” and second, some vague “fixes” are on the way at some indeterminate point in the future.

The other way you can tell Flock doesn’t care about anything but future profitability is this: when cities pull the plug on Flock systems due to local backlash, Flock has — one more than one occasion! — decided to to simply turn the cameras back on.

Dayton, Ohio ended its contract with Flock following public complaints and some apparently forbidden sharing of data with federal immigration officers. But the city had to resort to covering Flock cameras with garbage bags to prevent further recordings since even the PD seemed unsure of whether or not it could actually control this function and Flock itself remained deliberately vague about when (or if!) it would be showing up to remove the recording equipment that contractually still belonged to it.

This has also happened in Menominee, Wisconsin, Evanston, Illinois, Littleton, Massachusetts, and the South Carolina Secretary of Transportation has documented hundreds of unpermitted cameras.

………

Do what now? Flock was told to remove the cameras. Instead, Flock decided this meant it could flip the on/off switch as often as it wanted to until it actually got around to removing the cameras, due to vague concerns about backlash Flock has absolutely earned.

And I can guarantee you whatever things Flock is saying at this point, it’s only saying because it got caught. I have yet to see an incident where Flock has informed cities or PDs of inadvertent activation or illegal access. In every case, it’s always Flock making excuses after the fact for things it could have done more of to prevent (illegal access) or abusive things it did itself (re-activating/re-installing cameras) that contradicted the intent of city residents and their governments. These are not the actions of a trustworthy tech provider. These are the actions of a company that clearly believes it cannot be fucked with because it has managed to corner this market.

Shut it down. 

Flock Off

Even if one approves of Flock's digital surveillance as a service as a business model, the specific business way that the conduct business, with thinly veiled bribes to public officials and attempts to cover their operations on public streets under layers of secrecy, are duplicitous.

Now, we learn that when a government decides to terminate a contract, Flock drags its feet on removing cameras as well as refuses to turn the cameras off, which is why we are now seeing municipalities covering the cameras with trash bags.

As a bonus for my reader(s) I will give you this marvelous quote from the subhed, which describes Flock as, "The herpes of the surveillance state."

Flock and other automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras continue to give AI data centers a run for their money as the least welcome presence in American communities.

Things are getting so bad that Flock Safety’s CEO, Garrett Langley, came out of the woodwork last week to apologize for his 2025 comments to Forbes where he likened anti-Flock activists and deflock.org, the site that tracks where ALPRs are placed, to “terrorists.” Calling his past remark “a mistake” and throwing some stock we see you, we hear you-type platitudes to his critics, Langley went on to insist he still believes in a world that can be filled with his probing digital eyes—”a world where we can have safety and privacy.”

………

As reported by 404 Media, the city of Verona, Wisconsin, could not get Flock to come remove the three cameras it had installed after the city council voted to not renew a contract with the surveillance company. Verona officials were instructed by Flock not to remove the cameras themselves. More concerning, after Verona officials asked for the cameras to at least be remotely disabled while they waited for the company to come collect them, a Flock employee said they were unsure if such a thing was even possible—a claim that, if true, would indicate Flock technology is outdated by a factor of decades. It wasn’t true, of course. Flock later made clear that they “can remotely deactivate [the cameras] at any time.”

But while things were still fuzzy about whether those feeds were live and when Flock actually planned to come collect their gear, Verona took matters into their own hands. The decision was made to cover the cameras with black trash bags while waiting for them to be retrieved on some indeterminate date in the future, an analog privacy hack that is catching on nationwide.

………

As Verona, Wisconsin’s council president Mara Helmke so eloquently put it in the meeting where they voted to deFlock their city, “Flock is not trustworthy, no matter what kind of guarantees they have given you… Flock has assured us that our data is ours, right? But we can’t trust that. We simply can’t.” 

Indeed.

Cover Them Up With Trash Bags

After years of misuse by the police, a 30%+ error rate, and rising public protests, the Los Angeles Police Department has elected not to renew their contract with Flock cameras.

Good.  Now address the remaining problem, that Flock will not remove the cameras and will continue to spy on innocent citizens while they lobby for a new contract. 

The Los Angeles Police Department on Saturday stopped working with a surveillance technology company over concerns about the data’s use, according to an LAPD official.

Flock Safety operates 138 pole-mounted cameras in Los Angeles, allowing authorities to track vehicles that have been reported stolen or are registered to known fugitives. It is one of a handful of vendors used by the city for automated license plate readers.

Flock has been criticized for sharing its data with state and federal officials. Advocacy groups worry that information could help President Trump’s immigration crackdown.

………

Dean Gialamas, LAPD’s chief information officer, told several news outlets that the LAPD is seeking more protections around the information collected by the agency.

“The sticking point is around having very clear terms about who owns the data, what happens with the data once they collect it,” said Gialamas.

He said the LAPD would stop using Flock “until we can get those data, privacy, security and sharing concerns ironed out through a contractual relationship.”

The LAPD signed a three-year agreement with Flock in July 2023 that was already set to expire Saturday.

………

Reports that Flock has shared license plate data with federal authorities, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has led smaller cities across the country to end their relationships with the company.


In Northern California, the city of Mountain View turned off its 30 Flock cameras in February after officials announced that federal and state law enforcement agencies had accessed city data in violation of the city’s policies.

………

Inspector General Matthew Barragan recommended in the audit that the department suspend the deployment of any new automatic license plate readers, known as ALPRs, and the execution of new contracts.

Any new contracts should go through the Board of Police Commissioners, regardless of whether the agreement includes an exchange of funds, according to the report.


“Contracts or agreements shall establish enforceable requirements governing data security, privacy, access controls, retention and auditing to protect Department ALPR data and ensure accountability for its collection, use and disclosure,” the report said.

Even if one supports the indiscriminate use of ALPRs in US cities (I do not) Flock is a toxic bad actor whose business model is secrecy and back loaded bribery to public officials.