8 Reasons to Reject Flock

We already know what works to reduce harm in the community. Let’s invest in those things instead—housing, healing, healthcare.

• 94% of survey respondents agree that CAHOOTS is a good use of tax dollars, but the City of Eugene only covered 40% of their budget—and then let the program close even though the community safety payroll tax was passed in 2019 as a way to fund CAHOOTS. So where did that tax money go? Despite raising $62.4 million for 2023-2025, that tax revenue mostly went to police: CAHOOTS only got $250,000, or 0.4% of that money.
• EPD got this mass surveillance system supposedly to combat organized retail theft: a phenomenon that has a lot more news coverage than it has evidence that it occurs on a major basis. In fact, Flock Safety has lobbied to send your tax dollars to funds that “combat organized retail theft,” knowing that those funds can then be funneled to their product. It worked in Oregon, which dedicated $5 million toward organized retail theft and allocated most of the money to ALPRs. If organized retail theft really is organized, it will avoid the cameras. Meanwhile, we’ll all be tracked going to our medical appointments, dates, protests, religious and civic gatherings, and everywhere. So far, EPD has touted their use only in cases completely unrelated to retail theft, a dangerous but predictable broadening of scope. We want meaningful safety for our community! Not handouts to creepy billionaire AI companies!
• Ongoing costs will be at least $171,000 per year.

• The way the police went about this is gross: surveilling the total population of Eugene without our knowledge—let alone consent—is an extraordinary act. Now we also know that EPD Chief Skinner intentionally kept the information from the Police Commission itself until after the system was in use!
• We should have a say! There has been no effort to consult the general public or data security professionals. The police even refuse to let us know the locations of the cameras.
• As many as 22 of the cameras are set up on independent black poles with no signage—people could easily fear that just anyone had set up a spy camera. This approach presents an opportunity for anyone to buy their own ALPR and set it up under cover of the police’s secretive surveillance system.
• A dragnet surveillance project that tracks the entire driving public in Eugene/Springfield is certainly not an act of trust. The reality is that intimidation of the public is an intrinsic outcome of mass surveillance.
• Already the police are not trusted by the public. Going behind our back to introduce our community to mass AI surveillance is an admission that the department is not even trying to gain trust back. Now they expect our trust with a record of where everyone has been? Unsurprisingly, police in other places have used this system to stalk their exes. The system is rife with loopholes allowing this type of dangerous misuse.
• ALPR use and the data they produce are not regulated by Oregon or local laws OR courts. Instead, the police have a policy with vague and meaningless phrases like “ALPR system audits should be conducted on a regular basis.” Plus, there is no external or independent entity to enforce these policies.
• Police merely need to fill in a text field “reason” for a search to gain access to millions of captures—no warrant required. And audits show that police regularly leave the justification field blank. EPD policy specifies that “reasonable suspicion or probable cause is not required.”
• Without meaningful public engagement, we’re left with all sorts of questions. For example, what new features will the vendor, Flock Safety, roll out and how will we find out about them?

• The only safe data is data never collected. Already other ALPR databases have been hacked or left unsecured. Flock’s privacy policy admits that “no method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.”
• Already we are being asked to trust EPD with this data. Importantly, there are a number of ways that the data can be shared with federal agencies, including ICE, CPB, DOJ, and the FBI. For example, even if EPD decided to stop giving direct access to 38 other agencies, the EPD contract with Flock includes a provision that Flock may access and share the data if legally compelled or for pretty much any reason.
• The system is not just a list of license plates and their locations: it also collects vehicle descriptions, including year, make, model, and distinguishing features like damage, bumper stickers, and cargo racks—all put into a searchable database that uses artificial intelligence to enable predictive tools.
• The company makes a big deal about the data being deleted after 30 days, but users can download the information and keep it indefinitely. Per the EPD policy, “Officers can download relevant data for evidentiary purposes.”
• Numerous PDs have simply ignored their own policies put in place to safeguard data and privacy.

• People of color are at particular risk from Flock’s surveillance system. Meanwhile, communities of color are already overpoliced.
• There have been numerous instances where ALPR errors or human mistakes with the technology have led police to confront random people of color with guns drawn. We already know this story ends in trauma and tragedy!
• Immigrant communities of color are at serious risk. ALPRs in other jurisdictions have been used against immigrants, including in cities that had declared themselves sanctuary jurisdictions. The Department of Homeland Security’s website openly states that it uses ALPR technology to “meet the goals of the current Trump administration.” And there is no way for EPD to prevent Flock from sharing info with ICE.
• In 2020, Minneapolis police used ALPR surveillance to track people protesting against police. As early as 2006, police in NYC were using ALPR to record everyone who went to mosques.

• Flock Safety was funded in part by Peter Thiel whose company Palantir is currently tasked by the Trump Administration with creating a master database on all US residents which will include a mix of financial, medical & immigration records previously spread out across several federal agencies.
• Flock is currently developing AI facial recognition software to serve as a “mass people lookup tool.”
• Their model is to sell as many systems as possible on subscription-based surveillance, playing into fear and media frenzy around crime. Flock lobbies legislatures to put money aside to fund initiatives like the Organized Retail Theft grant program here in Oregon. The $5 million in that fund primarily went to Flock and a few other ALPR companies. Flock has even helped police departments write grants for public funds.
• Flock’s policy is that somehow taking no position is morally neutral. As in, “we’re just here as a tool to law enforcement, not to have any opinion about which laws you enforce or how you do it!” Yet they also have a policy that states they will share data with law enforcement if required, or even for whatever reason. That means there’s nothing EPD can do to stop data being shared with ICE.
• Flock sells to private customers too: HOAs, Lowe’s, Fedex, Kaiser Permanente—and the Oregon Legislature has not done anything to protect Oregonians from this type of corporate surveillance.
• Their tagline is that they will eliminate crime. The only way to “eliminate crime” is to legalize everything.

• The system makes digital fingerprints of cars and bicycles, but that’s not all it captures—pedestrians, drivers, and passengers can also be captured.
• Although it’s common to hear the argument that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy while driving on public roads, actually the Supreme Court has a more nuanced take on expectation of privacy. The Court ruled in 2021 that flying constant drones over Baltimore was a violation of the 4^th Amendment based on the scope of surveillance. In Carpenter v US, the Court ruled that police need a warrant to obtain cellphone location information. In US v Jones, the GPS surveillance of a car over a period of weeks constituted a violation of the 4^th Amendment as well. Unsurprisingly, there is a current District Court case against ALPR use in Norfolk, VA—see video.
• Our laws and civil rights have to keep up with changes in technology. The 2018 Carpenter v US ruling held that the Court’s decision “must take account of more sophisticated systems that are already in use or in development.”
• If we don’t say no to total population surveillance using artificial intelligence, what will we say no to? Big Brother is not inevitable, we can, should, and will say no—the sooner the better.

• Oregonians care about privacy, personal choice, neighborliness, alternatives to police, the environment and freedom.
• The Flock system undermines our sanctuary and shield laws.
• Police from other states could use our ALPR data to track youth traveling to Oregon to seek gender-affirming care.
• DHS’s website openly states that it uses ALPR technology to “meet the goals of the current Trump administration”—goals that are at odds with Oregon values.
• Oregon, and certainly Eugene, have a long history of anti-authoritarianism. We are weird, wild, and free! Recently, many police departments in Oregon bought ALPRs, meaning we’re being surveilled even when we leave town, and, yes, the departments share data access. It’s time once again to push back against the dystopian turn.
• The system is based on AI—an ethically fraught technology from multiple perpectives, not least of which is due to environmental harm, something Eugeneans care deeply about.

• In spite of a well-orchestrated corporate media campaign by ALPR vendors, there is actually no conclusive evidence that ALPRs reduce crime. In San Diego, the rate that car theft cases were solved remained extremely low after installing ALPRs—the system couldn’t even help police solve car-related cases!
• ALPRs are estimated to be wrong 10% of the time. Errors have caused real harm and put people at risk of deadly police interactions. Police attacked a man with their police dog and accused him of resisting arrest and obstructing official business—all because the ALPR misread his license plate.
• People aiming to break laws can work around the system, but it’s not practical to avoid the cameras for most people.
• ALPR systems have caused serious harm, such as in cases of misuse (police stalking), data getting into the hands of ICE or vindictive federal agencies, and errors leading to people being held at gunpoint for a misread plate. Every interaction with police is potentially deadly, especially for Black people.
• Just because you can surveil everyone, doesn’t mean you should. Flock’s system sets us on the slippery slope of government intrusion into the privacy of citizens, and snowballing justifications for more and more powerful tools for law enforcement (at greater and greater expense) in a legal system that falls far short of justice. The NYPD have conducted shocking surveillance of Muslim communities including using electronic license plate readers on cars parked at mosques.
• We Are All Suspects and Everything We Do Is Suspicious are ineffective and impractical ways to deal with law-breaking, but they are effective ways to funnel money to corporations that manufacture surveillance tools, run prisons, and destroy neighborhoods.