A wave of bipartisan, grassroots opposition has led nearly 150 US municipalities to end or reject contracts with Flock Safety, a surveillance company whose ubiquitous "Automated License Plate Reader" cameras are used to create a permanent and comprehensive record of everything that happens in their purview. This is very likely a violation of the Fourth Amendment and massive invasion upon our civil liberties. But that's not all! Dozens of law enforcement officers have been caught using Flock's systems to stalk exes and strangers. Flock has been used by ICE to track suspected immigrants and by authorities to track women who seek abortions in violation of regressive new reproductive rights restrictions. And there's more! Flock's systems also have a remarkably high error rate which all too often leads to false detention, arrest and even use of force.
Flock is based in Atlanta, Georgia, but has deep roots in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. It emerged from local startup incubator Y Combinator (class of 2017) and received venture funding from Garry Tan's Initialized Capital, Peter Thiel's Founder's Fund, and Andreessen Horowitz. The company has also cultivated deep ties within San Francisco's current political establishment.
Two of the 24 members on San Francisco's Democratic Party governing body (Trevor Chandler and Lily Ho) are directly employed by Flock as lobbyists. That body's president, Nancy Tung, was recently revealed to have taken $10,000 from Flock for a speaking arrangement weeks before a vote on Flock's contract. A majority of the SF Democratic Party were part of a "moderate" slate funded by surveillance aficionado Chris Larsen and endorsed by Tan-affiliated GrowSF.
In addition to an estimated 2,500 cameras privately installed by Larsen and accessible to law enforcement, San Francisco has at least 400 Flock cameras, and the city's Flock network has been illegally accessed by other law enforcement agencies over 1 million times.
San Francisco's Flock contract has been the subject of an increasing number of increasingly large protests lately, and in order to get ahead of the backlash, Mayor Daniel Lurie recently announced a package of "strong privacy protections" pertaining to the City's expanding network of surveillance cameras.
Those "strong protections" (still just proposals) would allow SFPD to retain camera data for only 30 days (unless they get approval from leadership); would require that SFPD identify a concrete, law enforcement reason for accessing particular data; and would require that SFPD keep track of precisely who is accessing the data. You might be thinking to yourself: Wait, they don't already do these things? Incredibly, the answer is no.
The expansion of mass surveillance is a key plank in the agenda of Mayor Lurie and his "moderate" coalition. The contract isn't up for renewal until next year, but the timing of the Mayor's policy proposals is intended to stem gathering opposition ahead of the midterm elections. If the votes go his way in November, renewing or extending the Flock contract will be a breeze, grassroots opposition or no.
