St. Lucie County finds unidentified cameras; separate ruling and bill target ALPR surveillance

Flock's cameras offer "indiscriminate mass surveillance," a U.S. federal judge wrote in a ruling Thursday, as does any system with "continuously updated" location histories for all the vehicles filmed by automated license plate-reading cameras. The judge's ruling included italics for emphasis when describing "the question of why is it the government's business where everyone goes all the time?" Judge Hill: We might reasonably expect our friends and family to tell us something like: "Hey, I saw you out driving by the store last week." But we do not expect people we know — let alone strangers, and especially not law enforcement — to randomly approach us to say: "Hey, I have been following your car for the last 30 days, and here is a detailed log of every place your vehicle has been with supporting photographic evidence. I am also going to share this information with law enforcement throughout the country so they know your whereabouts, too...." Cell phones also move in public places where people can see you in plain view. But it becomes constitutionally problematic when law enforcement can indiscriminately and passively catalog your whereabouts over an extended period of time and then use that information for any purpose whenever convenient... [I]t is also consequential that we are not just dealing with stationary cameras. The cameras on [police officer] Alaniz's vehicle itself feed information into these systems... It is also no longer difficult to imagine law enforcement using a fleet of drones hovering over an entire city so they don't miss the movement of a single vehicle. Officer Alaniz had used Flock's travel history for a car when deciding to pull over its driver, which eventually led to a vehicle search and charges of possessing drugs with intent to distribute. But the judge wrote that because this violated reasonable expectation of privacy, "all evidence obtained after Alaniz initiated the ALPR search must be suppressed as fruit of the poisonous tree." The judge granted a motion to "suppress all evidence obtained as a result of these unconstitutional searches and seizures." The Washington Post got this comment from a Flock spokesperson about the judge's ruling: "we expect it will be appealed and ultimately overturned." (Flock's spokesperson added that the ruling "does not set controlling precedent and does not affect law enforcement agencies' continued use of these important public safety technologies.") But meanwhile, on Friday U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Ban Flock Act. The proposed bill bans federal agencies in America from using automated license plate reader systems "without explicit statutory authorization". The bill also lets certain federal agencies (including the Homeland Security Department) withhold grant money from State and local governments that use automatic license plate readers. TechCrunch reports: Despite its title, the bill doesn't call out Flock in the text and covers any and all ALPR systems. The bill allows exceptions only for toll collection and for uses that Congress approves in future legislation, which would have to limit data retention to no longer than 48 hours.... Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) are co-sponsors. Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Florida’s St. Lucie County recently discovered that its residents were being surveilled by mysterious cameras installed in secret and unconnected to any state or local agency. The county found the cameras after it voted to uninstall its own fleet of Flock automated license plate readers, which are used by more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies to track drivers’ movements on roads around the country. When the county took an inventory of the Flock units in operation, it found 14 unpermitted cameras pointed at its roads. Local law enforcement agencies claimed three of the unpermitted devices, leaving 11 mystery cameras unaccounted for, according to a report from the Washington Post. The county sent out letters mid-month to revoke permissions for the cameras it could identify and posted notices on the unpermitted cameras directing them to be removed within 30 days. “Once that 30-day timeframe is up – staff will begin safely removing the cameras or covering them to block their ability to record video,” St. Lucie County Communications Director Erick Gill told Fast Company. Gill clarified that 13 of the unpermitted cameras were on county streets, while one of the cameras was within the city of Port St. Lucie. The unpermitted cameras were first reported by local news station WPEC.  Like many communities, St. Lucie County recently voted to remove Flock cameras from its jurisdiction. “At this time we don’t know what other actors have access to our information… what Flock the company itself has access to and who it’s sharing or selling its information to,” St. Lucie County Commissioner James Clasby said during a September 1 vote. Clasby’s warning was prescient, given the mysterious cameras later found secretly recording roads in St. Lucie County.  Anti-surveillance backlash In August, Florida’s Department of Transportation ordered law enforcement agencies to remove the cameras from state highways in light of concerns around misuse and data privacy. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis promised to pull the cameras in response to public outcry over the tens of thousands of license plate readers that now power a real-time national surveillance network on American roads. “These cameras that are out there now — who’s to say they’re only doing the license plate?” DeSantis said in a recent podcast appearance. “Now, they say that. I think it’s capturing people in their cars. I think it’s capturing way more information than they’re letting on.”  DeSantis also alluded to recent instances of law enforcement officials abusing Flock cameras. Last month, a police officer in Fort Pierce, Florida was arrested after an investigation revealed he accessed Flock’s database 382 times to track the movement of an ex-girlfriend. Like DeSantis, Texas Governor Greg Abbott is another red state Republican turning against Flock. Both Republicans have close ties with law enforcement, but the intense backlash against Flock and other surveillance systems like it is prompting even traditionally tough-on-crime Republicans to denounce the technology.  Democrats agree. In Congress, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Jeff Merkley and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez just introduced a bill on Friday to ban Flock cameras and other automated license plate readers nationwide. The “Ban Flock Act” would block federal agencies from deploying the surveillance cameras or sifting through their data. The legislation follows a recent proposal from Republican Sen. Josh Hawley that would impose federal regulations on the vehicle surveillance cameras without blocking their use outright. “At a time of growing concern about the unchecked power of artificial intelligence, Flock is eviscerating the very notion of privacy by installing tens of thousands of cameras in communities across America without their consent,” Sanders said.