As Wisconsin cities flee Flock, its shared camera network loses value - Ars Technica

Overview

As Wisconsin cities flee Flock, its shared camera network loses value

Perhaps it’s the local summer diet of deep-fried cheese curds, corn on the cob, and Spotted Cow, but Wisconsin residents have been feeling pretty dyspeptic about Flock’s automated license plate cameras.

Details

Over the past few months, a spate of Wisconsin towns and cities have withdrawn from Flock deals over privacy and trust concerns. As they did so, another issue revealed itself: With each city that leaves, the Flock network becomes less useful to the cities that remain. And cities are starting to notice.

Consider Dane County, which includes the city of Madison. It’s one of the most populous counties in Wisconsin. It was also a significant Flock user, with a contract for 24 license plate cameras. But after complaints from citizens and privacy experts, the Dane County Board of Supervisors on April 16 voted to cut the $80,000 in county funding for Flock cameras and banned “further expenditures on the system.”

“There are well-documented concerns about how this company operates and uses its technology to violate people’s Fourth Amendment rights [against unreasonable searches],” said County Board Chair Patrick Miles. “The board’s action supports protecting our community from a proven bad actor. We have full confidence in our Sheriff and deputies, and we are open to considering other companies that have stronger safeguards in place.”

The county’s Flock cameras soon went dark, cutting off Dane County data from the 140 other law enforcement agencies that had once accessed it. Many of these agencies were local, but they also included cops in Missouri, New York, and Tennessee.

(As for the city of Madison itself, it has avoided Flock cameras altogether. The city says it does not use any “automatic license plate readers, gunshot detection systems, or gait analysis software.”)

Once Flock cameras come down, nearby communities see less use for the network.

Monona, another Dane County city, in early May announced that its Flock contract was “under review.” The Monona police chief supports license plate cameras and said that Flock had helped solve “an enticement case involving a suspect who transported a vulnerable adult across state lines.” Still, local police were concerned about “privacy considerations” and “maintaining community trust and accountability.”

Because much of Flock’s value comes from access to cameras in other jurisdictions, the loss of Dane County and Monona meant Flock was suddenly less useful to nearby police departments. The town of Mc Farland, which neighbors Monona, announced on May 15 that it would not move forward with its plan to deploy Flock cameras “in light of a shrinking database in Dane County and input from residents.”

“Once Dane County lost their funding for Flock, we lost about half of the potential camera network within Dane County,” said Mc Farland Chief of Police Brian Redman in a statement. “I had to ask, ‘Were we still going to get the return on our investment with that loss?’ With the network being chipped away, that wasn’t going to be the case.”

On May 26, the nearby city of Fitchburg voted to discontinue its own Flock subscription. According to Channel 3000 News, local leaders “cited concerns about the national search feature in the current Flock model, saying the city cannot definitively determine how data searched by other areas is being used.”

The University of Wisconsin police force in Madison then announced on July 3 that “after careful and thoughtful consideration,” it would not renew its Flock deal.

Like many local communities, the campus police force still believes in the technology—just not in Flock. Instead, the campus will find “an automated license plate reader (ALPR) vendor that better meets UW-Madison’s public safety needs.”

On July 28, the nearby city of Stoughton also voted to cancel its own Flock contract, paying a $12,500 early buyout fee after intense local opposition to the devices. This happened even though police said that, only 14 minutes after entering the license plate into Flock, the cameras helped them find a “missing/runaway 15 yr old juvenile who took parents’ vehicle.”

In just a few months, the Madison-area license plate camera situation changed dramatically.

A similar story has played out in northeastern Wisconsin. Oshkosh ended its Flock contract in April, while its northern neighbor, Appleton, announced in May that it, too, would stop using Flock.

Nearby Grand Chute canceled its Flock deal in early June, switching to a competing product from Axon. Grand Chute Police Chief David Maas told Fox 11 News that the Axon system “benefits the community in multiple ways and also respects resident privacy in a way that feels more comfortable, quite honestly.”

With local communities bailing, the nearby city of Kaukauna announced in July that it would not renew its Flock contract, either. Kaukauna explicitly said that “one of the main functionalities that appealed to the city was the ability to work with area communities also using Flock ALPRs to identify suspects traveling outside of city limits.”

With so many Flock cameras going offline, “It is not fiscally responsible for the city to continue to invest in the Flock cameras with the concerns that have been raised and the inability to partner with area communities,” said Jamie Graff, City of Kaukauna Chief of Police.

It would be too much to say that the cities have given up on automated license plate readers. Many of the places severing ties with Flock this year have made clear that they hope to find another system that better meets their needs and values. And a map of license plate cameras in Wisconsin still shows many in use, including some in the Madison area.

Public resistance was crucial to many of these decisions to de-Flock. Indeed, the broad backlash against Flock has grown so strong that the surveillance company last week announced mandatory new audit controls and lower default data retention periods for US users.

Flock now knows what Kaukauna and Mc Farland realized: The same “network effect” that helps build a business can also work in the other direction once customers start to flee.

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Key Takeaways

• As Wisconsin cities flee Flock, its shared camera network loses value

• Perhaps it’s the local summer diet of deep-fried cheese curds, corn on the cob, and Spotted Cow, but Wisconsin residents have been feeling pretty dyspeptic about Flock’s automated license plate cameras

• Over the past few months, a spate of Wisconsin towns and cities have withdrawn from Flock deals over privacy and trust concerns

• Consider Dane County, which includes the city of Madison

• “There are well-documented concerns about how this company operates and uses its technology to violate people’s Fourth Amendment rights [against unreasonable searches],” said County Board Chair Patrick Miles