We are being surveyed, constantly. Propped up on hundreds of telephone poles, stop signs, and rods are automated license plate recognition technology.
There are many types of surveillance technology, but Flock Safety is one making news as people in Columbus and across the country react to their use. These small devices capture license plate information, as well as bumper stickers and other items on your car.
In theory, they are meant to track cars after a crime has been committed, to find missing people, and to be a tool for law enforcement.
But, in recent months, this is not what has happened. Individuals have abused this technology. People are concerned about their privacy and how data from these are stored. And for some people, their safety has been compromised by these devices.
Guests:
- Katie Geniusz, reporter with WOSU
- Emmanuel V. Remy, Columbus City Councilmember and chair of Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee
- Drew Harwell, technology reporter for The Washington Post
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: Welcome to All Sides with Amy Juravich. You may have noticed poles with solar panels mounted to the top pop up around your neighborhood. These are Flock cameras and they're always watching. They are a type of automated license plate reader that captures car license plate numbers, the make and model of your car, as well as bumper stickers and any dents. Though the company, Flock Safety, was founded in 2017, these surveillance devices have made a lot of headlines in recent months. And here to talk about Flock cameras and their presence in Columbus is Katie Geniusz, a WOSU News reporter. Welcome back to All Sides, Katie.
Katie Geniusz: It's good to be here.
Juravich: So we reached out to Flock safety and invited them to join the show. That did not work out for the show, last week they sent a video statement and the statement was produced on August 13th. So here is Garrett Langley, CEO and founder of Flock Safety, talking about the mission of the company.
Garrett Langley: Nine years ago, we started the company for a really simple reason. How do we build safer neighborhoods? How do build safer cities? And as the company's grown, you know, last month alone, we helped detect over a thousand missing people, you know over 20,000 stolen cars. We've realized our responsibility and our opportunity to set a new standard for safety and privacy has grown with it. And so for us, this is an evolution. It's another chapter in a long book. For a company that's trying to build a safer America.
Juravich: Okay, so we'll get into a little bit of what he said in that mission statement, but Katie, to start off, can you briefly explain what Flock cameras are for people who have heard people talking about this, but what do the cameras actually do?
Geniusz: Yeah, so they are a type of camera that is mounted at the side of the road. It is a stationary camera and the type of camera it is is called an ALPR, which stands for automated license plate reader camera. It is always on, it is always scanning, but it only records when it hits the feedback it's looking for. In this case, it's license plates, a car that passes by. So what a Flock camera does is it scans that license plate back of the car. Car information and logs it into a database that then police can go into, search up, I'm looking for a license plate that says this, and it comes back with this is where that license plate was spotted at what time of day. And the big thing that Flock has advertised is that they share access across municipalities. So Columbus police can say, I am searching for this license plate here and they can that license plate. In somewhere in California.
Juravich: Okay, and it's not just the police who have the cameras though. I mean lots of places have them public and private. Is that right?
Geniusz: Both, yes. So private cameras don't have access like police camera or the police-owned cameras do. So if I were like a HOA that has a camera, I couldn't search another HOA's camera, but I do have the option to share with police. And so that's kind of a concern for many people is, well, we don't know where these private cameras are sharing as well.
Juravich: And the private cameras, you mentioned an HOA, so like a housing complex or an apartment complex could get them if they were having, say they were problems with a lot of car break-ins, they wanted a camera, right? Shopping.
Geniusz: Shopping centers like to have them. The Polaris Mall has them, Easton Mall has them. They're a little kind of higher up on some of those light poles, but they sometimes track shoplifting. They can be used as some of those as evidence of like, hey, this person has been here. The idea is this person has been here shoplifting multiple times. This is their car. Yes, this is their car. Let's try to prevent them from doing this more or build a case against them. People don't like that. It is something that is scanning all cars though. It's not just people who may have committed crimes or may commit crimes in the future, it's every single car. So people feel very uncomfortable with the idea that, well, I'm not doing anything wrong, why are you documenting my data as well?
Juravich: You talked with the ACLU of Ohio for one of your stories, and you sat in on a recent city council meeting that was a very long meeting about these cameras. I mean, tell me some other big concerns people have, besides the fact that they're always watching and they get every car.
Geniusz: Well, it is how this data can be used. So it's been shown that many police officers across the country, or several police officers across the county have used this to impersonal their personal lives, stalking ex-girlfriends, current partners. That has been a major concern that a lot of people have had. That is the accusation against one former Reynoldsburg police officer that has used this technology, used Reynolds, Reynolds Berg's access to. Follow around the whereabouts of a partner. The other thing is when sharing this access, who is accessing that camera? There has been a lot of concern that immigration and customs enforcement would have access to these cameras and use that to track people and detain people. In a recent audit, the Columbus Division of Police said that no ICE searches had been made on their system. However, they couldn't rule out immigration-related searches, which is if I'm a police officer somewhere else and my friend in ICE says, hey, can you run these tags for me? And I just do that. And you don't know why. Yeah. I can just run those tags.
Juravich: Ice aside though, um, Flock would say that some of these instances are just like one police officer being a bad actor, right? Like this is a, like that is an exception, not the rule of what's happening.
Geniusz: Absolutely. Flock has put a lot of personal responsibility onto police officers and police agencies on their personal usage, as opposed to saying that it is an issue for Flock. So they say, well, that's your issue. That's your policy issue. What a lot of like privacy advocates in the ACLU have kind of pushed back on that is, Well, you're making it like you're allowing this you have made it The you've given them the ability to do this so you should be aware and trying to prevent these misuses
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about Flock cameras in Columbus with WOSU news reporter Katie Genius. It, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like a few months ago, nobody was talking about these and now everyone is. I mean, is that true? Like what's, why the shift right now?
Geniusz: I think part of it has to do with increased ice activity is people were like, oh my gosh, there's stuff that's watching that could possibly be used. The other thing is people now are just understanding what this technology is. It can be a complicated topic to understand and to explain to people. And when the police have... Uh implemented this technology it was under the idea of well we can offer more surveillance and more protection for people. The issue that people are running into now is you didn't adequately describe it to us. That's what a lot of advocates are are saying is you've installed this technology but you didn t tell us exactly what was being installed and the extent of data collection and hearing. So, people are now understanding exactly what this technology is and because they're understanding it, there's a lot more people that have come out that have an issue with it.
Juravich: We're going to be talking with a member of Columbus City Council about the cameras here in the city in a few minutes. Um, but we mentioned earlier a pretty long, six hour long, and at some points, contentious hearing occurred not too long ago at a city council meeting. Um, and, at the end, did council sit plan to vote on anything when it came to Flock cameras? Or was this just like gathering information kind of hearing?
Geniusz: It was more of a gathering information kind of hearing. This was mainly to discuss the results of the audit that came out, which did reveal over 15,000 immigration-related searches or possible immigration- related searches. They have said that they were overly broad to try and include things instead of exclude things that could be harmful. The actual number they believe is a bit lower, but still any immigration searches is against Mayor Ginther's executive order that he made. Who was doing those 15,000 searches? Most of them were from other agencies. There were 20 from Columbus police that they are saying they're investigating right now. I have not heard anything as a result from that.
Juravich: And so they're saying that those searches being done by other agencies was that the city didn't know these agencies had access to our stuff, for lack of a better word.
Geniusz: Some, it was, there were some searches from DHS. There were some that they included that they said was more for trafficking, like drugs, people, trying to search other federal crimes. The problem is, you can say one thing, the reason for a search in the Flock system is a text field that you can type into. So you can kind of say anything as a police officer. That's one of the major criticisms that people have is. Unfortunately people lie and people who are doing the wrong thing or something that is trying to circumvent safeguards are probably more likely to lie about why they're doing something.
Juravich: You've covered the Flock cameras in Columbus for a while now, have you looked into other Central Ohio Police Departments and what's going on with them and their contracts with safety.
Geniusz: I have looked into some other Central Ohio police departments. They have been kind of the similar messaging on this of we believe this is a tool, we want to offer safeguards. There are some police departments that are trying to offer more transparency. So Upper Arlington Police just put out a transparency portal. Columbus Police also put out transparency portal recently that says how many cars we're scanning, who we are sharing with. This is our parameters we won't allow you to use our cameras for immigration searches, reproduction searches, anything like that. So we are seeing a bit more transparency from people. Transparency is one of the things that activists want. A lot of activists want the cameras gone altogether. Yeah. So
Juravich: Flock cameras are not the only detection devices, though. There's other companies, Axon, Sound Thinking, GenTech, are those around too? Or has Flock become the name, kind of like how everyone says Google, instead of searching?
Geniusz: That has kind of become the name that when people talk about police surveillance technology, Flock is the top of that search list. Those other technologies though have not escaped some activists. The ACLU when talking to Gary Daniels said he's a little concerned that because Flock and ALPRs are so in the news right now and kind of the focus of everything, that people may become a little myopic of, well, we get rid of Flock. We've won, is what a lot of activists may think. But a lot of municipalities we've seen across the country replace their Flock cameras with another version of an ALPR. So Axon makes ALPRs, which is what Columbus uses to contract for their body cameras and drone cameras. And then they also have in-car ALPRS.
Juravich: Okay. Yeah. So basically, if the police believe that these help solve crimes, they want to use them. So if everyone's mad at Flock safety, then they can just do it by divide different ones.
Geniusz: Yeah, that's the idea. That was something I even asked Councilman Remy about previously was is that something you would consider when looking at this is if Flock isn't unable to offer these security measures that you want for privacy for the residents of Columbus, what of other technology companies? And he has told me that yes, we would consider a contract with another company with another company if that is. Something that they can offer that Flock cannot.
Juravich: Yeah, yeah. And this issue has caught the attention of Ohio lawmakers too. There's two pieces of legislation that have been introduced in the state house. The lawmakers say they want police to be able to use the cameras, but they also want to protect people's privacy. So from your reporting, do you think a state law is the way to ease people's minds here? Is that what we need we need laws? I don't know if it will
Geniusz: entirely ease people's minds, but as something that I've noticed is we don't have any laws regarding this technology. So I would think some laws over no laws on what should be, what this technology should be used for, maybe repercussions for people misusing it because right now there are no legal repercussions in Ohio for using those cameras to follow someone for personal use. Maybe some legal repercussions may benefit this conversation.
Juravich: Yeah. And could it be a city law just for the city of Columbus or just for the city upper Arlington? Or do you think a state law is what is needed? Or are we talking like we need national things going on here?
Geniusz: Probably we need a national level.
Juravich: Level.
Geniusz: But with how slow national level politics moves on legislation, people are pretty concerned that by the time they get to this, new technology will be put in place. So that's one of the things the ACLU is pushing for something called CCOPs, which is Community Control Over Policing, which is people will have to vote and understand the entirety of a new police surveillance tool before it's put in. And then, of course, voting on and understand things that have already been put in. And it's kind of- Oh, that must be-
Juravich: Oh, that must be quite the voter education campaign, my goodness, okay, yeah.
Geniusz: Only two cities in Ohio have this at this time, which is Dayton and Yellow Springs. So that's one of the reasons Dayton got rid of their cameras is, well, we have an ordinance that says people need to agree to the use in this way and it didn't actually follow the use that people agreed to, we're getting rid of them.
Juravich: All right, well, I'm sure this is not the last time we will be talking about Flock cameras, but we're going to leave it there. We've been talking with WOSU news reporter Katie Geniusz about Flock cameras and their presence in Columbus. Thank you so much for your time today, Katie. It's great to be here. And coming up, we're gonna talk about Flock cameras in Columbus and what City Council is thinking about the future of them. That's when All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Though Flock cameras have been installed on public streets for years, recent questions and controversies over their use have caught the attention of just about everyone. Law enforcement and the company Flock Safety say their cameras are essential. They help catch criminals and they are working. Others worry about privacy and the misuse of the camera's searchable database. Here to talk about Flock cameras in Columbus is Emmanuel Remy, a member of Columbus City Council representing District 4 and chair of the Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee. Thank you so much for joining us today, Councilman Remy.
Emmanuel V. Remy: Thank you so much, Amy, for having me.
Juravich: All right, so why did Columbus decide to get Flock cameras in the first place? Can you take us back to whenever the decision was made to pick of all the cameras, pick these?
Remy: So the Division of Police won a grant, and in 24, I think we accepted that grant that was actually ran through Ohio State. And with that grant, they used it to purchase this technology. So the grant was to determine which technology to use, and that's how we got started, and that why we're here today.
Juravich: Okay. And what was Columbus or I guess the police department rather, what were they hoping to do with the cameras? The best case scenario for the cameras was to catch criminals, right?
Remy: Well, certainly in, let's say a missing kid or, you know, like the examples that they've used over time. There were the twins a couple of years ago that were found east of Columbus, but Flock helped determine their pattern, where they were heading. The beauty of it was it didn't look at the individual people in the car. It looked at attributes of the car, so if there was a bumper sticker on the back of the of a red Toyota, it was only hitting on red Toyotas for that case, in that case.
Juravich: Okay. And before all of this recent public attention and public outcry and six hour long city council hearings, did you or your public safety committee, did you have any concerns about the cameras or is all are all these concerns relatively new?
Remy: They're relatively new. I think it's been a very productive conversation with the community to understand some of the concerns that people have and certainly brought to light the activities that maybe our federal government was utilizing these you know cameras for within our own jurisdiction and that's just not not the values that we hold and certainly not something that we're going to accept.
Juravich: But were you surprised when all of a sudden everyone was talking about them and you were like wait a second this Escalated quickly as a phrase people use. Yeah
Remy: I mean it's evolved quite quickly this year and certainly the conversation has been good because it's really allowed us to think more broadly about technology in general. I got on the council eight years ago and a lot of these things that are technological pieces today that we're utilizing weren't around at that point and technology is changing daily. And so, you know, it's so fast, fast evolving that we... You know, have to think about what we're going to do from a policy perspective long-term that makes sure that we protect the residents and the city of Columbus and the City of Columbus itself.
Juravich: I guess technology is moving faster than policy. I'm shocked.
Remy: The government's not known for their expediency.
Juravich: Well, okay, so to clarify where we are right now, does Columbus have a current contract with Flock? Like if we would decide tomorrow if City Council would vote to stop using the cameras, do we lose anything? Do we lose money or something?
Remy: Well certainly you know the cameras that are up that investment through that grant would be you know there are grant dollars still available I know that that much and in December the contract is actually up we would have to extend it if we wanted to continue this relationship with Flock or you know look at other alternatives the grant is the dollars are still there to to utilize for more but you know at this point obviously the conversation is. Such that we're really considering all options and just trying to understand where this technology fits in for our residents and for solving crime.
Juravich: Okay. And so you mentioned that the contract with FLOX specifically is up in December. Does city council plan to take any action or do anything in particular before December? You had this hearing, but it was an information gathering hearing. So tell me where you're at now. What are you thinking?
Remy: We're working with the city attorney's office, for instance, to look at what the consequences would be for misuse of any technological tool. As you just mentioned in the earlier segment, talking about there aren't any laws really on the books to talk about that, other than the LEED system, which is codified at a state level, and it's a felony for mis-use. We can't issue felony laws, but we'll certainly look at what we can do that. Show our sincerity about consequences for misuse it's not going to be acceptable by anybody that's employed by the City of Columbus and we want to make sure that we're developing policy that that you know will take care of that. We're also looking at you know who can use the technology. We're looking at in what circumstances it can be used for and what methods that they do use. We saw the policy changes with FLOC last week. Shortening the retention days to seven, having to have a case number to put in there in certain valid reason. So we'll continue to look at all the policy that revolves around technology long term.
Juravich: Are the cameras, do you know if the cameras are located in particular areas? Are they randomly placed throughout the city or are they strategically placed?
Remy: I believe they're strategically placed. I mean, that's not something that the division shares just because if everybody knew where the cameras were, then it would probably lose its effectiveness with the criminals. But certainly, I know there were close to 70 now, I believe, that are installed. So pretty widely used. The network in Columbus, I think there's over 500, if you look at the privately installed ones and other places like Ohio State that have.
Juravich: Yes. Okay. So about 500, but then 70, or specifically Columbus's. And I mean, if they're in particular neighborhoods, is it, are police putting them in places where they feel like, you know, there is more crime or that they have a better chance of like catching criminals? Is that where they are?
Remy: That's what we've been told. I mean, there's also a relationship with the shot spotter with this. So I know that wherever that technology is, there generally has been a flat camera installed.
Juravich: A shot spotter is a sound detection to detect the sound of a gunshot. So if they put a camera near that, then in theory, they can work together. The Columbus Police Department did an audit. They presented that information to Columbus City Council, and it came out saying that the CPD network was searched for possible immigration-related reasons more than 15,000 times. What were your thoughts whenever you heard that number?
Remy: It was a big number, one is one too many, but we wanted to understand what we were dealing with. And I believe that at this point, the things that were searched at that time were much, most of them were part of broader investigations for other things that weren't ICE related, but there were a few of them that they weren't able to determine what they were doing and they're investigating those currently. So I think, again, us establishing the right policy to understand with consequences will help to, you know, shape how that's used within the division. I know the chief takes us very seriously and it's not something that she's going to tolerate. So we'll continue to look at, you now, what those consequences are and then what happens with their employment if somebody were to misuse it in a way that didn't make sense.
Juravich: So what you're talking about here is Columbus passing a law. I mentioned earlier that the state of Ohio, two pieces of legislation have been introduced where they want police to still be able to use the cameras but they want to protect privacy. Do you want state legislation too or do you want the city to have the control here?
Remy: Well, certainly I believe that we'moved much faster than the state does. And, you know, when they bring up these laws, it can take years to get out of committee. So what we're, we're going to take and do what we can here, cause we're much nimbler. That's funny that we'd say that about government, but certainly in the city, we are much more nimble than, than the status. So we'll, we'll see what we do and we'll pass those laws when we can.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about Flock cameras in Columbus, and we're talking with Manuel Remy, a member of Columbus City Council, representing District 4, also chair of the Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee. We've mentioned this already. These cameras have been misused nationwide. There's a handful of situations where they have been used inappropriately in Columbus. There have been cases around the U.S. Where law enforcement officers have used the technology to stalk people. In Columbus. The technology has never been misused, has the technology been mis-used by law enforcement for personal use? There was the investigation of a car crash that someone was involved in, searching license plates, tens of times for personal-use. I mean, what do you think of this pattern? It'll continue without interference, right? So what, yeah, talk to me.
Remy: Talk to me about that. Any misuse is unacceptable. I think when you look at these cases that are much more dramatic around the country, stalking girlfriends or exes, that sort of thing, that's unacceptable. We're not going to tolerate that here. Again, I think having those consequences front and center with some sort of law makes a lot of sense. And if you risk your employment because you're going to use this in a way that it was not intended. . I think that will make people think twice and then having a layer of, you know, authorization for use whether that's putting in case numbers, but then also having the upper ranks of The division held responsible for what people that are using that technology are doing with it
Juravich: So this is you asking Flock for more security controls.
Remy: We have been out, we've been, that's ongoing dialog, you know, and they are responding, they're obviously probably worried about their business model, you know across the country, but they are respond to the things that we've asking for. Again, audits are gonna be part of the future, you know having consistent audits that are coming through from the division back to council, and for the public's sake for instance. And so we wanna make sure that the technology is a place that. Where it is applicable and it works and it's helping solve crimes, great. Any type of misuse is not gonna be acceptable.
Juravich: So we reached out to Flock Safety and invited them to join the show. That didn't work out for the show, but last week they sent a video statement. The video statement was produced on August 13th. Here's what CEO and founder of Flock safety, Garrett Langley said about the misuse of Floc cameras.
Langley: Look, I think this is a problem that's plagued law enforcement then far longer than FLOC. And we knew that abuse was a risk nine years ago, which is why we mandated every customer had to have an audit log. About four months ago, our product team came up with the idea from customer feedback to build what we call audit assistance. This idea that an audit law could be so large that you needed technology to identify abnormal behavior. We weren't sure how things were going to play out. But I can tell you it worked. You could see it in the headlines. We are finding bad cops and holding them accountable. And about a third of our customers optionally adopted it over the last four months. We think now is the right time to say, look, this should be required. And I would challenge state regulators to make this a law for all police technology to have this level of accountability so we can curb police abuse.
Juravich: So what's your reaction to that? I mean, the CEO of Flock is calling for people like you to make laws to regulate them. Well.
Remy: Wish they would have thought about this a long time ago, obviously, but this is something that obviously top of mind. That's what we heard during the hearing. This is what we hear consistently across, you know, from residents. They want the tool to help solve crimes, to help lower crimes in some cases, but they also want accountability. They want transparency. And that's exactly what we're looking to provide.
Juravich: The idea that a search should have a case number attached to it seems pretty, like that makes sense to me. It seems pretty logical to me, so do you know why that wasn't required before?
Remy: I think it was just loosely managed. I think there was a field for it, but they could put in other reasons, and I think that really narrowing down on what those reasons can be, I think, that's important, because obviously we saw where this misuse occurred.
Juravich: Yeah. Okay. So, Columbus City Council, do you feel like the, what's the tone right now? Because some cities have reacted and said, we're getting rid of the cameras. We're not using these. We are done with Flock. Goodbye. We know we're going to start over. They might get different cameras from a different company, but they're just, you know, they're done. Is Columbus City Council anywhere near that aspect?
Remy: I still say everything's on the table and we're still talking amongst our colleagues, but this has been a great opportunity for like me, for instance, to talk to other cities about what they've done. I've had close conversations with Blaine Griffith up in Cleveland, Cleveland's council president, how they handled it, how they navigated all of the things that happen within their own department and other council members around the country. Just these conversations have stirred, you know, technology like is ever evolving. And we have to, whether it's Flock today, it'll be some other technology tomorrow. And humans, you know, there is a possibility that it could be misused. So what is the policy long-term to ensure that, again, there's consequences if they do, and to help deter anybody that wants to do this for some reason that's not appropriate for use.
Juravich: So, but do you want to keep using the cameras for the public safety aspect?
Remy: If you walk through Linden and you talk to my residents, they were very happy with what they believe is these cameras really helping to solve the crimes that have been occurring in their neighborhood. And I've had area commissioners say we would love more. So we had to balance that, the concerns that we heard throughout that hearing with, which are all valid concerns. We also have to think about the residents that feel that this is providing a level of safety within their community.
Juravich: Can you give me an example in Linden of some of like a crime that was solved that people were happy about?
Remy: Well, my conversations have been with the area commissions and the area commission chairs. We didn't get into the specifics of it, but I know that, for instance, the division is saying that 49% of the homicide cases have had, Flock has contributed to the solving of those crimes. So, again, it's a tool in the toolbox. It seems to me that if we were able to solve 49% the murders out there, that's a high number. Um, again. This is just one tool of technology and it, you know, there's, we don't even know what tomorrow is going to bring as it relates to technology. We just want to make sure that misuse is something that is just not acceptable in the city of Columbus.
Juravich: Okay, and so the misuse by, you know, a few police officers who are bad actors, you want to deal with that. You want to have them held accountable. Maybe they lose their job, depending on what happens. But what about the privacy concerns? What do you say to people who just don't like the idea that every street they drive down their car could be recorded.
Remy: Well, if you think about what this is, if you haven't committed a crime, there shouldn't be any reason that you should be concerned. But in the case that there are, they're gonna look for that car, I'm talking about this specific piece of technology, but they're going to look for that car that has the attributes of the one that they're trying to track. In a perfect world, it's not being used for everyday citizens that are driving down the road. And that's what we want to ensure, is that this is used for criminal investigation only.
Juravich: It's not a perfect world though, you know, yeah, yeah And there's the private ones as well. So Katie genius the reporter who was on earlier used the example of like a mall parking lot So the camera turns on for every single car that drives around the mall But you know Maybe everyone doesn't want every doesn't wants you should be recorded to ever have everyone to know like I oh, you Know Sally went to the mall today. Like is that necessary?
Remy: I think it's becoming more and more pervasive. I mean, we carry phones around that track us. Cars that are 23 and newer track us, you know? I don't, it's what has become of technology today. It's in our everyday lives. I prefer the back of the day when we had to come home when the street lights were on and we went outside and played all day weren't on computers. But the fact that we're here today is, I think, it just an everyday part of life and we have to manage it in a way that we protect civil liberties and privacy as much as we can, unless it involves something criminal in activity.
Juravich: So you would just say to someone who spoke out at your hearing with the privacy concern, do you like get used to it?
Remy: Well, I don't want that because that sounds callous and I you know, I do hear people's concerns. I I just know It's it's it's challenging, right? You know, it is something that I don't want to be tracked, you know but I've I guess I've conceded that I am gonna be tracked just because of Where we're at today and and it's a tough
Juravich: Well, just to end on the Flock contract, you said goes through December. As of right now, do you think Columbus would be renewing it, looking at another company? What are your thoughts between now and December?
Remy: We're waiting for the division to put out their overall policy, their colonist sensor policy. We are going to make sure that whatever we can codify is codified because that's a policy that could change with administrative changes. We're going to codify what we can. Whether it's this company or some other company or some new technology that we don't even know about today, we want to just be ensuring that there is policy in place, in laws in place that protect as much as we can people's privacy and civil liberties. And so, you know, the other thing that I haven't brought up is the administration can handle this with one decision. The mayor can take care of this today if this is of his concern. But. That's why we're taking this technology policy very, very seriously and looking at something for long term.
Juravich: What do you want the mayor to do?
Remy: Well, I'm just saying like we, I just keep saying that there's, that's a person that he can administratively take care of it.
Juravich: Like an executive order, instead of waiting on counsel.
Remy: Or just tell the chief to stop using it. I mean, that is something that is under his purview. If he wants to do that, he could do that. I'm one of nine. We have to make decisions collectively. And again, more broadly about policy. We're policy makers. We're not administrators. You know, the administration does that. So they can make that decision any day of the week.
Juravich: Okay, have you heard anything from the mayor's office about their plans?
Remy: No, I have not.
Juravich: We have been talking with Emmanuel Remy, member of Columbus City Council representing District 4 and chair of the Public Safety and Criminal Justice Committee. Thank you so much for your time today.
Remy: I appreciate it.
Juravich: And coming up, this issue with the Flock cameras is not a Columbus issue alone. A lot of cities are having conversations about Flock cameras. We'll talk nationwide when All Sides Continues on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to all sides. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Flock cameras have been a topic of conversation in Columbus in recent weeks. A six hour long public hearing got contentious as local residents and officials worried about misuse and privacy issues. But the concerns over Flock cameras are not limited to Columbus. It's become a national issue. Flock safety and local police departments say these cameras help catch murderers. They've helped recover abducted children and have recovered stolen cars. But the ACLU says the camera's search function is being abused and the cameras invade our privacy. Here to talk to us about Flock cameras around the U.S. Is Drew Harwell, a technology reporter at the Washington Post. Welcome to All Sides Drew.
Drew Harwell: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Juravich: So you have been keeping an eye on Flock cameras for a while now, and only recently have these cameras started making lots of headlines. But despite the fact that they've been around for several years, why do you feel right now suddenly everyone's talking about the Flock cameras?
Harwell: I've been asking myself that question a lot, too. And I think it is interesting because, yeah, like you said, Flock is nearly 10 years old now. License plate readers, you know, which are pretty much just fancy roadside cameras have been around even longer than that. But I think what's starting to happen is we're starting to see more of them. There's now one hundred and thirty thousand Flock cameras across the country. You just see them more on your daily life, on your commute, when you're driving around. Once you see them, as I have, I see them everywhere now. And also I think the cases of abuse are becoming more real. Years ago when I was writing about Flock, it was a lot more speculative. We knew bad things could happen, bad cops could misuse them. But now we're really starting to get stories of what that abuse looks like. And we did a story in the Washington Post where we talked to a lot of mostly women who have been targeted by exes and. You know, the victims of this are really horrified, and some cops have already been sort of thrown in jail for this. So I think it's just the issues are becoming more legitimate and tangible to all of us since we're starting to see the downsides.
Juravich: There are people on all sides of the dice here though. Some love the cameras, some hate them. There are plenty of people in between. Tell me about people who like the cameras who say that they are a good law enforcement tool. What do they say to you?
Harwell: Yeah, so some cops say they're like a dream crime fighting tool because how they work is they're installed along the road. They take a time stamp photo of every passing car's license plate. They put it into a big mappable database. So if I'm a police officer and I'm trying to find out who was driving where driving, you know, at this exact time or where one specific car drove for the last month, I could do that. And that's a capability I didn't have before. And Flock, you know, it's. It's hard to know how much we should believe their numbers, because of course they are a business, but they say they're used in a million criminal investigations a year, that they've solved all these crimes. And there are many anecdotes that they shared where cops feel like they've been able to really get a piece of information they never would have been able to obtain before purely because they had this extra surveillance power.
Juravich: I've spent years, you know, watching British crime dramas, and they solve so many crimes using CCTV, which seems to be everywhere in a British crime drama. And then, you now, there's also Law and Order, where they're constantly like, oh, look at that camera. Let's get that footage. Did you look into, in any of your post-investigations, did you look in to comparing what Flock is doing here to what, like, the CCTV we hear about in, like in the UK? Bye.
Harwell: Yeah, it's interesting because in London they talk a lot about facial recognition because they have cameras on the street that capture every passing face on the site, you know, in parts of London. And we have that as a function in the US as well. But I kind of think in America that license plate readers basically are our form of facial recognition, because we all drive everywhere and we are our cars and we're our drives. And so it's very similar because they both have like an identifying. Capability, they both use artificial intelligence, right? Facial recognition uses the camera feed to map out the geometry of your face. These extract the text off of your license plate and put it into a database. So very similar issues and very similar kind of fear factors because once you have a camera that has all of this, a camera on steroids that can do all of these AI rendering and save it to a master database that the cops can use, you start to wonder about surveillance creep then. And more cameras start getting installed, more agencies start being able to use them. They start being used for more crimes. Now they're not just being used for murders and the worst of the worst, but everything else. And so you're kind of starting to see that kind of big brother anxiety playing out the same as it was in the UK that it is now here in the US.
Juravich: Let's pivot to the investigation The Washington Post did that that did find officers were not using the cameras for intended purposes. Tell our listeners about what you found in Indianapolis.
Harwell: Um, yeah, I mean, in Indianapolis, it was, uh, uh there were, you know, it was kind of similar to a lot of the cases elsewhere where we had, um, an officer who had gotten authorization to become a user on the Flock network and they could run searches of individual license plates and, um they started running searches on people in their personal life and they started looking up wives and exes and ex girlfriends and their ex-girlfriend's new partners, their ex girlfriend's family members, sometimes running searches, you know, by the hundreds, sometimes in the middle of the night, and using that data to start sending menacing messages to the women, asking why they drove here or there, you know, dropping hints that they were tracking them. So you know in several states including, you know Indiana, we had cases where the police departments had no idea that the were running these searches. Sometimes until we told them, and only then were the cops investigated and found to have broken all sorts of laws.
Juravich: Yeah, in one of your more recent pieces, you worked on it with two other journalists, and you said that at least 69 police officers have been accused, charged, or convicted of misusing Flock cameras, or other license plate reading cameras. Was that a surprising fact to you? Did you think 69 was a lot of police officials to be doing the wrong thing here?
Harwell: Yeah, I think so. When we started this process, we had a handful. And Flock kind of says, and Flock's boosters say, well, it's used so much. Cases of abuse are just going to happen. They're just inevitable, which I think is, I guess, a reasonable position. But even when we started, a handful of cases was shocking to me because, again, these are police officers. We give them a ton of authority. Maybe we give them... Operational secrecy. We trust them to use these tools in the right way. We know that people will break the rules, but also they have forms of supervision. They have internal affairs agencies, and these tools can be tracked. I was shocked when it was just a handful, and then it became a dozen, and two dozen, and now we're up to almost 70. I will say we are learning of new cases all the time, Some from local reporting. Some from our own reporting, where we can see some of the public records and some of the data. And we've been going out to police departments and they had no idea because they were not auditing or checking the work of their officers. And so they were running hundreds of these illegitimate searches. So I was pretty shocked. I think some Flock boosters say, well, you know, it's just got to happen for this tool to work and that the upsides are worth it. But I was really stunned. And then talking, you know, I will say, talking to the women who have dealt with this. Really brings it home, because this is not a speculative fear for them. You know, the fear in their lives was not only that they were being tracked from their precise location, but that it was a cop's doing the tracking. And, you know, some of the women we talked to were feeling like, who do I even report this to? Who do I call? I can't call 911. 911 goes right to my abuser. So I think that was really what drove home the unique danger of all this.
Juravich: This is All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. We're talking about Flock cameras nationwide with Drew Harwell, a technology reporter at the Washington Post. And we talked about this earlier with a Columbus City Council member where it just seems logical that a police officer should have to put a case code in to be able to do a search so that at least the search was legitimate and related to something in an active case. But anyway, we reached out to Flock Safety, invited them to join the show. They couldn't join, but... In a video statement that was produced on August 13th, here is Garrett Langley, the CEO of Flock Safety, talking about that case code requirement.
Langley: For us, it's always been about local control. You know, cities should have a choice. But what I've also realized is that cities rely on us as the expert for what we think is best. As we looked at the data, what we saw is that about 90% of investigative searches happen within seven days. So will it solve less crime? It will. And I would encourage local officials to still make decisions that they think match their local needs. But as a business, we think seven days is that new standard.
Juravich: Okay. Well, that was actually about the seven day retention. So just backing up the case code requirements was another cut we had, but basically it just said that you should have to put a case code in to do the search. Doesn't that seem logical to you, Drew?
Harwell: Totally logical. And when we were doing the original reporting, I cover technology and a lot of the problems we run into are intractable, they're complicated. It's like, there's these gray zones. If you do this thing, it'll bring this down. But there are some really obvious kind of low hanging fruit that we found in our reporting that Flock and other license plate reader companies could do that they weren't. And one of them is the case number where if I'm an officer right now, I can go on. And search for somebody, I don't even have to justify it. I just put in a plate number. The interface suggests that you should give maybe a justification, but it doesn't really require you to do it. A lot of the searches we were finding were not justified at all. Of course, that just allows people to do with no friction and no oversight. That is one of the changes we suggested in our original story. I mean, after we published that, Flock announced that they would start requiring that next year. For all cops to put in, you know, and a criminal case number is for every, every investigation. They create a case number so they can centralize it. So it seemed like a very kind of obvious thing that I still can't totally understand why they would wait so long to implement that.
Juravich: So now each search will be tied to a case number once this is implemented. And then just before we run out of time, back to the sound bite we did here, that was related to how long the data was being stored. Flock also recently made a change saying that the default setting on how long the data is stored will now be seven days instead of 30. What do you make of that? Is that just to help people feel better about their privacy? I don't know. Yeah.
Harwell: It's a setting, right now, wherever you're driving, often the default right now is 30 days. So if you drive by a camera, a cop could look up your entire driving history for the last 30 days, them setting the default to seven days makes it so they only see the last week of your driving, which maybe gives people some peace of mind. But of course, every agency can change their setting and some agencies run it at a complete year so they could see a year of your drive history. So. You know, little things like this don't really solve the bigger question of surveillance and this broader debate. I think some of these little nip-tuck changes can potentially be good for oversight, so we're not leaning into over surveillance. But, you know, like Flock says, every agency kind of gets to decide their own rules. And for some people, they're not completely... I'm encouraged by that because they don't want the police to police themselves. They want a better system of laws that we can all agree on.
Juravich: We've been talking about Flock cameras nationwide, and we have been talking with Drew Harwell, a technology reporter at the Washington Post. He and his team have been doing a lot of reporting on Flock cameras around the country. Thank you so much for your time today, Drew.
Harwell: Yeah, thank you.
Juravich: And you're listening to All Sides on 89.7 NPR News. I'm Amy Juravich. Thanks for joining us.
