In Our Opinion
Search warrants issued by judges are a worthy check on surveillance camera companies
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Flock Safety is at least acknowledging the privacy concerns that have been raised by members of the public and by civil liberties groups over the past several months by announcing changes to its platform.
We aren't sure those changes go far enough, though they do appear to be a step in the right direction. Flock operates a vast nationwide network of automated cameras that record the license plate numbers and other characteristics of all passing vehicles every day. Thousands of law enforcement agencies in 49 states can search and share Flock's data across jurisdictions to aid their investigations.
Police have credited the technology as an important crime-fighting innovation that has helped locate missing people and track suspects in violent crimes. But some critics say its pervasiveness amounts to unconstitutional warrantless mass surveillance. Dozens of cities and agencies have nixed their relationships with Flock amid concerns that the data can be accessed for immigration enforcement or used in unauthorized tracking, after a flurry of examples surfaced of law enforcement officers misusing the technology for personal searches.
Among the changes Flock is making are requiring law enforcement customers to implement an audit tool that's intended to flag abnormal search behavior; shortening the standard data retention window from 30 days to seven with evidence tied to a case number preserved longer; requiring law enforcement users to enter a code from their records management system tying each search to a specific case before it is run; allowing customers to decide which offense types -- such as homicide or arson -- outside agencies can search their data for while also allowing customers to block outside searches related to immigration enforcement.
The technological changes are well and good, but we're not sure why a judicially approved search warrant isn't required for one police department to get information from another police department. Camera systems like Flock's – and let's forget that Flock is just the vendor getting the most flack right now – can have a legitimate public safety use. That doesn't mean we should cede our privacy over to people who write computer code. We'd prefer that the use of data captured on cameras be vetted by human judges the same way that invasions of one's personal privacy in criminal cases has been approved for more than 200 years.