The city of Dayton, Ohio has partially covered its Flock automated license plate reader cameras with black trash bags because police there are unsure whether the cameras are still active and the city doesn’t know whether it has permission to take the cameras down. The move comes after months of outrage from residents, a scandal in which the city was sharing Flock camera data to immigration enforcement, apparently on accident, and a $30,000 audit into how the cameras were being used.
Dayton Deputy City Manager Joe Parlett said at a city commission meeting last week that “the Dayton Police Department has agreed to work with the Department of Public Works to put bags over the cameras” until the Flock cameras are completely removed. I spoke to several people in Dayton who said they’d seen backpack cameras over the past few days. Dayton Daily News First reported on bagging.
Dayton isn’t the first city to cover its Flock cameras with trash cans because they can’t figure out how to end the use of the cameras immediately. Late last year, Evanston, Illinois Covered my cameras with garbage bags too While he waited for the company to take them out of the city. Cities across the country are reconsidering their relationship with the surveillance company after reports from 404 Media and local news outlets showed that data from the cameras was making its way to Immigration and Customs Enforcement through Flock’s national camera network.
Most cities that have reconsidered their contracts have done so through city council meetings and public debate that lasted for months, and Dayton and Evanston city officials told residents they were not sure they could immediately deactivate or remove the cameras under the terms of their contracts. And so both cities decided to physically block them as a stop-gap measure, showing that the cities feel they do not have the ability to unilaterally decide when to stop using swarm surveillance cameras.
Dayton City Commissioner Darius Beckham was appointed to the position. Said at a city commission meeting last week The city “is requesting that the swarm cameras be removed. I think we’re working on how quickly we can do that. I think in the interim, we’re trying to figure out what steps can be taken to mitigate the risks and concerns that there are still recordings being made.” Covering them with garbage bags is the idea the city finally came up with.
Cities aren’t sure what their contracts say, how to extricate themselves from those contracts, or what cameras are recording (and where that data is going). This uncertainty highlights the problems associated with the use of private, third-party surveillance infrastructure. For example, last week, the mayor of Menominee, Wisconsin Said bunch of cameras in the city “Has been activated without City Council approval.”
Dayton has had Flock cameras in the city for several years, but in October the city discovered that data from the cameras was being sent through Flock’s national network to the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is a We first reported this incident in May last year. The city claimed that it did not intend for this sharing to occur, and that a specific police officer “failed to implement safeguards that he had helped develop” to prevent the sharing; Essentially, no setting was enabled to prevent sharing. on 1 may Police department announced Due to this data sharing it is “indefinitely suspending the use of our fixed-site automated license plate readers”, and the officer who failed to implement privacy safeguards will be leaving the department.
“It’s very disappointing, and disappointing would be too mild a word,” said Dayton Police Chief Kamran Afzal. said in a press conference earlier this month. “Disappointing would be a very mild word. I can’t describe my choice of words live on air or how I really feel, but it’s disappointing and disgusting, that would be another word I would use… Of course it was a user error. It’s nothing more than that because as soon as we found out, we immediately shut things down [about the sharing]. “All they had to do was press a toggle button saying ‘No, not sharing’ and we were done.” On March 31, Afzal announced that he would resign this summer to take another job in North Carolina.
For months, city residents have been demanding greater accountability from the city of Dayton and the resignation of Dayton’s city manager over the use of flock cameras. Melissa Bartolo, who is pushing against Flock cameras through an organization called Deflock Dayton and the Coalition for Public Protection, told 404 Media that residents’ work to push for transparency about Flock data sharing practices in the city has brought the issue to the forefront.
“It’s a step in the right direction,” Bartolo said of covering the cameras, adding that, eventually, the cameras will have to come down. “Our coalition has made six demands – covering the cameras is not one of them. Removing the cameras is one of them. This is a step in that direction. We have told all five city commissioners that they agree to remove the cameras, but they say it is a process to find out… so even if the program is ‘suspended’, the data can still be captured. We cannot just say the program is suspended until we actively know this That they’ve turned off the cameras.”
One of the major questions is whether Dayton is actually going to end the flock program, and how he will go about doing so. Evanston in August Terminated his contract with FlockAnd the flock cameras were removed. The city then claimed that Flock “re-installed the cameras without the city’s permission,” and sent the company to shut down the work. reporting by the Evanston Round Table Conference Suggested that the cameras were possibly activated after reinstallation. The city then decided to cover the cameras with trash bags; Earlier this year, cameras were completely removed from the city.
“All Flock cameras have been removed from Evanston,” a spokesperson for the city of Evanston told 404 Media. “The cameras are owned by Flock and were to be removed by Flock. We covered them while we waited for removal.”
A spokesperson for Flock told 404 Media that “Of course, any city can turn off its cameras if it no longer wants to use them. However, each contract is negotiated in advance with the city’s attorney, and legal conditions may prevent a city from canceling a contract without grounds.”
“Our goal is to ensure that city leaders make decisions with open eyes, regardless of the contract,” the spokesperson said. “You’re well aware of the amount of misinformation spread in Reddit threads and YouTube, and we always want to make sure a city fully understands the impact of its decision before turning off the cameras. Like Richmond, CA claimed they saw a 33% increase in auto thefts while the cameras were turned off, or Austin, Texas saw several violent incidents that would have ended long ago had they been using Flock.”
In particular, Flock said he wants to continue working with the city of Dayton: “We are proud to work with the city of Dayton, OH and hope we can continue to do that.”
The city of Dayton did not respond to a request for comment.
<a href