Five More Cops Charged for Abusing Flock Cameras Amid So Many Similar Scandals That We Can’t Even Keep Track
Futurism ·
"We have seen abuse of automated license plate readers for almost as long as they have existed." The post Five More Cops Charged for Abusing Flock Cameras Amid So Many Similar Scandals That We Can’t Even Keep Track appeared first on Futurism .
Police abuse of AI-integrated surveillance cameras is spiraling out of control.
On Wednesday, freshly unsealed court documents revealed that five Indianapolis police officers had been charged with abusing the department’s automatic license plate readers (ALPRs). The accused include officer Jonathan Schultz, an 18-year veteran, who used 300 cameras provided by the ALPR company Flock to stalk multiple women, including his ex-wife, and a woman he met at a workout class in 2023, ABC News reported .
Ten hours away in North Carolina, the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office halted its Flock partnership and fired a seasoned detective who was caught using the cameras to “track the every movement of a single private citizen.” Across the country in San Jose, California, city officials are calling for a crackdown on police access to ALPRs after an officer was sacked for sharing Flock data with his cousin , who had been accused of domestic violence.
Those are just the latest incidents involving police abuse of ALPRs, and are almost certain to be superseded by new scandals in the coming days and weeks.
As Flock’s surveillance network swells to well over 140,000 ALPRs across the US, incidents of police abuse have followed, with at least 244 separate cases of police abuse recorded by the Institute for Justice — and those are just the ones who’ve gotten caught.
Far from a few bad apples, the rate and distribution of ALPR abuse across the country points to a truly systemic issue, and one which isn’t stopping.
The laundry list of ways police have abused Flock is immense — officers have been caught using ALPRs to stalk romantic interests , retaliate against critics , conduct unauthorized searches on behalf of immigration agents , monitor activists , harass coworkers , locate the victim of domestic abuse on behalf of the suspected perpetrator, surveil Muslims driving to mosques, and even just to pass the time when they’re bored.
“Unfortunately, we have seen abuse of automated license plate readers for almost as long as they have existed,” senior investigative researcher for the Electronic Frontier Foundation Beryl Lipton said in an interview , after 10 officers from the Chicago area were caught abusing ALPRs in separate occasions in late August.
“Previously, the systems weren’t as connected as they are,” Lipton said of Flocks expansive web of interconnected cameras. “Now that abuse can really take place at scale across state lines.”
With so many angry protestors directing their rage at the company supplying these devices, it’s worth remembering who’s responsible for Flock’s real-world harms: unscrupulous police officers who treat innocent citizens like game to be tracked.
More on Flock: Flock’s Network Is Losing Value to Cops as More and More of Its Cameras Go Offline
The post Five More Cops Charged for Abusing Flock Cameras Amid So Many Similar Scandals That We Can’t Even Keep Track appeared first on Futurism .