Flock Off

Flock cameras are automated license plate readers and motion-monitoring systems created by Flock Safety and used by law enforcement, neighborhoods, and businesses to track vehicle data, log physical characteristics, and map travel patterns across more than 120,000 locations nationwide. That's the simple generic AI explanation, but basically, Big Brother is watching you.

I wrote this cartoon several days ago and decided last night to draw it while catching up on John Oliver's Last Week Tonight, as he did a show on these cameras. Oliver did a great job of exposing the flaws with these things. Basically, they are not looking for bad guys, but looking at everybody. And when they do believe they found a bad guy, they are often wrong.

The company that makes them estimates that there are 120,000 of these cameras operating across 49 states in the United States. Independent crowdsourced mapping projects track nearly 96,000 to 100,000 of them, while the company's network spans over 6,000 to 7,000 law enforcement agencies and private community groups. There are about 20 billion scans per month.

Would you like to know if they are in your community? Click here. If you live in my own small city of Fredericksburg, smile when you drive through Central Park. You’re on hidden camera.

Not only are citizens reacting negatively to these cameras, but so are cities. Some recent ones that have canceled their contracts with Flock are Madison, Wisconsin, Salem, Massachusetts, Syracuse, New York, Fort Collins, Colorado, Framingham, Massachusetts, Bloomington, Indiana, Ithaca, New York, Oxnard, California, Santa Cruz, California, Olympia, Washington, Flagstaff, Arizona, Staunton, Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia, Redmond, Washington, Bay City, Michigan, Warrenton, Virginia, Sedona, Arizona, Evanston, Illinois, Austin, Texas, Eureka, California, Denver, Colorado, Bend, Oregon, Everett, Washington, South Tucson, Arizona, and Los Angeles, California.

According to my research, which may be spotty, the only state without any Flock cameras is Alaska. But I do not trust this information, as perhaps a private corporation in that state has them implemented and not any police department.

While a lot of communities are cutting ties with Flock, police departments are still using them to violate citizens’ privacy and to harass and even arrest people falsely accused of crimes. And they are expensive.

Irmo, South Carolina, a small city with a population of 11,000, recently contracted with Flock for 22 cameras at a price of over $400,000.

People are starting to vandalize the cameras, as if they were reflecting pools, with some now spraying the cameras’ lenses with foam sealant.

Be good because cameras are everywhere. You are probably being watched right now. Recently, the Fredericksburg Police Department asked to see footage from my Ring as my neighbor across the hall had his Door camera stolen by a woman he had broken things off with. Sure enough, my camera captured it.

Oddly enough, his camera did not capture the theft. But that is what he gets for cheating on his girlfriend.

There are 79 days left until the midterms.

Drawn in 30 seconds:

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