A judge in Washington has ruled that police images taken by Flock’s AI license plate-scanning cameras are public records that can be requested as part of normal public records requests.
She further found that….the images on them are public records because they were paid for by taxpayers. Despite this, the records that were requested as part of the case will not be released because the city automatically deleted them after 30 days.
The case came in response to a public records request made by Jose Rodriguez, who in April sought all of the images taken by the city’s Flock cameras between the hours of 5 and 6 p.m. on March 30 (he later narrowed this request to only ask for images taken by a single camera in a half-hour period). The city argued that Rodriguez would have to request them directly from Flock, a private company not subject to public records laws. But Flock’s contracts with cities say that the city owns the images taken on their cameras. The city eventually took Rodriguez to court. In the court proceedings, the city made a series of arguments claiming that Flock images couldn’t be released; the judge’s decision rebuked all of these many arguments.
Am I the only one who thinks there must be a large entity behind Flock trying to build a new domestic surveillance apparatus in the US or is that just the natural skeptical privacy minded conspiratorial thinking I have about this company that seemingly came from nowhere causing this much controversy and damage.
I mean, Andreessen Horowitz. If that name doesn’t explain everything, you should do some digging. Have a stiff drink at the ready.
Yeah that explains it all actually. Didn’t know he was it though.
There’s several others. I just did a quick Brave search for “List of Flock investors” that turned up a number of names, but he’s the main one I recognize.
I should do some more digging then. Thanks for sharing.
A shifty company worth keeping your eye on.
So If I follow her argument any NSA/ICE/ etc. trove of american citizen data would be publicily accesible because it is funded by taxpayers?
I suspect that the national agencies can hide behind a “national security” barrier which would be unavailable to a city or county law enforcement agency.