Huntsville Police defend Flock cameras amid pushback
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Flock cameras are one of several tools Huntsville police use to fight crime, and the technology is proving effective, the department says.
Why it matters: Automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) like Flock cameras are highly regulated and audited, police say, even as their use raises privacy concerns across the country.
Driving the news: Flock anxiety has made it all the way to Congress, where members of both parties have raised concerns about the network of around 120,000 cameras, spurring a Senate investigation.
- Citizens across the country are pushing back on ALPRs they see as constant surveillance infringing on civil liberties.
- Cases of alleged misuse of Flock camera data have been increasing across the country, too, from Georgia to Ohio.
The latest: Sgt. Chris Jackson, public information officer with HPD, told reporters Thursday the department keeps a log of each officer who searches through ALPR data and audits that log each weekday.
- Each officer has a unique identifier used to access the data, he explained, retained in the log alongside which data the officer sought.
- Any unauthorized access of that data violates state and federal law, Jackson said, and "being terminated would probably be the least of your concerns."
Yes, but: Police don't want to make those logs public, Jackson said, as they include sensitive information pertinent to investigations, like which license plates are being sought and where.
- "If that information were to get out into the community, we're now alerting a murderer, a drug trafficker, a child predator that we're on to them and that we're trying to find them," Jackson said.
How it works: The cameras take a photo of vehicles passing by, and software identifies and logs the license plate information and location, he said.
- Searches can be initiated with other identifying information like color, make and model, but "they're kind of hard to sift through," Jackson said.
Zoom out: Given that police may not learn about crimes for days after they happen, HPD also sees problems with Flock's recent move to reduce data retention time from 30 days to seven.
- "You might get lucky at day 10 [of an investigation] to get a vehicle," he said.
By the numbers: HPD has more than 200 ALPRs, 29 of which are Flock-brand cameras.
- Officers answer about 450 calls for service a day, Jackson said, about 60 or 70 of which pull in ALPRs to help.
- In one case this year, HPD was able to recover a stolen Range Rover in 27 minutes thanks to ALPRs, he said.