Flock Cameras Got Eviscerated by the Midterms

Shutterstock / Futurism Tuesdays midterm elections in the US were a referendum on a lot of things — the war on Iran, data centers, and the ultra-powerful tech lobby, to name just a few. In several local contests, the elections were also a crushing blow for the rising domestic surveillance industry, as voters sent automatic license plate reader (ALPR) companies like Flock Safety packing. In York County, Maine, for example, a ballot measure to remove the town’s current ALPRs and require voter approval for any future installations of surveillance technology passed with flying colors, winning a 72 percent share of the vote. And in League City, Texas, a measure to “advise the city to continue police use” of ALPRs failed — albeit by a slimmer margin, with 54 percent of voters opposing the measure. As the newspaper Community Impact reported, cities like Pflugerville, Texas also passed ordinances requiring public approval before installing any facial recognition, surveillance, and AI tools that could infringe on residents’ privacy going forward. Beyond ballot measures, municipal politicians with wishy-washy messaging around Flock bans were also trounced. As the right-libertarian magazine Reason observed, incumbent mayor of League City Nick Long retained his seat by promising to abide by voters’ wishes when it comes to ALPRs, saying that “if the vote is no” on the ballot measure, then “we will have the cameras bagged or disabled within 72 hours of the certification of the vote.” Long’s opponent Tom Crews, on the other hand, wasn’t so bold, waffling on the question of how a no vote would impact the city’s $175,000 contract with Flock. Crews was then clobbered at the polls, losing with just 33.6 percent of the vote. And there’s clearly appetite for more restrictions on ALPR companies going forward, as numerous measures across the country simply failed to make the ballot. According to Ballotpedia, at least seven measures were left on the table in states like West Virginia and Colorado, in one case due to municipal leaders choosing to ditch ALPRs, basically pre-empting a referendum by voters. In other words, the surveillance rout may just be the beginning — though with over 145,000 ALPRs installed throughout the country, local organizers have their work cut out for them if they want to end Flock spying for good. More on Flock: Flock Cameras Are Really Just the Start of Our Dystopian Surveillance Hell, Experts Warn