On the struggle to dislodge Flock AI cameras from a city
… I appreciate others posting so much on this board about the boom of city-supported and city-and county-funded use of Flock AI cameras. These facilitate overpolicing, oversurveillance, and widespread data sharing — which is especially worrisome as state and/of federal laws demand data sharing with ICE, Homeland Security and/or state law enforcement.
In a prior post, Ed Book justified Gainesville’s decision by emphasizing that the benefits to police outweigh the dangers to others, and noting the (alleged) limited nature of GPD’s Flock contract. We now have our own city, GPD, ACSO, and Alachua Police each installing their own cameras and automated license plate readers.
The Alligator ran a good piece on this if anyone wants more background:
https://www.alligator.org/article/2026/02/flock-cameras?ct=content_open&cv=cbox_latest
I am adding this article from today’s WAPO (Bezos owned, I know) bc it overviews one city’s dubious integration of Flock and the lack of transparency around its data sharing “ethics”
The feature highlights how hard it is to dislodge adoption of Flock by legal processes and standard community organizing when the mayor, city council, and police all circle the wagons, which is the situation happening here.
Here is that (gift) article link — gets anyone through the paywall: