Happy 250th. Fitting week for it: Hillsborough, Pittsboro, and Chatham County have all pulled the plug on Flock's license-plate cameras, and HB 206 sadly makes the SBI's highway version permanent. The through-line back to 1776 is the general warrant — the suspicionless search the Fourth Amendment was written to ban.
Happy Independence Day, Wilmington. Quick local tie-in: the Revolution was partly a fight against general warrants — searches of everyone, without cause. That's more or less what the county's Flock camera network does. Public records show it was searched ~2.98 million times in 16 months, with the name of every searching agency and officer redacted.
Disclosure: I've lived here nearly 30 years and I write for the site linked below. Wrote up the Fourth Amendment history and how it connects to what's on our roads: https://deflockilm.org/america-250-privacy-fourth-amendment/
The closest city to me is 8 square miles and has 24 cameras.
That's 3 cameras per square mile.
I don't see many people talk about this part ... Not only is it obviously a HUGE infringement on our privacy but let's talk about the sheer amount of data 24 cameras in 1 city is constantly capturing, analyzing, and "storing for 30 days". I know it's stored through AWS (cloud) ... But still. WHEN IS IT ENOUGH?
I already deleted so many apps because I was tired of CONSTANTLY feeling farmed for data. They know because they want to trade and sell my likes, dislikes, what grabs my attention, what I spend money on... And NOW they also know the routes I take every single day. I see enough cameras each day that if you pooled the data together there is a screenshot with a time and date of my face and or license place EVERY DAY OF THE WEEK. YOU COULD FIGURE OUT NOT ONLY EXACTLY WHERE I AM, BUT WHERE I WILL MOST-LIKELY BE EVERY SINGLE DAY OF THE WEEK.
Even the "middle of nowhere" states aren't safe ... No offense if you live in a middle of no where place... But you're telling me North Dakota is flocked? Montana is flocked?
Sigh. It would be a shame if we all got way too rowdy for the celebration of 250yrs of America.... A real shame.
> If you drive in Wilmington, your car is being photographed and logged by Flock cameras around the city and county. I pulled the Sheriff's Office's own audit records through a public-records request: the county's camera network was searched about 3 million times in ~16 months, and the name of every searching agency and officer was blacked out.
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> I went through the comments on a bunch of local posts about this too — opinions are all over the map, and I tried to lay out both sides honestly (some folks point to stolen cars being recovered; a lot more are uneasy about the scale and the lack of a warrant).
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> Full disclosure: I'm part of DeFlockILM, a local group on this. Records and write-up here if you want to check my math. Curious what people here actually think — have you noticed how many of these are up now?
They are running a story tonight on Flock in Wilmington
Here is the State Bureau of Investigation report prepared for members of the General Assembly
'Pilot Program to Authorize Automatic License Plate Readers in State Rights-of-Way'
https://webservices.ncleg.gov/ViewDocSiteFile/105562