u/JesseJames3rd

> 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.

> 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).

> 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?

The nationwide trend of elected officials shutting down public comment continued this week in Madison County, North Carolina.

Over twenty speakers in the rural county attended the June 9 Commissioners meeting to speak against increasing surveillance by private Flock camera devices.

But Board Chair Michael Garrison said he was “taking advantage of our policy.” He refused to let the speakers take the podium, telling residents “You will not speak on Flock tonight.”

As read by Madison County Attorney Donny Laws, the policy provides that “a spokesperson may be requested to be designated” for “a group of persons supporting or opposing the same position.”

The commission forced the group to convene outside the chamber and designate a single speaker on their collective behalf. As one person who wished to speak noted, “So we need to have a mini democratic process, to then not have a democratic process.”

Some of the aspirant speakers in attendance at the commissioner meeting were representatives of the community organization Madison For Privacy. Others had never met. They each wished to make their own points on the private surveillance technology, especially as the meeting agenda included the county’s budget, which indirectly funds the cameras.

Opposition to the use of Flock surveillance cameras, used for automated license plate recognition and other purposes, continues to spread nationally. Growing awareness of the hazards of artificial intelligence and the documented misuses of state-licensed, corporate-owned personal data has fueled distrust in these systems. As the events in Madison County illustrate, the problems impact rural areas as much as urban ones.

Learn more at madisonforprivacy.org
Video credit: Sarah Scully
Source: Battleground

Title: Nearly 3 million searches ran through New Hanover's license-plate cameras in 16 months — and the names were redacted

Flock cameras everywhere

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County Commissioners silence speakers opposing Flock surveillance