Presumably because of the title, people are making this a thread about license plates. But Flock (a YC company!) does a whole bunch of ML image classification stuff; think of it as something closer to a Google search for cars that have traversed your municipality in the last week, searchable not just by plate but by make, model, and distinguishing characteristics; you can even track cars by bumper sticker.

We went through this exercise last year in Oak Park, with our local PD requesting 20+ cameras --- a tactical misstep, because they'd been piloting a small number of cameras, and the larger request drove their acquisition costs across the threshold of needing board approval, which they were surprised to discover was contentious.

Because the board was split on the prospect of giving OPPD a Village-wide "Google for all movements of any car everywhere" capability, we were able to extract concessions. We got board approval for a much-reduced deployment (I think we have 8 cameras), contingent on recommendations from our citizen police oversight and IT commissions (I'm on one of those).

In the end, we got a General Order issued from OPPD limiting the use of cameras to violent crime, all uses traceable to case numbers reviewable by our police oversight commission, no usage from personal machines by OPPD staff but rather only OPPD-issued equipment, mandatory 2FA, and some other things I forget.

We were much less successful at regulating data sharing. This is a huge feature of Flock, and part of its viral customer acquisition strategy. OPPD found out about Flock by getting access to data from neighboring municipalities; many police departments run "transparency portals" to show you who they're sharing with, and it's often "every law enforcement agency in the region". Which makes sense, if you look at it from the perspective of the police department! But it makes it much harder to regulate how cameras are used, because our PD can't issue General Orders for other PDs, and Flock doesn't appear to provide any tools to enforce limits on data sharing.

The obvious thing to ask for in a pilot deployment is "turn all the sharing off", but that's hard when Flock's foot in the door was sharing from some other department.

I'd have been happier if we'd ended up with zero Flock cameras, but I'm not sure how political realistic that would have been, and I'm surprised we were able to extract as many concessions as we did.

Probably the most important thing we got was a commitment to a review of the effectiveness of the cameras after a year; presumably, if OPPD can't tie the cameras to solving specific violent crimes, we'll stop paying for the cameras.

The Village Board didn't enjoy being blindsided by a random acquisition request, and demanded a process be put in place for future surveillance tech requests. So one happy side effect of this is that we teed up ACLU CCOPS†, which I expect to see passed in the next couple months. CCOPS theoretically prevents municipal agencies from deploying surveillance tech without board approval, even if the cost is below purchasing thresholds.

Get involved in this stuff. You'd be surprised how little engagement there is at the local level, which is where a lot of the most important governing decisions are made.

† https://www.aclu.org/legal-document/community-control-over-p...