#CambridgeMA has officially dropped their contract with #Flock!
https://www.cambridgeday.com/2025/12/10/city-cancels-deal-license-plate-tech/
#flock
Who wants to see the start of the Fuck Flock 9000? #flock #flocksafety #flockcameras #alpr
> The 16 cameras that were present in the city were deactivated and taken offline the next day, officials said. There are now no #Flock Safety cameras in the city.
I've seen at least one camera on my commute is still up as of today? Maybe it's offline, but the little black owl looking thing is definitely still there with the faint red LEDs on. Anyone else? #CambridgeMA
A remarkable outcome for a large group of local Colorado activists last night. In Longmont, a Denver suburb northeast of Boulder, more than 50 people testified last night to city council (and more than 90 people came to the council meeting) about their pending renewal of a contract with Flock, the ALPR company that has been under fire for its surveillance capitalism. DeFlock Longmont, the group that organized the public comment scrum, won a victory when city council voted not to renew the contract at the end of the hours-long meeting.
Public comment was at times serious and other times silly, but unanimous in opposition to the city renewing their contract. Public safety officials, including the chief of Longmont Police, testified after the public comment period that the Flock cameras had been instrumental in stopping a number of dangerous incidents and arresting people who committed violent crimes.
I hope you're following this, @404mediaco because we are not going to stop with just this one city.
Read the story here:
https://yellowscene.com/2025/12/10/longmont-residents-win-fight-against-ai-surveillance/
edit: added BRL story:
Watch the video:
In a big fuck you to the hundreds of Oaklanders who stayed till midnight to oppose the expansion of the #Flock contract, the #Oakland City Council is now debating sending the item directly for a Council vote on 12/16. Extremely out of order. Rules committee meets at 10:30am at Oakland City Hall. https://oakland.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1352259&GUID=7DAF1C9C-D32E-4F01-8DBD-2EFC73119009&Options=info|&Search=
In a big fuck you to the hundreds of Oaklanders who stayed till midnight to oppose the expansion of the #Flock contract, the #Oakland City Council is now debating sending the item directly for a Council vote on 12/16. Extremely out of order. Rules committee meets at 10:30am at Oakland City Hall. https://oakland.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1352259&GUID=7DAF1C9C-D32E-4F01-8DBD-2EFC73119009&Options=info|&Search=
I published a new post to my blog about #flock
@404mediaco Thank you for your continued reporting on the #flock issue. We successfully convinced our city to cancel their #Flock contract last week after they sneakily installed it about 6 months ago. I really think your articles helped us get more local folks involved to pressure the city and helped to educate the city council.
At the city council meeting for #Longmont, Colorado, more than 90 people have come to do public comment in opposition to the city renewing its contract with #Flock, the #ALPR company whose products have been under fire as a result of the abuse of the company's products by ICE, CBP, and other federal law enforcement agencies. It is a massive turnout for any city council meeting. The meeting is being livestreamed on the Longmont youtube live stream. This is going to be a very passionate public comment period at this meeting.
Five things you should know about #Flock:
1) It’s an AI surveillance company.
2) They’ve partnered with similarly dangerous entities, including ICE.
3) @404media has done awesome reporting on them—here’s one example! https://www.404media.co/flock-wants-to-partner-with-consumer-dashcam-company-that-takes-trillions-of-images-a-month/
4) You can explore & find camera locations on DeFlock! https://deflock.me/
5) Fuck Flock. All my homies hate Flock.
#AI #Privacy #Surveillance #SurveillanceCapitalism #ICE #Orwellian #Technology #Tech
Referenced video by Benn Jordan:
'Breaking The Creepy AI in Police Cameras'
'Benn Jordan's flock camera jammer will send you to jail in Florida now'
By Louis Rossman
"Flock, the automatic license plate reader and AI-powered camera company, uses overseas workers from Upwork to train its machine learning algorithms, with training material telling workers how to review and categorize footage including images people and vehicles in the United States, according to material reviewed by 404 Media that was accidentally exposed by the company.
The findings bring up questions about who exactly has access to footage collected by Flock surveillance cameras and where people reviewing the footage may be based. Flock has become a pervasive technology in the US, with its cameras present in thousands of communities that cops use every day to investigate things like carjackings. Local police have also performed numerous lookups for ICE in the system.
Companies that use AI or machine learning regularly turn to overseas workers to train their algorithms, often because the labor is cheaper than hiring domestically. But the nature of Flock’s business—creating a surveillance system that constantly monitors US residents’ movements—means that footage might be more sensitive than other AI training jobs."
https://www.wired.com/story/flock-uses-overseas-gig-workers-to-build-its-surveillance-ai/
#USA #Flock #Surveillance #AI #PoliceState #Upwork #ML #ice #ALPR
Here is an activism toolkit from Digital Fourth and EFF for testifying at the #CambridgeMA Public Safety hearing on surveillance:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16c3KdTYPJvt3gCetNmWDxP91VBZnH8jnMZ4JzQ7jkj8/edit?usp=sharing
The hearing is at 12pm on Tuesday December 9th.
You do not need to be a Cambridge resident to testify.
#BigBrother #NoWhereToHide Merging private tech like #Ring, #amazon and #Flock creates an inescapable surveillance dragnet. By bypassing warrant laws, this "always-on" grid enables unchecked real-time tracking, threatening civil liberties and paving the way for authoritarian control by erasing anonymity.
Either De-Flock's maps are inaccurate or they recently installed a cluster of them at the nearby strip mall.
#Flock
#privacy
#security
#BigBrother
#surveillance
#AI #Surveillance# Startup Caught Using #Sweatshop / #Gig Workers located in the #Philippines to Monitor US Residents
After accessing a cache of exposed data, 404 found documents related to annotating #Flock footage, a process sometimes called “AI training.” Workers were tasked with jobs include categorizing vehicles by color, make, and model, transcribing license plates, and labeling various audio clips from car wrecks.
https://futurism.com/artificial-intelligence/ai-surveillance-flock-philippines
https://archive.ph/VtX5G
Outstanding reporting by @404media on Flock! https://www.404media.co/flock-uses-overseas-gig-workers-to-build-its-surveillance-ai/
To quote the lede directly, “Flock, the automatic license plate reader (ALPR) and AI-powered camera company, uses overseas workers from Upwork to train its machine learning algorithms, with training material telling workers how to review and categorize footage including images people and vehicles in the U.S., according to material reviewed by 404 Media that was accidentally exposed by the company.”
#ai #surveillance #SurveillanceCapitalism #Privacy #ICE #flock
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