Cold as ICE

As of May 4th, the city of Kettering, Ohio will no longer allow use of their Flock cameras for immigration enforcement. This comes months after the council meeting to install the surveillance ALPRs saying they would not be used for ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) or speeding tickets.

They can't be trusted

The police chief informed council members that these Flock cameras wouldn't be used for immigration enforcement after one member asked. For several months, the city of Kettering's police department used the Flock cameras for exactly that. Now, on May 4th, the police changed the way they do things “to no longer allow agencies to access our camera data for immigration reasons." The Dayton Daily News states that "...data from an audit of the system shows immigration was the stated reason for agencies to access Kettering’s Flock system 184 times in January alone..." That means, from the months of March to May, it's possible that this could have been used to incarcerate dozens of people.

This isn't just about ICE

From what we see time and time again, we cannot trust our governments to do what they say. This is most definitely not the first time this has happened and it certainly will not be the last. As DeFlock puts it, "As history has shown, when governments or third parties gain unchecked surveillance powers, they're eventually used against people who weren't doing anything wrong—until someone decided they were." This is exactly what we will see in the coming years. We're allowing more and more surveillance into our daily lives without the thought about bad actors. There are far too many people that will hijack the use of these mass surveillance programs and use it for their own personal benefit.

What can we do?

Pay attention to what happens in your community. In many cities, citizens are protesting the use of mass surveillance programs such as Flock. That could be your city, too. Show up to your council meetings and voice your concerns; you will not be the only one doing so.

I wish to hear your thoughts, though. If you have any comments or have an idea for a future post, E-Mail me at schmidty@paytabyte.me. Please note that all traffic to that E-Mail is proxied via Cloudflare and stored by Outlook by Microsoft.