Sleek black devices well-hidden on high poles, around corners, or atop streetlights dot the roads of towns and cities all over the country. Gainesville has become home to hundreds of these devices, known as automatic license plate reader, or ALPR, cameras, over the past few years. Most notably, those developed by Flock Safety.
Art Forgey, the Gainesville Police Department information officer, praised these cameras for their crime-solving capabilities.
Meanwhile, Dean Jordan, a 72-year-old fifth generation Gainesville native, said they’re “beyond any Big Brother warning you've ever had in your life.”
Flock Safety, a private surveillance company providing technology to thousands of law enforcement agencies across the country, manufactures cameras that extend beyond the functionality of standard ALPRs. A typical toll, speed or red-light camera takes note of license plate numbers that pass by or violate specific traffic laws, and stores that data locally. Flock cameras, however, use artificial intelligence to take note of all vehicles that pass them, their license plates, and any identifying features such as scratches or dents before storing that data to a shared database, through which police departments across the country can share and look up information.
“We’ve had license plate readers for 30 or more years,” Jordan said. “They’re not that. What they really are is information gatherers. They have incredible abilities.”
In 2024, Gainesville City Commission approved a five-year contract between Flock Safety and the GPD, granting Gainesville police 10 stationary Flock ALPR cameras and access to the Flock software and shared database for those five years. The contract costs 125,000 dollars, for five years, at 25,000 dollars per year. The money came from the Federal Law Enforcement Contraband Forfeiture Trust Fund, a fund consisting of assets seized or forfeited in criminal investigations. Florida law allows this money to be used for crime prevention purposes.
While the GPD only owns 10 cameras, private companies throughout Gainesville have also entered into agreements with Flock Safety and share the data they collect with local law enforcement. Crowdsourced data mapping website deflock.org shows over 100 of these cameras scattered throughout the city, most populated around the University of Florida campus, Butler Plaza and along Archer Road, as well as more dotted in towns around North Central Florida.
These cameras have sparked controversy throughout the country, and Gainesville is no exception. Residents have taken to social media voicing their concerns about the security and ethics behind advanced ALPRs.
Jordan is one of these residents.
“They’re not secure, and they are ripe for abuse,” he said.
These are the fears voiced by many Gainesville citizens, and they aren’t unfounded.
An officer in Texas accessed over 80,000 ALPR cameras, nearly 7,000 of which were Flock, to track a woman suspected of having an abortion across the country, including in states like Washington, where abortion is legal.
A former police officer in California was found to have used Flock cameras to track a woman he had previously had an affair with and her new romantic partners.
A woman in Colorado was falsely accused of theft and summoned to court after Flock cameras identified her vehicle near the scene of the crime.
And possibly the most widespread issue was a breach that allowed anyone with computer skills and easily accessible technology to hack into the live video feed of 60 Flock cameras across the country, giving them access to the live recording as well as the previous 30 days’ worth of data. Many of these cameras were pointed at schools, sidewalks and playgrounds.
However, the cameras accessed in this breach were Flock’s Condor cameras, which have facial recognition technology and the ability to pan, tilt and zoom. The cameras used by the GPD are Flock’s Falcon cameras, which are stationary and only record data on vehicles.
Jordan referred to instances like these when voicing his concerns with Flock Safety.
Forgey, however, said these cameras are no different from any other forms of surveillance Gainesville residents readily accept.
“We all know that when we're on a sidewalk walking down the street, or we're out on a roadway, we have no expectation of privacy like we would in our home,” he said.
Data from the cameras is stored for 30 days, and GPD officers receive training from Flock administrators, who also audit any searches performed. Flock cameras aren’t doing anything more than snapping your picture in a public place, and if they’re misused, that’s an issue with people, not with the cameras, he said.
“Just about any security camera out there anywhere can be hacked and be used for nefarious reasons, and Flock being a computerized system is no different than anybody else,” Forgey said.
Derek Bambauer, UF law professor and cybersecurity expert, is a little more skeptical.
Flock cameras gather a large database, he said, and while some of the uses for that database can be beneficial, others can be highly concerning.
The cameras are only used as a reactionary tool, Forgey said, meaning the GPD doesn’t access the data they collect unless there is already suspicion of a crime having been committed. However, once there is suspicion, no warrant is required to access all of the available data on someone’s vehicle, wherever in the country they may be.
Florida law enforcement agencies have been shown to access Flock’s nationwide network of data for a variety of reasons. Reasons for searches have been listed most frequently as stolen tags, armed disturbances, possession of illicit substances, and more. But perhaps most concerning to Jordan, some searches have listed the reasons “Assist ICE” and “immigration” on multiple occasions.
This isn’t the first time local and state law enforcement agencies have been found using Flock to informally assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, a federal agency.
“The fourth amendment is violated every time these masked vigilantes rough someone up,” Jordan said.
Despite the controversy, Forgey said the cameras’ benefits outweigh the risks. They help solve cases that may have previously gone cold, and citizens just knowing they’re out there deters crime, he said.
But Bambauer worries that isn’t all they deter.
Bambauer said he worries about cameras capturing cars outside of political protests, abortion clinics or any other controversial location that could put the driver at risk of repercussions.
“I think it means we have to be really cautious about the trade-offs that we make between enhancing public safety versus not capturing too much information,” he said.
To feel confident in the use of these cameras, Bambauer called for more transparency from law enforcement agencies over who has access to the data they collect and how exactly the technology works to obtain it, as well as legal constraints placed on things like where and for how long data is stored, who can access it, and what it’s used for.
“Data in some senses is neutral, but data can be put to a huge variety of purposes,” he said. “And the only thing that really limits that right now is the imagination of the user.”
Jordan had his own idea for how the city should handle the use of these devices.
“While I will forgive them for purchasing them, they need to get rid of them,” Jordan said.