There was a time when a person could drive across Tampa Bay in relative anonymity, observed only by traffic cops, toll collectors and an ever-increasing number of panhandlers.
That freedom is disappearing.
Flock cameras now stand along our roads photographing license plates, identifying vehicles and recording where cars have been. They perch atop poles beneath little solar panels, looking like birdhouses designed by the Department of Homeland Security.
The cameras do not sleep, blink or become distracted by attractive joggers. They never call in sick. They don’t even stop for lunch, which Flock Safety’s media team recently admitted it occasionally must do.
Let’s concede something before the civil libertarians start throwing copies of the Constitution at me: These cameras can be extremely useful.
When a violent criminal flees in a vehicle, it is comforting to know that hundreds of electronic eyeballs may be reading his license plate. The same is true when police are searching for a kidnapped child, a missing senior citizen or one of the wandering psychopaths who periodically remind us why we lock our doors.
St. Petersburg police say the technology has helped solve homicides and an arson. Tampa police credited it with helping catch the killers of rapper Charles “Julio Foolio” Jones. Other agencies have used license-plate readers to locate missing people and stolen vehicles.
If a homicidal maniac is driving toward my neighborhood, I want Flock to find him.
If I’m headed to the pharmacy for a prescription, that’s none of Flock’s business.
That is the difficulty with mass surveillance. A camera capable of following the getaway car can also follow the dentist, preacher, divorce lawyer or a fellow making his third weekly visit to a doughnut shop after telling his wife he joined a gym.
The machine doesn’t know the difference between dangerous and lawfully embarrassing.
Neither, unfortunately, do some people operating it.
A Haines City police officer was recently accused of making 717 searches of his estranged wife’s vehicle using Flock. Apparently, after the first 716 searches failed to explain where she was going, he decided to try once more.
This is not police work. It is using government equipment to stalk citizens who have done nothing to warrant surveillance.
Flock says every search is tied to a user and recorded in an audit log. The company has announced stronger tools to detect unusual activity. That sounds reassuring until hundreds of searches for an estranged wife apparently become unusual only after someone else discovers them.
The safeguard should not merely be a computer saying, “Officer, you seem remarkably interested in this Corvette.”
It should be a supervisor asking why.
Local law-enforcement agencies insist they have safeguards. The public, however, is frequently prevented from inspecting the search logs that would show whether they work.
Officials cite security exemptions.
In other words: “Trust us. We checked ourselves, and most of us appear to be behaving.”
Police should not reveal information that could compromise an active investigation. But there is an enormous distance between protecting an investigation and refusing to tell taxpayers how often a surveillance system is searched, who can search it and how misuse is punished.
A government that watches everyone should let everyone watch the watchers.
Today the system identifies license plates, vehicle color, make and model. Newer technology can search video for people based on clothing, jewelry and tattoos.
This opens exciting possibilities.
Police may soon search for “middle-aged male, cargo shorts, orthopedic sandals, carrying a leaf blower he has no intention of returning.”
Artificial intelligence might eventually assign behavioral profiles.
Frequent hospital visits: medically concerning.
Frequent courthouse visits: legally concerning.
Frequent visits to both: probably running for public office.
The less amusing danger is that a national camera network can reveal who attended a political rally, visited an immigration attorney, entered a medical clinic, worshiped at a particular church or spent an evening with someone the government considers suspicious.
The question is not whether today’s police chief promises to use the system responsibly. It is what tomorrow’s chief, sheriff, prosecutor, governor or data contractor could do with it.
Technology has a habit of becoming permanent before the rules governing it are finished.
Flock cameras should not disappear. They are too valuable when minutes matter. But searches should require a documented investigative reason. Independent audits should be routine and unannounced. Misuse should mean dismissal and prosecution, not retraining followed by a stern memo. Data should be deleted quickly unless connected to a case.
The public also deserves regular reports explaining how the system is used without exposing active investigations.
We can find the murderer without building a permanent travel journal for someone’s wife, fiancée or neighbor. We can locate the kidnapped child without documenting everyone who drove past a political campaign stop.
Flock can be both a lifesaving tool and an invasion of privacy.
The difference is not the camera. It is the person watching—and whether anyone is watching that person.