Flock cameras: Who is tracking your car?

One this morning. If you have driven today, you've probably already been caught on camera. Yes, that's right. Automated license plate readers, flat cameras. They're tracking drivers nationwide. But who can actually see the data? Let's see what info we have on that. Olivia Dance joins us alive with answers after speaking with the privacy expert. Good morning, Olivia. Good morning, Golan and Sally. So did you know that Texas actually has the second most license plate readers in the country, and they're hard to spot. There's one just behind us here on Montrose Boulevard, and there's actually another one just a block up from here that we found. But they're designed to blend in, and the cameras have been popping up everywhere. But as cars drive by, as they are right now, the camera is actively scanning license plates, capturing vehicle details and then feeding that information into a massive network. So law enforcement is using the data from flock and other similar companies and calls it a game changer for safety, helping police to hit and runs, recover stolen cars and even find missing people. But privacy advocates warn they are creating a digital trail of your daily life as more than 120,000 of these cameras have popped up on roads all across the country. And because roughly three out of four police departments share their camera feeds, a single drive can leave behind a searchable trail across a nationwide network, allowing officers to track vehicles outside of their jurisdiction. Homeowners associations, private businesses and neighborhood groups also often have access to the cameras. And when these private entities connect their cameras to local police networks, they become part of the broader law enforcement grid search. All this data, 20 billion captures a month going up to Fox private cloud where nobody knows what actually happens to it. You know, they claim they have defaults by tenant where you say, you know, they recently changed it from 30 days by default to seven days for attention. Um, so they say after seven days is deleted, there's no validation of that. There's no audit ability. There's no way to know for sure. And that's the default, which means any precinct can go in there and crank the dial up to a couple of months and build bigger histories of where somebody is going and bigger dossiers in their life. Privacy experts say really, the only thing you can do now is push local government to demand stricter auditing rules and limit who has access to the cameras. And actually, Sally and Delon League City is the first local jurisdiction that is leaving this decision up to voters in November. Voters there will be able to decide if flawed cameras will be allowed within their city limits. And I'm sure those voters will have some strong opinions on both sides. For sure. All right. Thank you, Olivia. Appreciate it.