Flock cameras: Public safety tool or privacy concern?

Okay, welcome back. 844 Flock cameras have become a major point of debate recently. They are designed to be used as an investigative tool for law enforcement, but a number of regular civilians, they are raising some big-time privacy concerns. So both reasonings have merit, but where do you draw the line between public safety and personal privacy? We're hearing from both sides of the argument this morning. Gene Michael Vurdien, the former Secret Service agent and security expert, and Ed Yonka with the ACLU of Illinois. Thank you so much, both of you, for being here. Good to be here. So Michael, let's start with you. Why do you think Flock cameras are so valuable for law enforcement? I'll start with the fact that a license plate number is a public record. I just want to clear up that misperception. But beyond that, the information associated with the license plate number is private. But with the cameras, I also want to be clear, the cameras are recording the make, model, and color of the vehicle, and any distinguishing features like a dent in the fender, stuff like that. And that's it. Also, as far as the vehicle goes, there's no facial recognition, there's no video of the driver or passengers. It's also recording date, time, and location. So that's what those cameras are doing. And I'll stop there. We'll talk more about it, but they're not doing anything more than what I just said. Okay. So those parameters that Michael ran through, Ed, given that, and given that those kinds of pieces of information can lead to crimes being solved, what issue do you have with them? So two things. First of all, what Michael just described is a massive surveillance system that's been rolled out across this country, and certainly across the state of Illinois. If I know where Michael goes on a particular day, if I know where he travels to, I know a lot about him. And I don't have to have any evidence that he's involved in any sort of criminal activity. That information is being collected. And the balance here, and I think this is critical to this dialogue, is what is the evidence that these are actually detecting and resolving crimes? Because we often hear from law enforcement, or certainly from the vendors, that they do that. But it's always hard to difficult or pin down the places where the camera system and that surveillance system was in fact the thing that identified a criminal activity and helped to resolve the crime. Now, when it comes to the data and who's able to search the data, there have been a lot of questions about that as well. Michael, what safeguards need to be in place to prevent misuse? Because we have reported on an officer search someone's license plate a thousand times. So those stories are out there. So let's talk about the data. So it's retained for 30 days, no longer than 30 days. Also, it's not shared with a third party. FLOC has a contract with an HOA or a police department, municipality. It's shared with them. And the HOA, for example, can only share whatever information they want to share. But I do understand about the concern. Another thing, too, that I've been an advocate is, if you're like Rolling Meadows, for example, if you're a police department, have a public facing website. On that website, say exactly the number of cameras, the location of the cameras, what is being retained, what's not being retained. Also, to your point, Ed, show the results of this. We want to see what results are coming from this. Because I can tell you the benefits from a law enforcement standpoint. AMBER Alerts, stolen vehicles, missing people. But that's a niche. Anything beyond that niche, it's questionable. That's where the misuse- Let's get Ed's thoughts on this, though. In terms of, is there a 50-yard line here? Is there a way that these cameras could be used and deployed to those ends, AMBER Alerts and that kind of thing, that the ACLU would be comfortable with, with regard to personal privacy? If, in fact, they're going to be used, I think a lot of the things that Michael has just outlined limits on exactly when they can be searched, what kinds of criminal activity, limits on who can search them. I think to the question earlier, there's often a policy that's put in place that says only, for example, a supervisor can do the search or approve the search. And what we find over time is that data, that password, and et cetera, gets shared out. That's how you get the guy searching 1,000 times for a former love interest. That is where that happens. And then putting very strict guidelines around things like out-of-state inquiries trying to enforce, for example, abortion laws from other states and or attempting to search people or look at people who are headed into a protest. I think those are things where you could be. But I really want to pick up on Michael's last point, which is at every step along the way, there ought to be a public-facing, not just report out, but dialogue about how these work, and if there are any privacy violations, and then what happens in those circumstances. That's the way, if they're going to be used, we can best protect them is to have transparency around this entire process. One of the things that happened was in response, I think, to a blip in violent crime in COVID and just post-COVID, a lot of these camera systems were run out in a lot of different locations. But in some cases, the public never even had an opportunity to weigh on whether or not they should be there in the first instance. And I know a number of municipalities right now are trying to address that by getting out in front of this, doing community meetings, that kind of thing. And today we reported Homer Glenn's doing away with them. But the state of Florida is taking them all down off of their highways. This is the kind of dialogue I think needs to happen. Find that 50-yard line. Exactly. And figure out what the Goldilocks zone is. Exactly. And it is so good to have you two here to have that 50-yard line dialogue. And we're going to have more on this after the break. Stay close. 850 right now.