Behind the scenes of breaking news, culture wars, and moral division, a significant battle is brewing: mass surveillance vs. the people.
One surveillance technology in particular is rising to the surface of the national conversation: automated license plate readers (ALPR).
Flock Safety, a leader in ALPR technology, is one of the companies in the eye of the storm. Last week, Flock’s CEO and co-founder Garrett Langley made headlines when he released a statement announcing the company was going to “pause” its pilot programs with the U.S. government.
The company said that while it has no current contracts with any U.S. Department of Homeland Security agencies, it did engage in “limited pilots with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), to assist those agencies in combatting human trafficking and fentanyl distribution.”
So why would a company decide not to aid their own government in the fight against human trafficking and fentanyl distribution? Who are the voices that swayed them?
The company’s statement likely stems from criticism (or demonization) of Flock Safety for developing technology that has been adapted for use by ICE agents.
In a July interview with 9News Denver, Flock Safety CEO Langley was asked about the Denver city council voting against extending the city’s Flock contract “out of concerns the system would be exploited for immigration matters.”
Langley straddled the fence:
“Every city needs to make a decision what’s right for them. Some cities work really closely with federal authorities … Now in the case of Denver, if there’s no desire to work with ICE, that’s great. We need to create a safer city while still upholding the values we have.”
Ultimately, however, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston, a Democrat, extended the contract through October 2025 after the dollar amount was reset to a figure that didn’t need council approval.
A spokesman for the mayor said the cameras are “an important tool for fighting crime.”
Meanwhile, Denver city leaders formed a special task force to discuss the technology’s privacy concerns. The policy director for the ACLU of Colorado said he would like the cameras turned off entirely—”until there are policies in place to regulate the use of them …”
Reason magazine claims that that “Flock Safety’s 40,000 cameras present in over 5,000 communities across the U.S. are being used to detain undocumented immigrants, many of whom have no criminal history.”
To be clear, it’s not a matter of Homeland Security or ICE agents directly accessing the Denver system—or any ALPR system. It’s a complex issue of state and local law enforcement agencies sharing information or granting access to other agencies. As Denver7 reported, “Flock Safety’s cameras capture billions of photos of license plates each month. However, it doesn’t own that data. The local agencies in whose jurisdictions the cameras are located do, and they’re the ones who receive inquiries from other law enforcement agencies.”
Hellbound and Down 