Flock Around and Find Out
The black vans parked right in front of the school were a dead giveaway. You always knew when it was the one day of the week that metal detectors were being deployed at the Brooklyn high school where I taught in the 90s. If you were planning to bring a weapon into the school, the workaround was pretty simple: Just wait a few hours until the vans left. Everyone associated with the school knew that the metal detector program was ineffective. Everyone in the school knew that the metal detector program created a negative stigma and had racist under(and over)-tones. As a white teacher, I was free to bypass the metal detectors on my first day at the school, while the students (all of whom were Black or brown) always had to go through the detection process. Yet, when I returned to that high school to question students and parents for my Ed School thesis on urban school violence and the use of metal detectors, my survey showed that a huge majority of students and parents wanted the metal detection program to remain in place. People concerned about being the victim of a crime (along with those who have already had the misfortune of that experience) will generally choose flawed protection over no protection.
+ That’s one of the aspects that makes the public backlash against the Flock license plate readers that blanket many American cities so interesting. Yes, they add an unappealing layer of surveillance to our society at a moment when many of us trust government less than ever. But those kinds of tradeoffs are generally accepted by people concerned about having their cars stolen or suffering some other criminal act. Is Flock an exception? And if so, how bad did they have to be to become one? NYT (Gift Article): Flock Cameras Can Track Every Car in America. Police Love Them. Citizens Don’t. “A Texas officer used Flock’s cameras to track a woman across state lines who was suspected of self-administering an abortion. Officers across the country have abused their access to Flock’s cameras, including to track romantic partners, resulting in discipline and termination. Los Angeles and Dayton, Ohio, among other cities, recently suspended their contracts with Flock to prevent immigration authorities from accessing data from the cameras. Dayton resorted to covering the cameras with trash bags. In cities like Houston, Oakland, Calif., and Grand Junction, Colo., residents have taken matters into their own hands, with police reports and surveillance footage documenting Flock cameras being cut down, splattered with paint and even shot.” Will the backlash hold? I recently attended a meeting about the use of Flock in my (very liberal) town. People spent about two percent of the time talking about how bad Flock’s transgressions are, and the rest of the meeting describing the car thefts and other crimes that have happened on their blocks.
+ I have a feeling we’ll see an increase in personal technologies that enable you to avoid being detected by cameras, whether they’re hanging from telephone poles or being worn as glasses by someone in your office. TechCrunch: This ‘adversarial’ pattern can prevent surveillance cameras from detecting you. (I always thought ‘adversarial’ patterns were those that accentuated my love handles.)
+ No one has covered the Flock story in more detail than 404 Media. Here are all their recent stories on the topic.
