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tptaceklast Tuesday at 6:46 PM1 replyview on HN

I'm Oak Park (I helped write our ALPR General Order and the transparency reporting requirements that formed the case for killing the contract because it wasn't addressing real crime).

Oak Park is 4.7 square miles. All our surrounding munis have rolled out more ALPRs after we killed ours.

Further: because of the oversight we had over our ALPRs before, they weren't really doing anything, for something like 2 years. OPPD kept them around because they were handy for post-incident investigation. We effectively had to stop responding to alerts once our police oversight commission ran the numbers of what the stops were.

Which is to say: our "de-Flocking" was mostly cosmetic. We'd already basically shut the cameras down and cut all sharing out.


Replies

sodality2last Tuesday at 6:55 PM

I definitely think there's something to be said for nuance; my county is one of the worst in my state for penetration [0] but according to their transparency log avoids many of the common criticisms of Flock, like data sharing, immigration enforcement use, etc [1].

I'm just happy for any sort of critical analysis or attention being brought to every municipality's use of this technology as so often people have no idea at all, though. Because there are a lot of counties which are far worse, and almost none of the public is even aware; I suspect there is at least some gap between people who would care if they knew, and people who care now.

[0]: https://alpranalysis.com/virginia/206807

[1]: https://transparency.flocksafety.com/williamsburg-va-pd