alt Hacker News> If your muni votes to shut the cameras off, they will shut the cameras off.
That's simply not true: there are numerous instances of municipalities having to fight flock to get cameras removed or shut off, and instances where local governments pass ordinances that local law enforcement refuses to enforce because the cameras, which have been banned, are not off, as you allege is what happens, and law enforcement continues to use the data the cameras provide despite the contract being terminated.
Just google e.g. "flock trash bag" to see how cities are having to deal with Flock.
There are links elsewhere in this thread to a few of the many instances where this happens but I'll link to something that hasn't been mentioned yet, where flock cameras are turned back on and used by law enforcement in Springfield after contracts are cancelled, and cameras are left up that flock pinky swears are off that turn out to be on and accessible by law enforcement:
https://www.kezi.com/news/local/stolen-car-found-in-springfi...
And again, that is just talking about the instances where the municipality actually wants the flock cameras turned off or removed, there are many instances, like TFA, where the local government wants them on or doesn't care, and they remain on and used by other agencies, despite the termination of the contract with one of the client agencies.
When a municipality passes an ordinance prohibiting ALPRs, and the municipal police force refuses to shut off the ALPRs, and the municipality does not then fire the chief (or the muni executive, if needed), then the muni was full of shit about being opposed to the ALPRs in the first place.
I'm deeply involved in municipal politics and was for many years involved in national politics (and, more to the point, discussions of national politics online) and I see this all the time: people crossing the streams between the two, as if the levels of responsibility and accountability were comparable. A municipal sworn law enforcement official that ignores a duly passed ordinance that has gone into effect is breaking the law and their contract and can trivially be fired, not after a long drawn-out procedure but immediately.
I watched us shut our cameras down. As I said: there was no drama, at least procedurally. If our chief had tried to prevent the cameras from coming down, she'd have been out on her ass the next day. I'm sure there are places where there was drama, but I'd need to see the full story before drawing the conclusion that you're drawing. What I see here is the more interesting narrative ("the cameras are impossible to take down, they're a virus!") asserting itself in its natural habitat, the online message board.
I don't know what this story about a misconfigured camera (it strobed an "outage" alert after being deactivated) being reactivated by a technician is supposed to tell me. The theory here is that Flock is running a scam where they're rolling trucks to surreptitiously enable individual cameras?