Leah Feiger: Surveillance.
Brian Barrett: But what kind? What specifically do Flock cameras look at?
Leah Feiger: License plates?
Brian Barrett: Yeah, they’re license plate readers. Yes, this tool is not a license plate reader, it allows you to look up people. You can type in a general description. You can say, “Someone wearing scrubs, someone who has tattoos.” You draw a little shape on a map, a little circle on a map, and the system will run a continuous automated search for a match across every camera inside of that circle.
Leah Feiger: That’s so bad.
Brian Barrett: It’s pretty bad. It’s not great. And I think it’s a capability that most people don’t assume Flock has or offers, and it’s a relatively new system, but we do know it has been deployed in some places already so it’s out there. And not only that, there’s not really a moderation framework in place. Flock recently announced some ways to make sure that people aren’t abusing the license plate readers. This seems like so open-ended and such a chance to look for whoever you want, wherever you want using all of these cameras. It’s really kind of stunning.
Zoë Schiffer: I want to dig in a little more on the it’s really bad thing, because I mean, I think a lot of people are in agreement on that, but can you, Brian, just make the case for why this technology would exist? What is Flock’s argument for why it could be good, and then why do you think it’s bad?
Brian Barrett: So, I think the argument for why police officers like it is it’s another tool to identify people who were near the scene of a crime, or suspicious looking people or whatever. So, I think it’s just the more information, I would assume, that the more information you have as a police officer, the better you feel about the investigation. In terms of why it’s bad, I think a few reasons. It is not a reliable tool necessarily. I think there’s a lot about these sort of person recognition tools that aren’t necessarily 100 percent you’re going to get it right every time—
Zoë Schiffer: Like it can misidentify people.
Brian Barrett: Yeah, but even without that I think we already live in such a surveillance sort of state that we’ve become inured to it, but I don’t think we should. I think the idea that anywhere you’re walking you can be identified and brought into some sort of police probe because you happen to have tattoos, or happen to be wearing scrubs, or whatever other physical identifier feels like a pretty serious violation of your rights.
Zoë Schiffer: I will say it’s been interesting talking to people about it because you really do get a lot of people who live in San Francisco being like, “Petty crime was a huge problem and now it’s less of a problem,” and that’s really nice. And then there’s a lot of people who are much more concerned about civil liberties violations.
