Flock Cameras Track You Even Without Facial Recognition! #shorts
The short version: Black Star Network points out that Flock's 'no facial recognition' claim is a dodge — tracking your car tracks you just as effectively.
Our Take
Credit to Black Star Network for calling out the sleight of hand at the center of Flock Safety's PR strategy. "We don't do facial recognition" is the industry's favorite deflection, but it's a non-answer to the actual complaint. You don't need a face when a network of cameras is logging your plate, your car's make and model, its color, its direction of travel, and a timestamp every time you drive past one. String enough of those data points together across a city and you've built a movement profile of a person just as intimate as anything facial recognition could produce — just with a different data field as the key.
This is the shell game that keeps ALPR expansion moving forward with so little friction. Companies get to make a narrow, technically true statement about one technology they're not using, while the surveillance function — persistent, retroactive tracking of where people go, when, and how often — proceeds unchanged. Nobody has to consent to this. It happens whether you're suspected of anything or not, and the data often sits in databases accessible to agencies well beyond the one that installed the camera.
If this clip makes you want to know how close that dragnet is to your own driveway, check our camera map to see what's already been documented nearby, and visit our take-action page for concrete steps to push back at the local level.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Black Star Network, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.