AI AND PRIVACY CHOICES IN THE WEST VALLEY

Our Take

Credit to Jen & Friends for doing what most city councils won't: bringing in an actual privacy expert before the cameras go up, not after. Jake Wiener from EPIC asking the basic questions — who can access this data, how long is it kept, what happens when it's shared with other agencies — is exactly the due diligence that's been skipped in town after town that signs a Flock contract. Goodyear and its neighbors are about to join a long list of municipalities that bought first and asked questions later, if at all.

This is the pattern we track everywhere: a vendor pitches license plate readers as a tool for recovering stolen cars, a council approves it in a quiet work session, and suddenly there's a permanent record of everyone's movements with no resident input and no real answers about data retention or outside access. 'Private company holds your location history' isn't a hypothetical in the West Valley — it's the actual deal on the table Monday night.

If you want to see how far this has already spread, check our camera map for what's already watching your streets, and if you'd rather not wait for your own council to get asked the hard questions, our take-action page has what you need to push back before the next contract gets signed.