🗂️FOIA request for Flock
We did a public records request to see the history of how the locations were chosen for the Flock cameras in Ridgecrest. What we thought was going to be something like 10 pages turned into a box of paper. I started to go through the emails, and holy shit… I feel sorry for the sergeant who was assigned to be the POC to this high pressure, tech start-up sales rep. The City of Ridgecrest isn’t just a customer, we’re the victims of a spiraling timeshare package that sold us a dream we never asked for in the first place. It’s going to take us some time to get through all the documents, but we will have our report ready for the townhall.
🚨Flock and ICE
I’d like to also draw attention to section 5.3 of the contract the City of Ridgecrest signed with Flock.
5.3 Disclosure of Footage. Subject to and during the Retention Period, Flock may access, use, preserve and/or disclose the Footage to law enforcement authorities, government officials, and/or third parties, if legally required to do so or if Flock has a good faith belief that such access, use, preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to comply with a legal process, enforce this Agreement, or detect, prevent or otherwise address security, privacy, fraud or technical issues, or emergency situations.
The Ridgecrest PD may not be able to share data with ICE because of California State Law SB-54, but that doesn’t prevent Flock from doing so. The contract has signed away the rights of the data for Flock to use at their discretion. There are no regulations to stop Flock from sharing data with ICE if they are pressured into doing so.
🏛️ The City of Santa Cruz has recently decided to terminate their contract with Flock with a 6-1 vote on the City council. Santa Cruz and other cities in California had encountered a system configuration problem that allowed out-of-state users to access their camera data which is a violation of state laws. In Santa Cruz county, between Capitola and the City of Santa Cruz there were over 3 million searches of their cameras with 200 searches involving immigration as the search subject.
🛑 Flock passes blame onto the users of the system, saying that the users inadvertently allowed access to the national system. This should not be possible in the first place. Individual users should not be allowed to accidentally toggle something on that would violate state laws.
Additionally, in the Flock contract agreement, cities have to select which sharing network they would like to be a part of. So shouldn’t this be something Flock has to configure? Passing blame rather than owning up to their mistakes shows a lack of honor and efficacy. Their structure is to launch and iterate. How many other problems will we find? How many times will laws be violated due to Flocks lack of concern for them?
💰 Flock is a company which is backed by Silicon Valley venture capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz. These people have backed Trump and are looking to disrupt the country to gain power and relevance. Flock has raised over $275 million in venture capitalist funding to move fast and break things. Their company goes beyond license plate readers. It also has a division that is developing facial recognition software. Check out this research done by ACLU on what Flock’s ultimate goal is.
📍Townhall info correction
Location will be at City Hall, not the Kerr McGee Center. The flyer is correct, but the text block in my post was incorrect. This is the building attached to the Police department. Enter through the South double doors and turn left. We will also have the petition available to sign in person.
✍️Petition
We need to get as many signatures as we can so we can use it to show the City that this needs to go up for a vote again amongst the Council members to reconsider the contract with Flock.
📢Protest Saturday
We will be having a DeFlock Ridgecrest event at Ridgecrest and China Lake Blvd from 10am-12pm. Join us to enjoy some good music and conversation. The Mayor of Ridgecrest will also be making a special guest appearance.
Ridgecrest 50501 