Denver dumps Flock, awards contract to Axon (9news.com)
104 points by therobots927 5 hours ago
thaumaturgy 3 hours ago
Here in Oregon, I very nearly managed to get some decent legislation drafted that would have required a number of strong data protections from ALPR vendors.
Axon interfered heavily with that process and -- after the legislative workgroup had well concluded and just a couple of hours before the Senate committee was to vote on it -- managed to neuter one of the key protections in the bill.
Axon is not "better" than Flock, they are just slightly less transparent about some aspects and slightly less radioactive.
Community groups that have formed and activated against Flock should continue to harass local governments that immediately switch to Axon as a replacement.
helpfulclippy an hour ago
I was aware of your bill and had some activity related to it. Kudos to you and EOE for doing great work! Sorry your bill got fucked. :(
I was seethed by what happened to it, and sadly unsurprised by the attitude LE took. I want restraint, but I felt like so many concessions had already been made to get it into work session. E2EE was important, but we're still left with two ends that are deeply untrustworthy, and a bunch of regulations about data governance that I don't trust the state to be able to meaningfully oversee... especially among a patchwork of LEAs across the state. When lapses inevitably happen, I think they're going to mostly undetected, and those that are will be quietly swept under the rug without consequence to anyone.
nxobject 3 hours ago
Which legislator were you working with? (I'm not going to look the bill up up on OLIS, if that's going to dox you.)
Funnily enough, Portland (apart from big box parking lots) seems to be empty of those. I remember them trying to push ShotSpotter and being slapped down by the city's progressive wing.
thaumaturgy 2 hours ago
I think at this point getting doxed is an inevitability. ;-)
I worked most closely with Senator Floyd Prozanski. He's my local senator, and was in many ways an ideal fit for this. After we successfully kicked Flock out of Eugene, Springfield, and Lane County, he reached out to form a legislative workgroup. Over a few months of effort, we developed SB1516: https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2026R1/Measures/Overv...
Depending on where you fall on the spectrum of opinions on ALPRs, this is either a sort of okay bill or a pretty terrible bill.
philips an hour ago
anigbrowl 2 hours ago
Axon interfered heavily with that process and -- after the legislative workgroup had well concluded and just a couple of hours before the Senate committee was to vote on it -- managed to neuter one of the key protections in the bill.
This is why I'm increasingly jaded with 'get involved with your local legislative process!' proponents. If you don't have the ability to lobby around the clock and make campaign or in-kind political donations (and know how to communicate your willingness to do that), then you're at a massive disadvantage. As well, the process itself is highly corruptible, eg altering the text of a bill just before a scheduled vote.
As a general matter, I'm increasingly disgusted with the prevalence of tactics like holding votes in the dead of night or in closed sessions. Politicians engage in a lot of tricks to evade scrutiny from their constituents, relying on the fact that once a piece of legislation is passed people might be angry but the politician can often get away with saying 'there was no other choice, we have to work within the process' or some similar empty truism.
thaumaturgy 2 hours ago
We need more good people getting involved to be able to change the way this all works. And, in less than a year, we've developed a ton of political capital and we're still gaining ground. So, I would sincerely encourage anyone to join this effort, or similar efforts in their area, and just do whatever you can tolerate.
But also, having just been through this process (for my first time!): however terrible you think the political process is, it's worse.
SlightlyLeftPad 36 minutes ago
helterskelter 3 hours ago
Fellow Oregonian here. Have you got any local resources? I've been writing to my reps, framing ALPR's and cameras as a tool the feds will coopt, but I'm pretty sure nobody reads anything anymore.
thaumaturgy 2 hours ago
We've got lots of local resources! I've been in the capitol about half of the last two weeks, my partner is there right now, we've been working closely with ACLU Oregon and National, a couple of other legal firms are keeping a close eye on this, and we've built a grassroots network with people from Eugene, Springfield, Portland, Bend, Florence, and more.
Also, your Reps do read your correspondence, and there's a critical moment coming up in this bill.
Drop me a line at [email protected] and I'll reply with a Signal link and we can talk more.
helterskelter an hour ago
therobots927 3 hours ago
That’s good to know. I agree the cameras are the root problem. Flock exacerbated that problem and I think it’s good for them to get some negative publicity.
You could say similar things about Palantir - that it’s just a figurehead and that the NSA / TIA has similar capabilities but it’s still important to use the figurehead as an example to others.
But yes in general I think it’s important to not let this stop here. Denver needs to be pressured to remove the cameras entirely. This is a defensive move on Denver’s part and it shows they’re on their back foot.
tptacek 4 hours ago
This is going to happen in a lot of places that aren't large enough to make news: people dumping Flock over bad publicity, and simply installing ALPR cameras from vendors smart enough not to get themselves embroiled in politics.
fusslo 4 hours ago
AXON seems to be really good about not pushing things too far. I don't know if they lobby/amplify the need for police body cameras, however. Even that, IMO, doesn't have the stench of evil
They must be making huge profits, assuming every bodycam needs some kind of recurring revenue (for evidence.com, maintenance, replacements). BUT as far as I can tell, they are also taking the judicial requirements very seriously. Unlike Flock, I haven't heard anything about AXON providing tools to circumvent the 4th amendment. In fact, AXON makes tools that make it easier to comply with the law. For example, record requests for bodycam videos are (again, afaik) easy to satisfy with their tech.
I don't know what ownership they have of videos stored on their services. Can they use it for LLM training? can they sell anonymized data? do they? no idea, but trust in Flock is at about a 0 out of 10.
reactordev 4 hours ago
AXON wrote the book that Flock put into practice. They have really great lobbyists that shield them from any news.
tptacek 3 hours ago
baggachipz 37 minutes ago
How about... and hear me out, here... no ALPRs? Perhaps we shouldn't be violating the Bill of Rights in the name of "safety"?
officeplant 3 hours ago
Evil Corp B has been demoted, Evil Corp A to take up the mantle.
psadauskas an hour ago
Axon, the taser company? They're not any better, ethically https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Yd9nLQx3qQ
How about Denver just doesn't surveil its citizens, at all?
parineum 43 minutes ago
The service that Flock provides is the problem, not Flock. Switching to another company to perform the same task makes no difference.
downrightmike 4 hours ago
Anti-Pinkerton Fed act: Gov't may not buy services that it is not legally allowed to do themselves.
tptacek 4 hours ago
Municipal governments are extremely allowed to track license plates within their borders and have been doing so for generations.
ceejayoz 3 hours ago
That may change as they get more widely deployed; scale matters.
https://courthousenews.com/judge-holds-norfolks-license-plat...
> "Because rapid technological advances, such as the rise of artificial intelligence, make it impossible to predict how police surveillance will evolve, the Fourth Amendment analysis must remain nimble even as it remains grounded in founding-era traditions," the George W. Bush appointee wrote in a 51-page opinion. "Plaintiffs are unable to demonstrate that defendants' ALPR system is capable of tracking the whole of a person's movements."
> Davis drew distinctions from two significant precedents in determining that the pair's Fourth Amendment challenge lacked merit. In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court held that the government violates the Fourth Amendment when it accesses a suspect's historical cell site location information without a warrant. The Fourth Circuit ruled in Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department that the department's surveillance program, which captured and stored aerial images of nearly the entire city, violated the Fourth Amendment.
> Davis ruled that, unlike in cases where the government tracked people's movements through cellphone data and aerial photos, the collection of Flock data does not capture enough information to catalogue citizens' movements in their entirety. Davis reasoned that the 176 cameras, located in 75 clusters across the city, do not constitute a search.
samrus 3 hours ago
But do they not need a warrant to track someones movements?
Alot of these tech vendors have been a way to launder data gathering to avoid neeidng to get warrants
tptacek 3 hours ago
mminer237 3 hours ago
josefritzishere 4 hours ago
fundad 3 hours ago
I thought Flock and Axon were affiliated.
terrabitz 2 hours ago
No, two completely separate players. There was a partnership agreement a while ago, but that got severed a while back
https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/axon-plans-to-sever-apis-wi...
xnx 4 hours ago
Seems like a good move. Lots of value to ALPR systems responsibly managed. Flock is just an ass of a company.