Denver dumps Flock, awards contract to Axon
9news.com104 points by therobots927 5 hours ago
104 points by therobots927 5 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.
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.
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.
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.
Do you have a delta on the bill after Axon intervened?
-12 is what was queued up for the vote up until 2:30 pm that afternoon: https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2026R1/Downloads/Prop...
-14 materialized, Prozanski called for a vote on -12, Senator Braodman voted with Republicans against -12, and then they unanimously voted in -14: https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2026R1/Downloads/Prop...
The sole difference between the two is that -14 removes the following language: "'End-to-end encryption’ means a method of data encryption that ensures only the law enforcement agency that owns the captured license plate data possesses the capability to decrypt, access or grant access to the captured license plate data."
This was just the latest move in a long, long series of behind-the-scenes work by Axon to undermine the entire bill throughout its development.
There's a lot more I'm eager to say about that process, but we have some work to do before it all can be made public.
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.
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.
This is something I would LOVE to get involved with to support. At the end of the day though, it’s not something I have a lot of extra unbillable time for and that’s really what the problem is.
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.
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 contact@eyesoffeugene.org and I'll reply with a Signal link and we can talk more.
Sorry, I don't like mixing my on- and offline identities, but your site is a great resource and exactly what I was looking for. I'll definitely be reaching out to my reps about SB1516.
If you don't mind, what's the current situation with Flock in Eugene? Last I heard was that EPD was ending their relationship but it wasn't clear if the cameras were actually going to be removed. I believe Springfield has already gotten rid of theirs, and Florence voted to keep them.
(By the way, thank you, you guys are doing invaluable work)
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.
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.
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.
Standardized bodycam implementation nationwide was a fantastic improvement to policing post-2020. Axon seems to be king of that coast to coast. Watching bodycam video on YouTube has improved my perception of the police from "often unethical jerks" to "wow, I can't believe the nonsense these people have to deal with". Asshole cops now have to justify their behavior before judges and their bosses in a way maybe they didn't before.
Freedom of Information requests to axon seem to be given our somewhat freely given how large the bodycam genre on Youtube is.
AXON wrote the book that Flock put into practice. They have really great lobbyists that shield them from any news.
And yet you can see on this thread people saying this is a good thing, because Axon is the good kind of ALPR company and Flock is the bad kind. This is just WWF rooting interests, not public policy.
How about... and hear me out, here... no ALPRs? Perhaps we shouldn't be violating the Bill of Rights in the name of "safety"?
Evil Corp B has been demoted, Evil Corp A to take up the mantle.
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?
The service that Flock provides is the problem, not Flock. Switching to another company to perform the same task makes no difference.
Anti-Pinkerton Fed act: Gov't may not buy services that it is not legally allowed to do themselves.
Municipal governments are extremely allowed to track license plates within their borders and have been doing so for generations.
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.
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
They need a warrant to physically alter or attach things to private property to track them. They don't need a warrant to post monitors and record what they see in plain view in public spaces with no expectation of privacy. The entire concept of a license plate, universal around the world, works against the idea that the state can't monitor your car.
I'm not saying ALPRs don't pose new privacy problems and, in the long term, depending on how they're used, even constitutional problems. But clearly the Anti-Pinkerton Act doesn't get you anywhere here.
> They don't need a warrant to post monitors and record what they see in plain view in public spaces with no expectation of privacy.
They do if it's done to the point where you can track individuals around the city.
https://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/201495A.P.pdf
> The AIR program uses aerial photography to track movements related to serious crimes. Multiple planes fly distinct orbits above Baltimore, equipped with PSS’s camera technology known as the “Hawkeye Wide Area Imaging System.” The cameras capture roughly 32 square miles per image per second. The planes fly at least 40 hours a week, obtaining an estimated twelve hours of coverage of around 90% of the city each day, 5 weather permitting. The PSA limits collection to daylight hours and limits the photographic resolution to one pixel per person or vehicle, though neither restriction is required by the technology. In other words, any single AIR image—captured once per second—includes around 32 square miles of Baltimore and can be magnified to a point where people and cars are individually visible, but only as blurred dots or blobs.
> On the merits, because the AIR program enables police to deduce from the whole of individuals’ movements, we hold that accessing its data is a search, and its warrantless operation violates the Fourth Amendment
The decision you're citing explicitly cites precedent for the constitutionality of warrantless mounted pole cameras.
Anyways, I'm not that interested in the broader long-term constitutional debate. I'm just interested in shutting down the glib Anti-Pinkerton cite.
> The decision you're citing explicitly cites precedent for the constitutionality of warrantless mounted pole cameras.
And explicity notes that it's the relative scarcity of them that matters.
> Decades later, in United States v. Jones, 565 U.S. 400 (2012), location-tracking technology crossed the line from merely augmenting to impermissibly enhancing. There, police used a GPS-tracking device to remotely monitor and record a vehicle’s movements over 28 days. Id. at 402–04. Although the case was ultimately decided on trespass principles, five Justices agreed that “longer term GPS monitoring . . . impinges on expectations of privacy.” See id. at 430 (Alito, J., concurring); id. at 415 (Sotomayor, J., concurring). Based on “[t]raditional surveillance” capacity “[i]n the precomputer age,” the Justices reasoned that “society’s expectation” was that police would not “secretly monitor and catalogue every single movement of an individual’s car for a very long period.”
> Thus, Carpenter solidified the line between short-term tracking of public movements—akin to what law enforcement could do “[p]rior to the digital age”—and prolonged tracking that can reveal intimate details through habits and patterns.
Put enough of them up, and the software to track between them, and you're in "enables police to deduce from the whole of individuals’ movements" territory.
Maybe! I'm skeptical. Either way: Anti-Pinkerton doesn't come into it.
I'll tell you what's not going to happen, with certainty: we're not going to get to a point with ALPRs where it becomes so abusive that the Supreme Court decides municipalities can't track cars at all.
> we're not going to get to a point with ALPRs where it becomes so abusive that the Supreme Court decides municipalities can't track cars at all
Sure. But they may get restricted somewhat, as they are if they want to demolish my house without my consent.
It depends on how. The Fourth Amendment prohibits warrantless searches, not any information itself. The police can always just have an officer tail you 24/7, and it's perfectly legal. Placing a GPS tracker on your car physically invades your property and therefore counts as a search though. Generally any public photography is not a search, so they're free to record and keep records however they legally can.
Though at some point, even SCOTUS just does whatever feels right, regardless of what the law says. In Carpenter, SCOTUS ruled 5-4 that your cellular company voluntarily handing over historical cell data also counts as a government search. An appellate court has held that if photography is extensive enough, it becomes a search. SCOTUS has held before that uncommon photographic equipment can constitute a search. That logic honestly doesn't really make sense, but it is what it is now. I wouldn't be surprised that the courts rule against it, but that's not what the law really says.
I thought Flock and Axon were affiliated.
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...
Seems like a good move. Lots of value to ALPR systems responsibly managed. Flock is just an ass of a company.