In the February issue of the Life & Times, the article about a new noise camera on Adelphi Road highlighted how little local conversation there is about the outsourcing of surveillance technology within Route 1 Corridor communities. Last March, the city council approved a request from the Hyattsville Police Department (HPD) to accept grant money from the state to fund the establishment of a dragnet surveillance system throughout Hyattsville.
The suite of Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) is being purchased from Flock Safety, a company that has not only partnered with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and federal border control agents in the past to provide data for the violation of human and civil rights, but also lied about that partnership until it was made public. ALPRs function by creating an entry for every single vehicle that passes by the camera, using artificial intelligence to pin other identifying features, such as dents and stickers, to that vehicle and create a database of the entire community’s movements.
As if this blatant breach of privacy and Fourth Amendment rights isn’t enough, all of the data generated by HPD’s Flock cameras is stored on Flock servers despite being owned by HPD. HPD has reassured residents that its specific contract prohibits other jurisdictions and agencies from accessing this data, but as Illinois found out this past fall when Flock gave U.S. Customs and Border Protection access to their data, the company has a track record of breaking both contracts and state law when it benefits them. The irony is almost absurd that we call ourselves a sanctuary city while openly partnering with companies that are aiding the federal government in disappearing our own residents…