If you live in Berkeley, California — or in basically any American city — you are constantly under the watchful eye of a surveillance camera. Only now, Big Brother goes by a new name: Flock Safety.
Flock is a company that produces mounted surveillance cameras and automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, which have been adopted by municipalities across the country. Although these technologies are not new, they carry dangerous implications. Companies such as Flock covertly share the information they collect with federal agencies, including ICE.
Despite Berkeley’s sanctuary city status, external law enforcement agencies have searched ALPR data held by the Berkeley Police Department without the knowledge of the Berkeley City Council. Additionally, The Ellis Collective recently exposed the UC system for sharing ALPR data from its Flock cameras at its Merced and Riverside campuses with federal agencies…