<\/p>\n
Flock Security likes<\/span> to describe its national private network of cameras and license plate scanners as a public safety boon. \u201cI can think of no greater mission than rescuing our children,\u201d tweeted<\/a> Flock CEO Garrett Langley, sharing a promotional company video. \u201cAnother child rape suspect located and arrested with help from Flock,\u201d chief strategy officer Rahul Sidhu posted<\/a> last month. Last week, venture capital firm and Flock investor Andreessen Horowitz put<\/a> the company\u2019s benefits in civilizational terms: \u201cFlock eliminates crime. Decline is a choice.\u201d<\/p>\n Though Flock\u2019s investors and executives insist its surveillance dragnet thwarts the most serious of crimes, it turns out police are also using the company\u2019s technology to go after some of the pettiest possible offenses: curfew violations, loitering, and simply being homeless.<\/p>\n When police seek footage from Flock\u2019s more than 120,000 cameras nationwide, they select a category of crime corresponding with the alleged offense they are investigating, such as hit-and-run or burglary. Among the choices is the supposed crime of being suspicious in public, formally categorized by Flock as \u201cCurfew\/Loitering\/Vagrancy Violations.\u201d<\/p>\n Records obtained from the police department in Plano, Illinois, reveal that law enforcement agencies nationwide have tapped into cameras in that small town \u2014 and thousands more cameras elsewhere \u2014 more than 1,200 times while investigating alleged \u201cCurfew\/Loitering\/Vagrancy Violations.\u201d<\/p>\n As this data set reflects only searches of Flock cameras operated by Plano police alone, this is assuredly just a tiny fraction of the total number of \u201cCurfew\/Loitering\/Vagrancy Violations\u201d investigations using Flock nationwide. Records hosted by the website Have I Been Flocked? \u2014 which aggregates such logs \u2014 show hundreds more<\/a> of these loitering searches in other states.<\/p>\n The Plano searches were conducted by police departments throughout Illinois, from neighboring states, and from a Georgia town more than 600 miles away. Many queries were license plate searches pertaining specific vehicles; others show police surveilling people on foot for the crime of essentially standing suspiciously.<\/p>\n Flock did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Police in Norcross, Georgia, for example, conducted a smartphone-based search on January 31 with \u201cCurfew\/Loitering\/Vagrancy Violations\u201d as the stated justification. It tapped into data recorded by 6,098 different Flock camera networks, including Plano\u2019s, each consisting of an untold number of separate cameras that surveilled anyone who moved past them.<\/p>\n The search logs obtained by The Intercept do not break out \u201cCurfew\/Loitering\/Vagrancy Violations\u201d separately, so it is unknown in each case what exactly police were searching for. In some cases police appended extra information; the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, for example, searched over 17,000 Flock cameras while investigating \u201cCurfew\/Loitering\/Vagrancy Violations \u2013 Suspicious person at planned protest site.\u201d<\/p>\n When asked about these queries, Tennessee Bureau of Investigation spokesperson Josh DeVine told The Intercept that the searches in fact originated with the state\u2019s Tennessee Fusion Center, which is operated by both the TBI and the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security. DeVine referred The Intercept\u2019s questions to the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n Flock cameras have also been used to zero in on the homeless: Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, shared Flock search data from the West Palm Beach Police Department with The Intercept that included a query pegged to an \u201coutside agency dropping vagrant off\u201d in the city.<\/p>\n In January, police in LaGrange, Georgia, searched more than 6,000 Flock networks on the basis that someone walked out of a house \u201cwith a significant amount of traffic.\u201d Officers from the same agency earlier this year searched more than 15,000 Flock systems because of someone \u201clingering at a stop sign around midnight last night.\u201d<\/p>\n