Everett shuts down Flock camera network after judge rules footage public record

https://www.wltx.com/article/news/nation-world/281-53d8693e-77a4-42ad-86e4-3426a30d25ae

by aranaur • 5 months ago

485 156 5 months ago

cj• 5 months ago

URL is 404'ing. Another article..

Cameras that automatically capture images of vehicle license plates are being turned off by police in jurisdictions across Washington state, in part after a court ruled the public has a right to access data generated by the technology.

https://www.geekwire.com/2025/washington-state-cities-turn-o...

altairprime• 5 months ago

The above link 404's for me, but https://www.wltx.com/article/news/nation-world/281-53d8693e-... works.

dzink• 5 months ago

The link is broken. Here is a working one. https://www.king5.com/article/news/community/facing-race/was...

flexagoon• 5 months ago

This just redirects me to the king5 YouTube channel

fuzzfactor• 5 months ago

This appears to be an informative link;

https://www.everettpost.com/local-news/everett-temporarily-s...

GiorgioG• 5 months ago

Great now let’s follow suit in all 50 states.

sriram_malhar• 5 months ago

Red states have zero crime, so they don't need them in the first place. /s

Ancapistani• 5 months ago

This isn’t a red/blue issue.

Flock is no more populate on the right than it is on the Left.

SlightlyLeftPad2• 5 months ago

Does them removing it simply because it’s public record imply that they were up to no good?

timschmidt2• 5 months ago

Well if they had nothing to hide... /s

SlightlyLeftPad2• 5 months ago

“We were very disappointed,” Franklin said. “That means perpetrators of crime, people who are maybe engaged in domestic abuse or stalkers, they can request footage and that could cause a lot of harm.”

No concern over the dozens (or hundreds?) of cases of police or government employees themselves doing exactly what they’re afraid of here. Strange.

chaps• 5 months ago

They're not removing cameras.

For now, Everett’s Flock camera network remains offline, as the debate over transparency, privacy and public safety continues in the Legislature. The bill in Olympia that would put guidelines on Flock's data has passed in the Senate.

1123581321• 5 months ago

This is a good article about some of the legal particulars. https://www.heraldnet.com/2026/02/24/snohomish-county-judge-...

The defense of the photos not being government business until accessed seems shaky. That the physical camera installations were purposeful intentions to conduct government business in those areas is a reasonable line; this doesn't set precedent for Google's information becoming public records because the police might do a google search, to use an extreme example.

The proposed legislative amendment that would exclude Flock footage from public records (which would make this judgment moot) makes sense in the light of red light cameras already being excluded by the same legislators. However, I'd like to see a more incisive law covering both that would compel a reasonable amount of public insight into the footage.

CamperBob23• 5 months ago

The defense of the photos not being government business until accessed seems shaky.

It's reminiscent of the NSA's argument that data "collection" occurs only when a search is performed on existing "gathered" data. File under "Stuff that's only legal when the government does it."

dotancohen• 5 months ago

What should I be reading?

sneak4• 5 months ago

My prediction: “It’s not a “search” when an AI looks at the stored database and does sentiment analysis, because an algorithm doesn’t violate your privacy. It’s only a “search” after it’s flagged and an actual human with human opinions sees your private chats criticizing the supreme leader.”

hyperific• 5 months ago

According to the article, the Flock cameras are still in place but are "offline".

Why does that not convince me?

bl4kers• 5 months ago

Are there cameras pointed at the offline Flock cameras? I sure hope so because it would be a shame if they disappeared...

chkaloon• 5 months ago

Awesome. I think I'll put in an open records request for the cameras down the street in my little Wisconsin town. See what happens

hypercube33• 5 months ago

Funny I was thinking of doing that in my little Wisconsin town too. Howdy sorta neighborish HN user.

datahack• 5 months ago

Wonder if we should coordinate doing it simultaneously in like 10,000 cities and towns?

techdmn2• 5 months ago

And my axe! Let me know if you do. (Also WI)

N_Lens• 5 months ago

"The masses/general populace are the enemy" - once you understand that this is the fundamental belief at the root of the elites behaviour, everything will make sense. Flock cameras and AI surveillance is designed to reign in 'the enemy'.

neverkn0wsb357• 5 months ago

I think the person requesting to access the data was doing the right thing and I agree with the judge’s ruling.

The fact that they’re gonna shut it down, implies the scale of indiscriminate nature of data capture and the volume of data being captured.

These cameras are popping up all over the nation and if people realize how much data is being captured and where that data is going (or who it’s being sold to) and how it’s being used by government and private entities they would be appalled.

There’s been exposés about these cameras, everything from AI misidentification of “stolen” (not) vehicles and erroneous arrests and police encounters, to analysis of shopping patterns being sold back to private entities for better ad targeting. It’s wild.

Gigachad• 5 months ago

The laws need to be updated. CCTV in public used to be fine because no one was actually watching it unless there was an incident. Now it’s possible to have AI watch every camera and correlate everything everywhere we need new privacy laws to reflect this capability.

thfuran2• 5 months ago

And the government needs to be restricted from buying data it wouldn’t be permitted to collect itself.

achierius• 5 months ago

It was not fine then -- what we have now is simply even worse. We do not need to make concessions to our oligarchs: none of this is OK.

fc417fc8026• 5 months ago

I don't mind a local AI on an airgapped security camera network monitoring a camera and issuing an alert to a security guard. The issues are internet connectivity, data retention/mining/sale, and non-local processing (ie handing stuff off to a third party that does who knows what and probably doesn't take security seriously).

tremon• 5 months ago

Oh how the public opinion has been moved already. Rewriting your argument to echo the sentiment from a generation ago:

The laws need to be updated. Having police officers monitor public streets was fine because they wouldn't actually recall anything unless there was an incident. Now it's possible to go back and review specific footage and identify everyone on those camera's -- we need new privacy laws to reflect this capability.

garyfirestorm• 5 months ago

When passive monitoring turns into analytics -> public watching turns into stalking.

it’s ok for me to observe a person in public park - it should be ok to watch camera for an activity

But if it’s not ok for me to stalk someone I think it should be illegal for a network of cameras to watch my movements too!

Slapping AI onto stalking is still stalking.

close04• 5 months ago

the scale of indiscriminate nature of data capture and the volume of data being captured

It took a lot of naivete, to put it gently, and head-in-sand attitude to believe otherwise. Flock had everything in place to collect a treasure trove of data but they would decide not to do it? Out of principle? Or even if we take the very charitable interpretation that they don't do it today, but also that they'll never cave in to the pressure to do it in the future?

cucumber37328422• 5 months ago

The fact that they’re gonna shut it down, implies the scale of indiscriminate nature of data capture and the volume of data being captured.

Or it implies that the .gov, it's agents and those associated with it are not squeaky clean and that any aggrieved party being able to request footage would be bad for the .gov.

stingraycharles• 5 months ago

Yeah, it appears they have a lot of things backwards, for example:

“We were very disappointed,” Franklin said. “That means perpetrators of crime, people who are maybe engaged in domestic abuse or stalkers, they can request footage and that could cause a lot of harm.”

The whole point is that they should have been collecting data on perpetrators of crimes only in the first place, not a massive dragnet.

tclancy2• 5 months ago

It feels so in bad faith as there’s a claim ICE could use the footage if it’s public domain. They already can and that’s one of the big arguments against it you clowns.

toss1• 5 months ago

The judge is right, and should go even further.

This is data collected with public funds — our money — for public purposes.

Not only should it be available to any US resident by request, it should be public, as in in an online library, and any US resident without a criminal record should be able to get continuous access, not only a batch of records (yes, keep out anyone with a restraining order or any other crime).

It is our tax dollars, any of us should be able to do research on the data. Including watching the watchers. Where do the government employees go and when? Where do the Flock employees go, and when?

Or, if that kind of instantly-available stalking of anyone is too much of a risk, shut it down. Hard. All of it.

The real-world dynamics of the system is either 1) everybody's motions in public are public, or 2) it is a tool of a totalitarian state. There is no other option, and option 2 is intolerable in a free society.

throwaway85825• 5 months ago

Public traffic cams have existed for a while. I don't think anyone would complain as much if the ALPR feed was public. Politicians and government officials want to use surveillance as a means of control not to benefit the public and that's what galls people.

skeeter20203• 5 months ago

> The fact that they’re gonna shut it down

If only; they temporarily shut off their cameras, while other jurisdictions look to change their laws removing this data from the public record. Neither of these moves are close to "wins"

seltzered_• 5 months ago

Somewhat related discussion on Redmond Washington & Flock cameras: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45879101

p0w3n3d2• 5 months ago

Anyone can tell, why were those cameras installed in first place? Some company just said "lol for the fun" or what? Who paid for them?

sonzohan2• 5 months ago

A mix of public (city councils) and private (think HOAs that then donated access/equipment to the city) contracted with Flock in the past few years. The questions of exactly who, when, and why, are very muddy especially with the HOAs who operate rather privately.

p0w3n3d2• 5 months ago

Thanks. I don't live in US and this subject is quite unknown to me

Lammy• 5 months ago

Relevant federal payola:

- https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/summary...

- https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/clients/lobbyis...

jmward01• 5 months ago

I might be good with legal guarantees, meaning jail time for those involved, that the only place images on these devices went was local to the municipality collecting them and that they were only accessed for very well defined reasons by very specific people.

The core issues are that aggregation and exfiltration of this data means that privacy is dead and the AI world allows analysis for almost no cost. We need an idea in our laws that puts back the limited scope that technology has removed. If the police have to expend one person's worth of time to listen to a wiretap then it really isn't possible to get out of control. We need that level of cost associated with ALPR and all surveillance so that the abuse of these systems doesn't get out of control. Make it appropriately hard and it won't be a problem.

sneak4• 5 months ago

Then the feds come in with a national security law and bypass all those state/local protections and slurp it all up into an AI-powered Palantir database, the very existence of which is classified. Suddenly you’re the victim of parallel construction and don’t even know it.

The database CANNOT EXIST SAFELY. Why don’t people who “might be okay with this IF…” understand that?

Collect the data and it WILL be misused, eventually, with 100% certainty. Has nobody read Snowden’s book? They even have a name for intel agents casually spying on their partners/crushes.

The law does not apply to everyone equally. The intelligence agencies get to break any laws they want without consequences, by longstanding tradition (remember 007’s “license to kill” or the CIA’s famous heart attack gun?). There are NO legal safeguards that can prevent abuse, no matter how you word them, because there will always be some animals who are “more equal than others” to whom they do not apply (“national security carve-out”, “LEO exception”, etc).

Sadly, those to whom they do not apply are now coordinating with the new wannabe SturmAbteilung in what are called “fusion centers”.

bsder• 5 months ago

The database CANNOT EXIST SAFELY. Why don’t people who “might be okay with this IF…” understand that?

You have to point out the Jews in Amsterdam. They had nothing to hide--until they did.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1943_Amsterdam_civil_registry_...

Or Martin Niemoller: a good Protestant German pastor who viewed the anti-theist attitudes of the Socialists and Communists as more threatening than Nazis. And then the Nazis put him in a concentration camp.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Niem%C3%B6ller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_They_Came

throwawayqqq112• 5 months ago

There is another looming threat of modern day surveilance: previously hidden correlations.

The data you found benign sharing in the past might allow unpleasant conclusions in the future and might not even come from you personally. Think about what toys you bought for your kids, or in what college milieu your worldview developed.

Terr_• 5 months ago

"Using metadata to find Paul Revere", a what-if of the American revolution.

https://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2013/06/09/using-metad...

sidewndr462• 5 months ago

This is a myth that continues to be propagated. Using previously unobservable correlations is a bedrock concept in Federal investigations in the US

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

sneak4• 5 months ago

I am less worried about Flock ALPR (which are aimed in the direction of traffic flow to read rear number plates) as I am about the THOUSANDS of facial recognition cameras installed in the last year in all four directions at nearly every intersection in southern Nevada and many many cities in southern California (LA notably excepted). These are mounted above the stoplights and aimed against traffic at stoplights to read faces.

I mention these locales specifically only because I have directly observed them. I would be surprised if this isn’t also happening in many other US metro areas, given how eagerly DHS/TSA/CBP/ICE are mass collecting facial geometries at every available opportunity.

Ylpertnodi• 5 months ago

I would be surprised if this isn’t also happening...

"I wouldn't be surprised if this is also happening..."

Only the second sounds correct to me.

jen202• 5 months ago

I believe both to be correct but “would be surprised if this isn’t happening” to be a stronger statement than “wouldn’t be surprised if it were”.

filoeleven• 5 months ago

Flock cameras are advertised as ALPR but have facial/vehicle/etc recognition systems running on them as well. You can see one panning up to track other people near the end of this Benn Jordan video on the cameras.

https://youtu.be/vU1-uiUlHTo

throwaway1737383• 5 months ago

The statute in Washington that allows these to be used to enforce speeds and signals also prohibited photographing the driver using another or the same camera.

boisterousness• 5 months ago

These [cameras] are mounted above the stoplights and aimed against traffic at stoplights to read faces.

Those cameras are for traffic detection, so the signal can turn green when a car comes. They aren't reading faces.

sneak4• 5 months ago

*Flock (YC S17)

https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/flock-safety

zombot• 5 months ago

The fact that they shut it down to avoid it becoming public record proves that light is still the best disinfectant against vermin.

autoexec• 5 months ago

Everett Mayor Cassie Franklin said the city disagrees with the ruling and is concerned about who could obtain the footage. “We were very disappointed,” Franklin said. “That means perpetrators of crime, people who are maybe engaged in domestic abuse or stalkers, they can request footage and that could cause a lot of harm.”

These people are fooling themselves if they think that keeping the cameras but not allowing the public to see the data will stop domestic abuse or stalkers. We've already seen these cameras used to stalk people and it wasn't random members of the public doing it, it was police officers. As long as this data is being collected it will be abused. If not by the public, then by police, or by Flock employees, or by hackers. The only way to protect people is to not gather the data at all. Anyone who keeps these cameras doesn't actually care about the public's safety.

Zigurd• 5 months ago

Cops and DV. And crash coverups.

schiffern• 5 months ago

The mayor is making a great argument for not blanketing your city in a surveillance dragnet.

Policymakers were warned about precisely these dangers ahead of time. They went ahead anyway, and now they want to play blameless and are trying to shift the blame on anyone but themselves.

techdmn2• 5 months ago

Two such instances of police using Flock to track current or former romantic partners:

* https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article29105...

* https://www.fox6now.com/news/milwaukee-police-officer-charge...

skeeter20203• 5 months ago

this is not an honest argument, it's just a variation of the "think of the children" strategy.

DrScientist2• 5 months ago

I always think that the best way to get stuff regulated is make those in power feel the risks.

So if people started using something like flock to embarrass politicians, business leaders, or newspaper leader writers then suddenly privacy might become a big issue.

toofy• 5 months ago

don’t worry, normal people will never ever see this data to use it against the powerful.

our public data can only be seen by billionaires and cops, not us.

it can be used against us, but never the other way around. the faster we realize this, the faster we can move out of our “divisive” phase and get back to making billionaires dreams come true.

DrScientist2• 5 months ago

Indeed - but as compute costs come down, it doesn't have to be that way - ultimately there are 8 billion eyes out there.

There are also public data examples - for example the public data on charter flights or ship locations had people like Elon Musk bleating about privacy.

sidewndr462• 5 months ago

So whenever these cameras could actually be used by the public (potentially for good), the government is allowed to just shut them down?

JKCalhoun• 5 months ago

For reasons I have been unable to articulate, I have believed that if license plate readers are a thing, someone should open-source one that the general public could share.

When a comment comes back that someone malicious will use the tech to stalk someone I really have no answer for that. That is indefensibly a bad thing.

Of course the tech exists nonetheless (not open source as far as I know) and it could be argued it is even being used maliciously—or at least without the kind of judicial oversight we assumed would be in place. But one actor behaving badly does not justify the use of the tech by everyone.

I read about the citizens of Minneapolis using decidedly low-tech means to track ICE vehicles prowling their community and it suggested a scenario where an open license-plate-tracking solution could "balance the scales" a bit (that is if you believe the scales to be imbalanced).

I imagined not a license-plate reading dragnet but rather software where you had first to enter in very specific strings of ASCII characters and the software would only announce when there was a specific string match from the camera.

To that end I vibe-coded an app for iOS in about 15 minutes using iOS's Vision framework and the built-in phone camera. Anyone could do the same.

Nonetheless I only tested it with "HELLO" and "WORLD" using scraps of paper in my kitchen and never tried it outside as the craziness in Minneapolis seemed to have quieted down.

I moved on to other projects.

jermaustin1• 5 months ago

There had been a fairly decent open APLR library called OpenALPR. It used to be updated fairly regularly, but then was "acquired" and now sits abandoned for almost a decade without any updates, while the company that acquired it (REKOR) has commercialized it and extended it as a closed source API and platform.

ALPR is fairly trivial now days, and a modern CPU can process thousands of plates per second (dozens of plates per frame, hundreds of frames per second coming multiple cameras pointing at different lanes of traffic).

The "product" around all of these is linking the plates traveling together, tracking routes through various cameras, identifying common travel patterns, and more disturbing travel patterns that are outside norm for a given plate or route (i.e. do they normally drive these 3 cameras M-F, but this Th, they went a different route and stopped somewhere for a while).

All that used to be done by the police/detectives/investigators on their own. Now the AI is automating this, and that is truly terrifying, especially for how often misreads occur.

mmmlinux• 5 months ago

Ive wanted to know this for a long time. Why isn't there some package I can download to a raspberry pi with a camera, and contribute to a public website that shows things like, oh I don't know real time positions of government vehicles...

cmckn• 5 months ago

Please contact your representative in Olympia and tell them to kill the bill that would exempt this footage from public record requests. It passed the Senate on Feb. 6.

This is the bill: https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary/?BillNumber=6002&Chamber=...

Find your reps: https://leg.wa.gov/legislators/

Washington State Legislative Hotline: 1-800-562-6000

siffland• 5 months ago

My issues is with false arrests due to people blindly following AI. People pulled out of their cars are gunpoint due to the AI misreading a single letter on the plate, the lady who was arrested for stealing amazon packages just because flock saw her enter and exit a neighborhood and she had to get doorbell camera to prove her innocence.

Also i think it should be public record about every single point of data flock collects and retention period. I am not saying they have to release the data itself, but I want to know what my tax dollars are collecting, how long they are keeping it, who can access it and who they are selling, er i mean sharing it with.

unethical_ban• 5 months ago

The government's power over its citizens should mainly derive from its legitimacy in the eyes of citizens, not from its technological and military superiority over the people.

This kind of ubiquitous surveillance is so dangerous to democracy and the ability of the citizens to do anything without the government knowing.

_slih• 5 months ago

shutting down the cameras rather than releasing the data tells you everything about what was being collected. the system was designed around the assumption that nobody outside law enforcement would ever see the footage.

AlexeyBelov• 5 months ago

LLM comment.

Everett shuts down Flock camera network after judge rules footage public record

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