In stopped clock is right twice a day news, Florida is moving to ban Flocks from state highways.
Aside from Florida, there is a bunch of momentum all around the US now. Some cities just moved to another ALPR vendor like Axon. That sucks ofc. But many have eliminated ALPR entirely too, after citizens spoke out! Some cities had a constant stream of ppl speaking at city council meetings about it, months on end, dozens of ppl in every meeting.
It’s harder to deal with Flocks on private property. Like Home Depot and Lowes. A city gov terminating its own contract, doesn’t stop Home Depot. I dream of a coordinated, nation-wide boycott of co’s that put private Flocks in their lots. And letting them know exactly why.
Let’s keep the anti ALPR momentum going. It’s starting to see results. And don’t fall into the illogic of thinking it’s not perfect, therefore it’s useless.
These stores host flock and other cameras on the premise of: it deters crime, decreases theft, shoplifting, and other criminal acts and is a net benefit on that basis. Privacy makes them no money. As far as they’re concerned they’d put cameras in your cars and homes to make sure you’re not stealing from them.
You have to break that calculation so it costs far more than it can save to host these. Cutting down cameras doesn’t incur anywhere near large enough a cost to change that calculus and there’s a good chance Flock pays for the new cameras not the store. A boycott would be hard to get them to acknowledge as being connected to their hosting these kinds of surveillance systems and the people who put them in and keep them there would try to strongly deny a correlation so it would need to be a militantly disciplined, well organized campaign.
The problem is you need the media to help you organize such a widespread and well-telegraphed in message boycott campaign and the media is fully on the side of Flock and regarding any vandalism of Flock and similar ALPRs as a case where they desperately want the person caught and will air their photos to attempt to help catch such a criminal monster. So the media would never broadcast such a campaign, would never even acknowledge it. Local news makes so much money off police stories, local crime fear-mongering, etc.
Of course there are other options to change the cost calculus but they’re not preferable due to legality issues.