From MAGA to Marxist: Everyone Hates Flock

MINNEAPOLIS — Flock, an automatic license plate reader (ALPR) company that surveils American residents across the country, is facing backlash in Minnesota following a groundswell of working class activism against the technology.

Unsurprisingly, Minnesota has become one of the most active states leading the charge against government surveillance following a Star Tribune article that outlined federal use of the camera system during Operation Metro Surge, which brought thousands of poorly trained paramilitary forces to the state and resulted in the death of two U.S. citizens.

Opposition to the domestic spying program has crossed political lines, with hardcore Trumpists, liberals and leftists uniting to stop both law enforcement entities and private tech companies from building a mass surveillance system in the country.

The pushback against police contracts with Flock, which allow for a private company to compile data on every motorist who passes by its cameras, has ranged from public comment at city council meetings to outright destruction of the devices.

Following Trump’s assault on the state under the guise of immigration enforcement, the Twin Cities DSA has dedicated resources to fighting surveillance technology.

Members plan to meet later this month to help residents identify surveillance tools. Christin Crabtree, a DSA endorsed candidate for the Minneapolis School Board, will speak to community members during the meeting.

The DSA also supported Minneapolis City Council members who recently defeated a city plan to allow police to use Skydio drones as first responders. The company recently sold its hardware to Israel and to ICE.

“We don’t know what exactly is being done with our data, how it’s being tracked, who (Flock) is giving it to or selling to or who’s able to tap into those feeds,” Johnnie Johnson, a Twin Cities activist, said.

Johnson, a cybersecurity expert who runs his own consulting company, said the type of data being collected could put people at risk for further abuse by the government.

“For the people that say ‘Well, I don’t have anything to hide,’ you don’t know if you do or not because the environment and metrics change so much,” Johnson said.

“You could not be targeted on a Monday, and then all of sudden you’re being targeted on a Tuesday or Wednesday even though your behavior has not change but the eyes watching you have changed,” he added.

Concerns about the mass surveillance program have also come from the likes of diehard MAGA politicians like Tennessee Republican Rep. Tim Burchett.

Burchett recently introduced the Protection Against Mass Surveillance Act, which would prohibit federal and local governments from using or purchasing automated surveillance technologies.

While the bill is unlikely to pass, residents across the country have destroyed or disabled the cameras, including in Winona, Minn. where the entire city’s Flock surveillance system was stolen.

The Winona Police Department announced it will not replace those cameras.

West St. Paul and the Isanti County Sheriff’s Office have also ended their domestic spying program agreements with Flock.

In addition, Flock cameras have been damaged or stolen in at least half a dozen cities in Minnesota, according to the Star Tribune, often with no legal consequences for the perpetrators, who police have mostly been unable to find.

While some MAGA supporters and DSA-aligned people have spoken out against the technology, the American political middle has also been radicalized against law enforcement’s penchant for violating residents' Constitutional rights.

For Vance Trendov, a Columbia Heights resident who described himself as a moderate, seeing a Flock camera pointed toward his house galvanized him to speak out against police use of the system.

Flock captures a vehicle fingerprint, documenting make, model, color, body type and physical features, something the law hasn’t really caught up with, he said.

“Think how crazy it is that we give the government money to buy technology and to store data on ourselves going about our daily lives,” Trendov said. “What fucking George Orwellian world are we living in now?"

Police keep Flock data to themselves

Seeing a domestic spying program so close to home is also what jumpstarted the fight against Flock by Brady O’Rourke, a Crystal resident.

“(The Flock camera changed) the way that I I leave my house literally every single time because I'll just drive around it,” O’Rourke said.

O’Rourke has spent months both advocating against the use of ALPRs and filing public data requests to local police agencies.

"I truly don't believe that they're making anybody safer. I really don’t,” O'Rourke said.

However, local cops have routinely kept public data, like case numbers associated with ALPR searches, secret, according to emails between O’Rourke and several law enforcement agencies that Misfits Media viewed.

Shockingly, one agency, the Robbinsdale Police Department, first went to Flock for guidance on how to respond to its illegal redactions for O’Rourke’s data request, despite state law being clear.

In an email viewed by Mistfits Media, Linda Gieser, Robbinsdale PD’s Office Coordinator, seemingly copied and pasted a Flock respresentative’s false assertion that certain data is unavailable to the public due to automatic redactions.

Part of the problem, according to O’Rourke, is that Flock system audits automatically redact data, and the responsibility lies on each agency to change certain settings that allow law enforcement agencies to comply with state public data laws.

For example, the New Hope Police Department was able to give O’Rourke the data he requested that other agencies have not.

O’Rourke said he has found some success procuring data using an advisory opinion by the Minnesota Data Practices Office, an agency that works to explain public data laws to both requestors and government entities.

While state law classifies certain data as private, like license plate numbers captured by ALPRs, data manually entered into the system is not, according to the Data Practices Office.

This includes manual entries of license plate numbers, case numbers, reasons for searches, agency searches and what filters were used.

“There’s no guardrails, and there’s nobody watching it,” O’Rourke said.

Police in at least 12 states are accused of misusing Flock, including to track romantic interests.

“It just feels like kind of releasing the wolves, you know?” he added.

In addition to having a lack of actual oversight, ALPRs often blend into the background, something Richfield resident Katherine Shane hopes to change.

A local craftivism group Shane belongs to is at work on an art project to help make the cameras more noticeable to the public by putting up signs and origami art near the cameras.

“I think people, at a bare minimum, deserve to know where the Flock cameras are located so that they can choose whether or not they engage with them,” she said.

Shane, who was not historically opposed to other camera systems used for traffic violations, realized she needed to take action after speaking with other community members about what this mass network of data could lead to.

“We don’t know what they’re going to do with it, we don’t know how it’s going to be used and we've definitely seen that immigration enforcement has, to say the least, wildly overstepped their boundaries in the last year or so."

Another issue with ALPRs for Shane involves the selling of private citizens' data to other private companies.

Companies like Flock often work as “data brokers,” who make money by selling bulk information to others.

"There is no public benefit,” she said. "It's what? So that they can better market to me when they know whether I'm going to Target or not?"

Richfield anti-ALPR activists have also set up a website for anyone in the city to email the city council with concerns about the camera system.