Flock cameras in Texas: Pflugerville covering all city-leased cameras, system turned off
PFLUGERVILLE, Texas - The City of Pflugerville has turned off and is covering the Flock license plate reader cameras in the city, pending a potential contract renewal.
The city says that the cameras had been operational while negotiations were underway to extend the current contract.
The city's contract ended on July 31.
What sparked the shutdown of Flock cameras in Pflugerville?
What they're saying:
The city says staff has been directed to cover all city-leased cameras after an issue was discovered in the cameras' operating system.
The issue reportedly allowed non-partner law enforcement agencies to access the city's Flock data.
According to the Pflugerville Police Department's policies, the city's Flock data is only allowed to be accessed by authorized personnel and approved partner agencies for active criminal investigation.
Dig deeper:
City Councilmember Jonathan Coffman posted about the shutdown, sharing what he had learned from a phone call with the City Manager.
Coffman stated that the City Manager confirmed to him that a staff investigation into the issue revealed the system had been configured correctly "set to block the exact statewide and national sharing we were told wasn't happening."
"It happened anyway. Our settings said one thing. The system appears to be doing something else. The vendor is now aware of the reported issue," added Coffman. "To be clear, I don't believe anyone affiliated with or working for the City misconfigured a setting or hid something from Council or the public."
By the numbers:
According to Coffman, a Pflugerville resident had obtained the city's Flock records from a Texas Public Information Act request. Those records showed that 459 outside organizations conducted nearly 1.6 million searches that included Pflugerville's camera network over the last six months, says Coffman.
Those organizations included some hundreds of miles away and outside of Texas, he added.
On Flock's own website, only 78 organizations are listed as having access to Pflugerville's data, and all are located within Texas.
Flock says there are 32 license plate reader cameras connected to the Pflugerville Police Department.
What's next:
City Council will be discussing the contract at the Pflugerville Justice Center at 7 p.m. tonight (Aug. 25).
The contract, if approved, would be for $87,500 a year.
Coffman says that he will be calling for all contracts with Flock to be immediately canceled and for the Council to suspend Clearview AI and any other high-risk surveillance technology until "our policies and operations can catch up to what we now know."
The Source: Information in this report comes from the city of Pflugerville, Pflugerville City Council member Jonathan Coffman and the Pflugerville Police Department