The city gave the Flock representative around an hour to explain his side of the story but their own residents only 2 minutes each. I’ll use this opportunity to respond to the city’s presentation slide by slide.
This is great to see. I wish every city would do this. It can be very difficult to discern from FOIA documents where these cameras are installed. Rolling Meadows cameras had been spotted and are all documented on Deflock.org
What doesn’t make sense about the LPR #01 camera and the one on Euclid is that we’ve heard that the cameras are being installed in ‘areas with a high demand for service’. This camera is surveilling people getting off 53 and going to residential neighborhoods in Ward 3 and Ward 7, some of the lowest crime areas in the city. Why do we have this here?
One question this does address is the field of view of the camera and its ability to see into houses just on the other side of the intersection. This is probably software cropped and I do wonder what happens when you press that ‘full screen’ looking icon in the upper right location of the photo – does it show the full hardware field of view?
Why is this here? Pawn shop, apartments, auto theft?
The LPR #03 camera makes the least sense of any in the city. When the city debated ALPRs in 2023 it was to justified by protecting against auto thefts just north of this location on Hicks. They said people vandalized/stole cars and escaped to 53 (by the way, they still don’t claim the cameras have helped with this original purpose). If you look at where this camera is pointing, it doesn’t capture any of that. Instead they went one block west of Euclid and Hicks and now they’re only capturing residents entering Ward 1 and Ward 2. Not people coming to/from this area of crime. These are low crime residences. Why are you surveilling residents and not areas of crime?
My understanding is that LPR #04 is the camera was added at the request of residents who wanted help with crime and the city told them they weren’t used for immigration enforcement – which appears to have been misleading at best… Rolling Meadows Flock Cameras used for immigration enforcement: City Council Speech and FOIA data. This community deserves an explanation.
LPR #05 is here for Meijer. Meijer also has 5 cameras of its own. Why are tax payers paying for Meijer? This should be privately paid for by Meijer and I can choose not to shop at Meijer if I don’t like their surveillance. I have (and you should too) let Meijer know that I look forward to returning to their store when they stop doing business with Flock. You can email them and let them know your thoughts: customercare@meijer.com (also looking at you Lowes).
This is here for Walmart. Why are tax payers paying for Walmart? This should be privately paid for by Walmart and I can choose not to shop at Walmart if I don’t like their surveillance. I have (and you should too) let Walmart know that I look forward to returning to their store when they stop doing business with Flock. You can call them and let them know your thoughts: 1-800-925-6278
See above. We shouldn’t be paying for Meijer. Remember the cost of the cameras isn’t just the price to Flock. It’s all of the legal liability for all of the stalking and illegal uses.
Now we get to the two most problematic cameras, the PTZ cameras. These are Condor model cameras with AI abilities, which the city says are turned off. The apparent use of the C#005 camera is to try to figure out who keeps ripping the wires out of the LPR #4 camera. Below is a picture I took of LPR #4 with its wires ripped out. Looking at the invoices, it looks like the city is paying $350 a month to have a technician come out and plug the wires back in, each month. If I were told that the cameras weren’t being used for immigration and found out that wasn’t true I’d be upset too.
If you install a camera to catch people who are upset with your surveillance of them after telling them one thing and doing another, are you solving crime or creating it?
This camera is perhaps the most problematic of them all. The wide field of view is looking at homes near 1395 S Old Wilke Rd, the two story building white on top and brown on bottom in the left half of the upper left picture. Does the city pan high-zoom lens on the houses? Who has the controls to do that? Other agencies? As the camera pans, there are other apartments block behind the current field of view the cameras could look at.
The Illinois voyeurism / unauthorized video recording law says “(a-5) It is unlawful for any person to knowingly make a video record or transmit live video of another person in that other person’s residence without that person’s consent.” The penalty for doing so “is a Class 4 felony.”
I’ve not spoken with these residents so I don’t know if they have given their consent but recording peoples homes and broadcasting them across the Flock network is clearly problematic for a number of privacy reasons, whether or not they cross the bar of illegal. Why does the city need to use Flock in this case? There are a number of better choices here that do not broadcast video across the state/country testing these legal waters and bringing liability on the city. Liability we may all pay for.
In this slide the city is stating a number of things to currently be the case, but clearly many of these things haven’t been the case.
Insights from haveibeenflocked.com show that RMPD hasn’t always used case numbers, given the type of offense and entered a detailed reason code. A large number of searches by RMPD give generic reasons of “investigation”, “other-other”, “test”, “LE” which probably means Law Enforcement. How are other departments supposed to know if we’re using their cameras improperly with search reasons like this? More importantly — how are we to know they aren’t using ours improperly with similar search reasons?
haveibeenflocked.com data also shows out-of-state and federal immigration have searched for people in Rolling Meadows. So saying “Only Illinois” and “No Federal” … “have access” in this slide is a half truth at best.
I’ll skip a few slides here that I largely agree with – except (1) on slide 16 the Flock transparency portal is referenced which even Flock acknowledges is useless, and (2) on slide 18 an “outside department assist” requires documentation under RMPD policy 447.7 which the city can not produce records that it has performed.
Again the city here is claiming that the “cameras are NOT used for immigration or reproductive health care” but we know our cameras WERE used for immigration. At the council meeting Mr. Sabo referred to the case where Texas police used 85,000 Flock cameras to find a woman in Illinois with the entry “Had an abortion. Find female“.
When the city puts NOT in all caps to emphasize and then the opposite appears to be the case the community loses trust in its law enforcement, its staff and its elected officials. At the end of the day trust is the basis of safety, not technology. The city giving away trust to keep the technology is detrimental to our community and its safety.
The way forward
The way out of this is to follow the lead of the Winona Minnesota police department and issue a statement acknowledging that community trust is more important to safety than this technology.
I do want to thank Chief Peluso for braving the audience to put this information out there.