The City Club of Cleveland on Friday hosted a timely debate that featured a cybersecurity expert and a spokesperson for Flock Safety in a conversation as tense as it was informative.
This week, Cleveland City Council members will hold a final vote on whether or not the city’s contract with Flock for 100 license plate readers should be renewed for six months.
Last Tuesday, in a marathon meeting, Council’s Safety Committee voted 5-2 to move a potential renewal of the city’s contract with Flock forward. It came after four hours of public comment and council back-and-forths with Public Safety officials, Cleveland police and Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley, who presented a dozen recent criminal cases as evidence that it was a vital investigative tool.
A backdrop that made Friday’s City Club debate extra special, both for the cops and cybersecurity workers who showed up for lunch as well as for those curious to see what Cleveland’s future may be if it keeps Flock around.
Moderator Nick Castele, Signal Cleveland’s government reporter, was quick to point out the conversation dominating surveillance tech around the country.
“The conversation in many American communities is not just about whether this technology works,” he said, “but also whether it should even be allowed in its current form or at all.”
If you’ve ever driven on public roads in high traffic areas, there’s a super high chance your license plate was read by at least one of the 1,700 license plate cameras that dot Cuyahoga County. And not just your plate number, but the color and make of your car; the type of roof; whether or not you have bumper stickers.
A present fact that gave great fodder for argument between Thomas and Golbeck. The former who felt his company’s cameras and its national database were paramount to solving an unthinkable count of daily crimes; the latter who was convinced that database of license plates, accessible by an untold number of agents, infringed on the privacy of Americans uninvolved in crime whatsoever.
In other words, an argument pitting intent versus consent: Who really owns my data? And who gets to look at it at-will?
Thomas, who’s been Flock’s chief communications director and admitted punching bag for the past year and a half, maintained that local governments control their data and individuals are responsible for their actions. City councils can limit Flock’s reach. Police officers shared license plate data with ICE, not Flock. And your whereabouts for the past 30 days? That’s stored in Amazon Web Services data centers, untouchable save for the okay from a partnering city.
And Flock’s not the issue here, Thomas urged the crowd to understand.
“License plate readers will be a part of our city infrastructure. Cameras will be, drones will be,” he said. “This infrastructure exists today and it will exist.”
“If it’s not Flock,” he said, “it’ll be somebody else.”
Golbeck, safe to say, didn’t buy Thomas’ plea, as did several audience members, who often responded to Thomas impassioned defense with chuckles or by applauding Golbeck’s rebuttal. Many appeared to have already made up their minds on who’s right before they sat down to eat their lunches.
Golbeck, who’s spent the past few years writing and speaking publicly about Flock Safety’s main issue, was likewise unconvinced. It’s a private company looking to turn a profit, she said, on a national database. And secondly, the main issue is the implications of that mass database—that officers can bypass the typical warrant-seeking route and look-up what should constitutionally require a court-issued warrant.
“But it is an entirely different animal when every car, every license plate is tracked and recorded and put into a database that can be accessed not just by local police, not just by the police here in Cleveland,” Golbeck said, “but by police around the country.”
Thomas routinely rested on his main defense, that Flock has learned from “mistakes” in Colorado and Texas, and has placed safeguards on its technology — a Transparency Portal that shows what police are searching, Audit Assistance that flags any “nefarious” searches by off-duty cops or those hunting down ex-girlfriends.
Friday’s talk ended in the heart of criminology, which seemed to hand the ball to Thomas for the time being. You’re going to have bad cops, Thomas argued, just like you’re going to have murderers and thieves.
Which is why, Thomas argued, police acting urgently to hunt down rape suspects or school shooters should be able to get their whereabouts quickly without waiting on the court system to allow them.
“We need a place to start when we have horrible things that happen in society,” he said.
Golbeck, again, didn’t buy it. Flock’s camera system was still growing. Where exactly is their end? she asked.
She used the metaphor of gas: for decades, the U.S. allowed the sale of leaded gasoline not knowing it would lead to countless mental health cases across the country.
“We are in the leaded phase now,” she said. “And in 20 years, we’re going to look back and be like, ‘What the hell were we thinking?’”
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