After a Brunswick County Sheriff’s deputy allegedly misused cameras intended for law enforcement use, the Sheriff’s Office issued a general order making several changes to its policies regarding the use of the cameras.
But public opinions about surveillance, liberty, and the cost of security remain fiercely divided. Commissioners are looking forward to a presentation on November 2 from Brunswick County Sheriff Brian Chism about who has access to the data collected by the cameras, and the network that makes data shareable among law enforcement agencies.
Brunswick County Manager Steve Stone highlighted a few of the recent changes to the policy. He told commissioners that the number of people who are able to search the data has been reduced from 79 to 49 of the highest-ranking personnel in the Sheriff’s office. Also, the function to store data has been disabled on mobile cameras and reduced to 30 days on fixed cameras.
“So if it's one of those 49 people that's authorized in a patrol car, they can do a search," he said. “But as soon as the search is completed and they get the information, it is deleted and not shared with the Flock network.”
Counties working with Brunswick County will also have to request specific information, rather than having access to all the information, all the time.
A number of searches had been flagged for review by the camera system, but Stone insisted that the electronic data has been reviewed by human beings, who “determined that all of those were legitimate searches that were tied to specific cases that were open.”
Commissioner Pat Sykes held firm in her opposition to the cameras, saying, “Well, I'll just say that I'm totally against the Flock cameras. I think most everybody knows that I'm against them. The problem is nobody's watching the law enforcement, but you're watching us.”
Commissioner Marty Cooke held up his cell phone as he made the point that the project of social surveillance is well underway without the Flock-style cameras.
“I understand where some people are coming from,” he said, “but you know the thing about this device right here is, it will track everything you do. We have open mics with Alexa and some other products that we have in our homes, and you know they sell this stuff. You know they sell this to corporations to be able to track what you say. Anybody's dealt with any software whatsoever, you basically sign your life away whenever you utilize that stuff.”
Customers of Flock and similar technology companies include multiple government entities. NPR and KQED are among the outlets that have reported that ICE and other law enforcement agencies have purchased large amounts of data from various tech companies, thus bypassing the process of obtaining a warrant.
But Chair Mike Forte highlighted the convenience of personal surveillance cameras, like the Ring and Nest cameras that are available for homeowner use. “I could go on here right now,” he said, holding up his own phone, “and see if my dog is on my back deck or my backyard. I could see what he's up to. Somebody comes or goes — ”
“But you’re not getting up in somebody else’s business,” Sykes pointed out, cutting him off.
Though the discussion about the cameras was not specifically agendized, members of the public addressed it at length during the public comment period. Colleen Zigler was up first. She made the law enforcement argument in favor of the cameras’ utility in apprehending criminals, saying, “I’m guessing most of the people who will be abducted are women and children…I think the arguments about Big Brother are absurd and irrelevant,” given how much time people spend on their phones, allowing any number of companies to collect their data and use it for their own ends.
Zachary Dell’Acqua, who described himself as “scary good” at working with tech, is skeptical about the higher purpose of tracking technology. “There’s no money in saving kids,” he said bluntly. “The fact that it's a central database, and that all events are logged into one center, is just not the best way to go about protecting the public. It's actually the best way to extort a population, extract data from them, build a machine learning model predicting human behavior, then monetize it. You don't have billions of dollars going into Flock cameras from outside venture capital companies looking to save kids. This one's a Trojan horse. It's coming to get you.”
Commissioners voted unanimously to pay for a dozen cameras that staff described as “physical equipment with ALPR [Automatic License Plate Reader] functionality.” The cameras have already been delivered under a county contract with Axon Enterprise.
