Arlington will no longer use Flock Safety cameras or other Flock equipment after an Arlington County Board meeting on Tuesday.
The county is reversing course on its Flock lease as a result of public outcry over the cameras, surveillance and privacy concerns, the board chair said in a statement. As a result, the board directed the county manager to discontinue use of the technology.
The 41 Flock Safety cameras currently in use around Arlington — 26 License Plate Reader models and 15 Point-Tilt-Zoom models — will be removed within two weeks of the decision, the county said.
“This decision reflects concerns raised by Arlington residents regarding the use of Flock technology,” Arlington County Board Chair Matt de Ferranti said in a news release. “While Arlington has maintained strong safeguards to prevent the abuse of this technology throughout its use by the County, and there has been no report of misuse to date, the County Board takes seriously our obligation to maintain our community’s trust.”
Flock Safety has come under fire nationwide as Americans voice concerns about misuse of the AI cameras and the data they collect on anyone who drives past.
Police officers in various localities have been repeatedly accused of stalking people with the technology. A Wisconsin police chief threatened to perform background checks on Flock critics.
Law enforcement offices that contract with Flock do not need a warrant to access travel information and can opt to share their data with local law enforcement offices, statewide or nationwide, creating a database of Americans’ real-time movements accessible to a range of police officers that spans much of the country.
Earlier this month, News4 spoke with one woman in Arlington who made it her mission to document where Flock cameras are located in the county and to raise concerns about how the technology is used.
“Being anti-surveillance is not a partisan thing,” Desiree Lomer-Clarke, creator of “Flock Cameras of Arlington” on TikTok and Instagram, said. “… So I thought, let me show people that we have them where they are and what they look like, and then obviously try to start educating about what they actually do.”
Activists like Lomer-Clarke — who has nearly 4,000 followers on Instagram alone — seem to have made an impact on the county.
“The Board, the Manager, and our Public Safety staff will continue to evaluate the tools and technologies we use to ensure they align with the values and expectations of Arlington’s residents,” de Ferranti said in the news release.
Arlington will remove all Flock Safety cameras on public property “within 14 business days of this announcement,” the county said. All data from the equipment that is not required for active criminal investigations will be deleted.
Flock Safety cameras on private property within the county are not affected by the change, because they are not subject to county oversight.
Arlington says a public update on the use of Flock technology will be provided at the board’s recessed meeting Sept. 22.
