To the City Council of De Pere,

We the people, do not want another ALPR camera contract, bought with our tax dollars to spy on us.

Voting yes to another contract will destroy many people's trust in the local goverment. People hate Flock. Don't give them a reason to hate another surveillance system or even you.
Voting yes will tell the people in the city (in which you were elected to serve) that you don't care about them or their opinions.
You rejected the Flock Safety contract due to privacy issues and breaches of contract. That is a good first step!

You have a choice now to end part of the surveillance in this city, avoid the same privacy problems from a different company, and protect the people the way they want to be protected.

Do you want to be seen as a friendly neighbor next door?
Or will you be Big Brother?

Here is a list of facts on the subject:

BODY CAMERAS AND MASS SURVEILLANCE ARE NOT THE SAME THING

This distinction matters.

Body cameras can provide accountability during police encounters. They can preserve evidence of what officers and civilians did, protect citizens from misconduct, protect officers from false allegations, and provide useful evidence in criminal cases.

Persistent automated surveillance is fundamentally different. It observes people who have had no interaction with police at all. A person does not have to call 911, be stopped, witness a crime, or be suspected of anything. They merely have to drive down a road.

Calling both technologies "cameras" ignores the difference in purpose and scale.

We can support police accountability technology while opposing indiscriminate location databases. Those positions are entirely compatible.

SURVEILLANCE SHOULD NOT BE BURIED IN ROUTINE PROCUREMENT

Persistent surveillance should not be approved as if it were an ordinary equipment purchase. Buying office chairs does not fundamentally change the relationship between citizen and government. Building a searchable location surveillance network can.

Surveillance technology deserves separate public debate, written policy, technical review, cybersecurity review, civil-liberties review, financial review, and a recorded vote.

Residents should not discover cameras across their city and then have to ask, "Who approved these?"

COMMUNITIES SHOULD HAVE THE RIGHT TO SAY NO

Local governments should not treat opposition to ALPR systems as ignorance of technology or hostility toward law enforcement.

Communities across the country are already debating, pausing, limiting, or ending deployments because residents have concluded that the privacy costs require greater scrutiny.

Those debates are democracy working as intended.

A surveillance company may believe its product is beneficial. A police chief may believe it is beneficial. Some residents may agree. Others may conclude the privacy cost is too high.

Ultimately, the people living under the surveillance should have meaningful input.

OPPOSITION TO MASS SURVEILLANCE IS NOT OPPOSITION TO POLICE

Police need tools. They need modern technology, functioning radios, reliable evidence systems, body cameras, cybersecurity, digital forensics, training, vehicles, staffing, and investigative resources.

Technology that helps investigate serious crimes can absolutely have a place in modern policing.

But support for law enforcement cannot mean unlimited surveillance authority.

Power should be accompanied by oversight. Access should be accompanied by auditing. Technology should be accompanied by training. Errors should be accompanied by review. Misuse should be accompanied by consequences.

Public safety and civil liberties should reinforce each other.

THE BURDEN SHOULD BE ON GOVERNMENT TO JUSTIFY SURVEILLANCE

Citizens should not have to prove that they have a sufficiently important reason to avoid being tracked.

Government should have to prove that it has a sufficiently important reason to track them.

Instead of "collect everything because someone might someday become relevant," we should return to a more traditional principle: INVESTIGATE PEOPLE WHEN THERE IS A LAWFUL REASON TO INVESTIGATE THEM.

This is not radical. It is the logic behind warrants.

TECHNOLOGY CHANGES FASTER THAN LAW, WHICH IS EXACTLY WHY LAWMAKERS MUST ACT NOW

We must regulate what this infrastructure is becoming capable of doing.

THE DANGER IS NOT ONE EVIL COMPANY

It would be easy to make this petition exclusively about Flock Safety. That would be a mistake.

If every Flock camera disappeared tomorrow, the market opportunity would remain. Axon could expand. Motorola could expand. Another startup could appear. Governments could build different networks.

The underlying capability would remain.

This is not fundamentally about whether one CEO, one company, or one police chief is trustworthy.

GOOD SECURITY POLICY DOES NOT DEPEND ON TRUST. IT DEPENDS ON ENFORCEABLE CONTROLS

CITIES SHOULD KNOW EXACTLY WHAT THEY ARE BUYING

Before approving any surveillance contract, elected officials should be required to answer basic questions publicly.

What exact information does the system collect? Does it photograph every passing vehicle? Does it analyze vehicle characteristics? Can it search partial plates? Can it search by description? Can it track historical travel? How many cameras will exist? Where will they be located? How many private cameras are integrated? What is the retention period? Can it be changed? Who can search the system? How many outside agencies can search it? Can federal agencies request searches? Can officers search nationwide? Can data be exported? Can it be integrated with drones, body cameras, facial recognition, or other systems? Who audits employees? What happens if an employee stalks someone? What is the five-year cost? What is the local false-alert rate?

If officials cannot answer those questions, they are not ready to vote on the contract.

MESSAGE TO LAW ENFORCEMENT

We recognize that these systems can provide valuable investigative leads.

This petition is not claiming otherwise.

But tools powerful enough to track dangerous suspects are powerful enough to track innocent people. Powerful enough to locate a kidnapping suspect is powerful enough to locate an ex-partner. Powerful enough to find a stolen vehicle is powerful enough to identify someone attending a political event. Powerful enough to reconstruct a suspect's movements is powerful enough to reconstruct yours.

Strong safeguards protect ethical officers from the misconduct of the few who abuse access. They also protect officers from bad information.

A machine-generated alert should never put an officer into a dangerous confrontation under a false assumption of certainty.

THE MACHINE CAN BE WRONG. THE DATABASE CAN BE WRONG. THE ALERT CAN BE WRONG. THE PERSON IN FRONT OF YOU IS STILL PRESUMED INNOCENT.

James Boyd

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