We ask the commissioners and Sheriff of Surry County, North Carolina to end the county’s use and support of Flock and similar automated license plate reader systems, and remove county-operated cameras.

Ordinary people shouldn’t be tracked in the name of safety. Driving to work, visiting family, attending worship or taking a child to school should not put your movements into a police-searchable database.

Flock cameras photograph passing vehicles and record when and where they were seen. Those records include trips by people who are not suspected of a crime. Repeated sightings can help someone work out where a person lives, works, worships or takes their children to school.

The software goes beyond looking up a plate number. Flock describes searches using a vehicle’s make, model, color, bumper stickers, visible damage, and whether its plate is missing or covered. Shared camera records can extend searches across agencies when access is authorized. A routine trip can become information that someone searches later, far beyond the place where the camera recorded it.

This system is already part of Surry County’s government spending. The county’s released order form lists eight Falcon readers, one Falcon Flex and $27,500 in annual recurring charges.

A review of twelve monthly Surry County Sheriff’s Office Organization Audit files identified 102 entries containing ‘Traffic Infraction’ among 5,834 total entries. Two additional searches explicitly cited expired registration and inspection violations and were not included in that count. North Carolina law prohibits using license plate reader data to enforce traffic violations. County leaders should explain this activity and arrange an independent review.

The review also examined five monthly Network Audit files. These logs, which record searches with access to Surry County’s Flock network, contained about 6.39 million entries, including 492,320 categorized ‘Traffic Infraction.’ That volume calls for scrutiny of who can search the network and for what purposes.

Stricter rules would leave the cameras recording ordinary travel. We want the program ended and the equipment removed.

We call on the commissioners and Sheriff to:

1. Commit to ending the county’s Flock program and publish a clear timetable for stopping collection, searches and sharing, and removing county-operated cameras

2. Preserve records required by law and independently review the concerns raised by the county’s audit records

Please sign to ask county leaders to end this surveillance program and give residents a firm date for camera removal.

Read the records and supporting sources at surryforprivacy.org.