Hello, neighbors — while movement has been slow on the license plate cameras, we have sparked an ongoing discussion, aided by Flock itself making the case that it should not be trusted with surveilling our town (see below). Sunset Valley city council will make a decision on renewing the Flock contract soon, probably in January. I'll post an update when I have more details on that.

Here's some news to discuss with your uncle at Thanksgiving. 

• Evanston, Illinois, terminated their contract with Flock after discovering that they broke state law by allowing US Customs and Border Protection to access the city's cameras. Then Flock reinstalled them without permission.
• Texas DPS sent Flock a cease and desist order for illegally operating cameras for private entities without a private investigators' license. Flock has now gotten that license.
• After trying to work with the company on privacy protection, Senator Ron Wyden (WA) accused Flock of misleading police on data sharing, and stated (PDF) that "Flock is unable and uninterested in preventing" abuses of their products.
• Flock has participated in the Border Patrol's nationwide surveillance system that tracks vehicle routes, combines that with personal data such as social media posts and home addresses, and detains citizens with "suspicious" travel patterns. Flock said in August that it "paused" directly sharing city camera data with federal agencies, but as they didn't disclose the program in the first place, don't expect them to announce when they resume it.
• ICE and Texas DPS are targeting families at Austin public schools.
• Many other cities and counties in Texas and elsewhere are turning off, removing or rejecting Flock cameras.

Sunset Valley PD has a Flock transparency portal so you can see the 400 outside agencies who've been given access to our data. Note that federal agencies have other ways of getting Flock data (PDF) without directly asking the city for it. Our petition asks for the city to shut down the cameras because it's clear that we don't control our data—an untrustworthy surveillance startup does.

Please share this info and petition with your neighbors. Happy Thanksgiving — I'm grateful to live in a democracy and a city where our voices can make an impact.