AOC on Flock Cameras: “I Don’t Even Know How They’re Legal Half the Time”

Democratic representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is raising concerns about Flock Safety cameras, which she describes as overstepping surveillance technology that police departments adopted through non-transparent contracts.

According to the Congresswoman, the cameras allow private artificial intelligence companies to track Americans’ movements in an inadequate way, since they cannot control the monitoring process or give permission.

In response to the question regarding her meaning of “flat cameras”, the representative said the surveillance technology is alarming.

“Oh, man, flat cameras are awful. These things are terrible. They shouldn’t; I don’t even know how they’re legal half the time. The ways that they’re going up, the ways that they are doing these conferences with these sweetheart contracts with local police departments,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

“You know, I think that in a way that’s not vetted or transparent, I think people don’t want a surveillance state. And they don’t want that surveillance state hooked up to AI companies to be vacuuming our data and deploying it to analyze the movements of every American. People deserve a right to privacy, and they deserve a right to not be surveilled.”

And she added the problem is connected with principles of freedom:

“And when we talk about what living in a free country means, I think that the ability to move freely without that kind of, without looking over your shoulder to see if some private company is spying on you is a very foundational element of that,” she said. The congresswoman’s case never had a best method of what they are doing. And we’ve seen that.”

Flock Safety operates a network of 120,000 cameras installed in 49 states. The network captures information about license plates, vehicles’ appearance, and their locations. The information then goes into a searchable database used by thousands of law enforcement agencies.

According to the police, the information helps them conduct investigations such as locating stolen cars or suspects. The retention period for camera-collected data varies from several days to several weeks.

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