No Hiding In Hayward

By Arieana Castellanos

My god-daughter is growing up with surveillance as the norm. It doesn’t make her skin crawl the way it does mine. She doesn’t flinch at the Flock Safety camera signs announcing themselves around us. As I sit and watch cartoons with her, we see a rogue rabbit cop using license plate reading technology and video footage that tracks movements as part of the Zootopia hero’s plot. “There are cameras everywhere in the world watching us,” she says, proudly. 

Last year, the Hayward city council approved a Flock contract good for 10 years and up to $4 million, and in March more cameras went up. According to the Flock website, Hayward currently has 85 cameras. In May 2024, a HPD presentation stated there were 29 cameras, they had been given money by former Congressman Swalwell for 70 more, and the city council had approved an additional 35 (totaling 135 Flock cameras). Estimates put the national number at 90,000 - 120,000 cameras recording 20 billion plate scans a month. In a podcast interview, Garrett Langley, CEO of Flock, said they got to this point by “brute forcing their way” and “most customers don’t even know what camera version they have.” Here is a list of ALPRs and other cameras in Hayward. 

Flock's extensive network of cameras are not just Automatic License Plate Readers on streets. They are also Condor Cameras pointed at Bay Area playgrounds and near walking trail entrances and they are police drones. Benn Jordan and 404 Media found a Flock camera pointed at a children’s playground with vulnerabilities that allowed him to tap into the livestream and archived video of kids playing unattended. He also demonstrates the Flock AI capability and the exposed video shows a man rollerblading with the camera panned out and then zooming into his phone playing a video as he takes a break. Even behaviors are tracked as he shows cameras zooming into a couple disagreeing over a meal at a street market.

On June 16, the Hayward council approved the acquisition of 8 new drones-as-first-responders. Vendors are still an open question and we will need to pay close attention.  According to reporting from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Vice President of Aviation at Flock Safety, Rahul Sidhu said "The Flock Safety drones, specifically, are flying LPR cameras as well,”  to a group of potential law enforcement customers interested in drone-as-first-responder (DFR) programs. 

Drones are considered military equipment and are governed by AB 481, the California State Assembly bill governing the acquisition and use of military equipment by police. According to Hayward officials, they will not be weaponized or have facial recognition. Advocacy from Hayward Community Coalition in 2022 resulted in a local military equipment use policy that prohibited HPD from acquiring, borrowing, or using weaponized aircraft among other items— except in “exigent circumstances.”

If Hayward does acquire Flock Drones, it would be using systems with AI capabilities. The Flock website describes the AI tools as, in part, "highlighting existing connections between people, places, and vehicles already in agency data.” There's nothing in the military equipment policy that prohibits the use of AI and there's no guarantee HPD wouldn't use AI on the drone footage after the fact. Vague language in Hayward Policy 706 regarding how data and military equipment can be used in certain extenuating circumstances should give us all pause. Nonetheless these policies can be amended and creating new protocols is always an option.

In May, Berkeley narrowly defeated a full Flock package that included drones. The bids were opened to other vendors to identify competitive contracts. Flock representatives quoted in the Berkeley Scanner argued they don’t have a contract with ICE. The San Francisco Standard published an article the same day saying Flock does have a contract with Border Patrol and held a conference in Atlanta to sign multiple cities—including Berkeley. Even without local police cooperation, federal officers were able to access Flock data for immigration enforcement actions during the height of the Twin Cities crackdown in Minnesota. Data was accessed through direct searches, guest access, and law enforcement partnerships. 

A recent audit of Elk Grove’s Flock ALPR system shows “only three percent of searches involving data recorded in the city were made by the Elk Grove Police Department (EGPD). The other 8 million were searches from 3,600 other cities, counties, states, federal agencies, and non-governmental organizations.” This included fusion centers which collaborate with the Department of Homeland Security. It does not appear EGPD can control who is searching the data despite saying certain agencies do not have access. This police department also has a robust drone-as-first-responder program. 

Part of the appeal of Flock License Plate Readers is catching car thieves as they move in a city and track them throughout the region. Business insider reported, “in 2023 and 2024, Flock sent 1,427 alerts to Roseville police, flagging vehicles stolen or used in a felony after passing one of the city's Flock cameras. An analysis by the police department found that in 71% of those alerts, Flock's machine-learning software incorrectly read license plates.”

At least 50 police officers have been charged or accused of using Flock for unauthorized purposes and over half of those involved using it on “their wives, girlfriends, exes, exes’ new partners, or women they wanted to meet,” according to the Washington Post. On July 9th, the ACLU responded to charges filed against a Milwaukee Police Internal Affairs Detective for  allegedly using Flock’s Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) system to illegally track two individuals' locations while also investigating another officer’s use of Flock to stalk a romantic partner. 

In Wisconsin, the city council rescinded a Flock contract within 24 hours after Flock representatives lied about the technology’s capability.  Residents in Dunwoody, Georgia raised concerns when Flock sales employees accessed footage of a children’s gymnastics center. 

Cities across the state have severed ties with Flock Safety over data sharing concerns. Santa Cruz became the first California city to terminate its contract after data-sharing problems. Similar audits finding federal and out-of-state access, prompted cities including Mountain View and Los Altos Hills to suspend their Flock camera networks.  

We could stop Flock in Hayward and everywhere else but then what? Motorola, Axon, Genetec, and any other players in the market would come onto the scene. Axon makes police worn body cameras which also have AI functionality. They make tasers with ‘smart technology,’ police drones, and a product called Axon Fusus: A real-time crime center platform that unifies public and private video streams, automatic license plate readers (ALPR), and gunshot detectors. This problem is bigger than Flock.

The surveillance infrastructure went up quietly in front of our faces before the true impact revealed itself. The crime-solving indoctrination begins early and is rolled into everything. I am expected to believe it’s not propaganda. From Paw Patrol and popular children’s character Dogman (a decapitated dog head sewn onto the body of a headless cop) to Law and Order: Pick your Crime and CSI: Pick your location, we are bombarded with images of police solving crimes. The glamorous punishment bureaucracy burns its face into TV screens from diapers to deathbed. 

So what can you do about it? Read, learn, talk to your community members, go to city council, and stay inspired by all the great work done already to address these issues. AI, mass surveillance, and police militarization are not inevitable, effective, or cost-efficient. Alternatives to mass surveillance and over-policing include community-based interventions that are culture bound and needs-specific. Cameras and license plate readers record behaviors and are not a preventative strategy for crime. Connect with the American Friends Service Committee to learn more about drones and police military equipment, the Alameda County Care First Coalition, and restorative justice.