On Aug. 20, Members of Desert Rising gathered on the campus mall, and underneath the very cameras that they object to, stretched out a banner that read “MASS SURVEILLANCE DOES NOT EQUAL SAFETY.”
Desert Rising is a nonpartisan human rights organization that is demanding that the University ends its contract with Flock Safety, a company that makes automatic license plate readers (ALPRs). These cameras, which are sold to law enforcement agencies, HOAs and businesses, gather data on every passing vehicle using AI technology. That information is stored in a database, which is nationally accessible to police departments and other customers.
Now, these cameras are all around campus.
“If you’re taking the shortcut from Broadway to Sixth down Highland, now you’re in a national database, being marketed to law enforcement and other third parties,” said Steven Davis, media liaison for Deflock Tucson. Deflock Tucson is a coalition of local groups, Desert Rising among them, with the goal of providing “actionable steps towards a surveillance-free existence,” per their website. The alliance recently set up a petition on change.org to put a stop to the Flock Safety contract.
Davis, a UA alumnus, retired faculty member, and current student, first heard of the Flock Safety ALPRs a few months ago, through a post on the R/Tucson subreddit. About a week later, while driving on campus, he noticed one of the cameras.
I thought, well, I guess they were right,” Davis said. “I did a little research, and what I read was kind of disturbing to me, and then they just kind of seemed unfathomable.”
Automatic license plate readers are a contentious topic in the realm of public safety. While supporters embrace and celebrate the technology as an effective security tool, companies like Flock Safety have started nationwide conversations about mass surveillance and data privacy, with some even claiming the cameras violate civil liberties. The American Civil Liberties Union itself has, for over a decade, deemed ALPRs a “significant invasion of privacy.”
After learning of the cameras, Davis emailed Leila Hudson, Ph.D., the ex-officio Chair of the Faculty, and asked her to look into the problem.
“I said, ‘This is news to me,’” said Hudson. “I didn’t know about this, and I would have thought that I’d have known about something like this.”
Hudson is not a member of Desert Rising, and while the organization is calling for the removal of the cameras, her current aim is to see the contract. The thought of the contract’s contents, according to the professor, immediately raised concerns — not only about the cost and the budgeting, but about the handling of the data.
“Where is it stored? Who has access to it? What kind of rights does the third party have to sell or share this data with other people?” Hudson said. “I think the first step is understanding the nature of those contracts.”
“This campus has been through a lot over the last few years, and I think everyone freely acknowledges that we are desperately trying to rebuild the trust and integrity that have been so damaged,” Hudson said. “So, the sharing of information that the community is really interested in, about how their privacy is being protected, would be a good step towards restoring trust.”
Concerned, she spoke with the school’s chief safety officer.
“He totally shut her down,” Davis said. “He said ‘yes, those are Flock cameras, but I can’t tell you anything else, and please don’t tell anyone else about this.’”
Davis’ next step was to email the Office of the President, posing the same questions about data privacy that Hudson had brought to the Chief Safety Officer. According to Davis, he told the office that his goal was not to “blow anything up” or to turn the matter into a “big community conversation,” but to be reassured that appropriate protections for data privacy were in place.
The President’s Office informed Davis that he’d have to file a public records request, which Davis did, but he was made no promises about when and if he’d receive a response. So, he reached back out to the office, explaining, again, that he’d rather solve the problem in-house.
The Office of the President never responded to Davis.
“This has been an issue for a long time,” Hudson said. “Easily getting information that should be open, and public has often been a struggle.”
“I said f*** it, and we started going in a different direction,” Davis said. “Regrettably, in my view, because I’m all about public safety.”
Flock Safety reports to be involved in solving 700,000 crimes a year, which is over 10% of all reported crime. The company has had its name in several high-profile cases, including bank robberies, missing persons, and homicides. In Davis’ opinion, ALPRs do have a role in “detecting bad actors” in public spaces. According to Hudson, there might be valid reasons for the contract with Flock, such as dealing with vehicle thefts and other vehicle related crimes, though the school would not provide her with any statistics to show an “upside” to the cameras.
“But it’s the mass surveillance, the secrecy, and the violation of civil liberties that really got to me,” Davis said. “Especially in a community that I’ve considered my home community.”
Early this year, hardware security researcher Matt Brown launched an investigation into an ALPR company, revealing security vulnerabilities that left 170 cameras, and their data, publicly accessible. While the company is a competitor of Flock Safety, Davis worries that the community currently only has “assurance that Flock is protecting data privacy.”
Beyond security concerns, instances of mistakes and misuses have drawn scrutiny to the technology itself, but also to the use of databases by law enforcement agencies.
“If a reader misreads a license plate, then you may find yourself at gunpoint, being accused of stealing a vehicle,” Davis said.
The situation is not hypothetical. In July 2023, after an erroneous reading by a Flock Safety camera, two Española, New Mexico sisters were pulled over by police. The sisters, one of whom was 12 years old, were held at gunpoint before being handcuffed and put into separate police vehicles. A similar complaint was filed in Española just months before, when Adam Pacheco, a 17-year-old honor roll student, was targeted for armed robbery, despite several differences between his vehicle and the one used in the crime. Pacheco was also handcuffed at gunpoint and was forced to kneel in the street.
In several instances, law enforcement officers have used ALPRs and databases for unauthorized and even illegal purposes. One police lieutenant in Kansas pleaded guilty to using Flock Safety cameras to stalk his estranged wife. The Associated Press unearthed other cases involving various law enforcement databases: An Ohio officer who stalked his ex-girlfriend, a Michigan officer who searched up the home addresses of women he was interested in, and two Miami-Dade officers who ran checks on a journalist who criticized the department.
“A sheriff in Podunk County can enter whatever terms they want into the search,” Davis said. “And we’re dependent on the integrity of these 5,000 plus agencies to maintain our data privacy.”
Law enforcement also share data with other federal agencies that do not have contracts with Flock, namely, ICE. When using the database, officers are required to list a reason for their search. Recently, released audit logs in Denver showed that 1400 searches were made on the Flock database for ICE, the ACLU of Colorado reported. Another investigation showed that across the country, over 4,000 searches have been made with the reason listed as “immigration” or “ICE” or the like.
“So, if you’re at your local ICE field office, you can go to whatever police has access and say ‘hey, could you run a search on this license plate?’ And then it goes on the hot list,” Davis said.
UA has not publicized its contract with Flock Safety, and beyond the little buzz generated on forums like Reddit, information is scarce. Desert Rising has voiced objections to the university’s failure to notify the community, and though the cameras are marketed to “deter crime,” per the Flock Safety website, Davis argues that the silence indicates other priorities.
“If they wanted to deter crime, they’d put big signs on campuses saying ‘warning: surveillance cameras in place,’” Davis said. “That’s a deterrent.”
“But these aren’t there to deter, they’re there to collect.”
Desert Rising and Deflock Tucson are leading a public information campaign to spread awareness about the Flock Safety contract and ALPRs in general, both on and off campus; Many of the school’s cameras are located on poles next to public thoroughfares, so non-campus passersby will be recorded and logged by the system. Home Depot and Lowes have also entered contracts with Flock Safety, and several Tucson neighborhoods currently utilize the technology. According to Davis, Desert Rising is beginning to work with City Council and individual councilmembers, though he is unsure if ALPRs will be taken up as a city issue.
For now, the group has taken to social media, news outlets, and the campus mall to broadcast its cause. Over the last weeks they’ve held banners, handed out leaflets, and even projected informational films onto walls at the university.
“We have enthusiastic conversations with passersby, who are generally very supportive if they take the time to see what we’re about,” Davis said.
“I think there is a growing concern as more and more people become familiar with the issue,” Hudson said. “And it partly has to do with the times in which we live, where student safety and student security are paramount, and the sharing, the sale, the misuse, the abuse of data that most people don’t even know is being collected is a matter of great concern.”