Flock Around and Find Out: A Citizen’s Guide to Local ALPR...

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Aug 11

Guest post by Josh Frankel In April 2025, my NYS municipality rushed to sign a contract for Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs), live view cameras, and drone-as-first-responder technology with ...

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The Flock contract was hastily put on the agenda for a vote that same evening, bypassing the customary public notice, as required by law. The subject was misleadingly referred to as “Public Safety Equipment” and gave no further detail as to what was under consideration or why.Curious about where the cameras would be placed, I filed a Freedom of Information Law  request for the exact locations of the new Flock cameras. My request was denied three times, despite an extremely favorable opinion from the NYS Committee on Open Government .So I sued. I filed an Article 78 litigation against the Village of Scarsdale ; last submissions to the judge were April 27. There is similar litigation, brought by the same New York Civil Liberties Union  attorneys representing me, pending against Westchester County.2","collect":0,"end_time":0,"defaultTopTitle":"ritholtz.com","property":[],"viewcount":null,"language":"en","relate_stocks":{"FOIL":"Londian Wason New Energy Tech Inc"},"translate_title":"蜂拥而至，一探究竟：当地 ALPR 的公民指南...","themeId":null,"isJumpTheme":false,"ttsUrl":null,"symbols_score_info":{"FOIL":1},"content_text":"Guest post by Josh Frankel\nIn April 2025, my NYS municipality rushed to sign a contract for Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs), live view cameras, and drone-as-first-responder technology with Flock Safety. The Flock contract was hastily put on the agenda for a vote that same evening, bypassing the customary public notice, as required by law. The subject was misleadingly referred to as “Public Safety Equipment” and gave no further detail as to what was under consideration or why.\nCurious about where the cameras would be placed, I filed a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request for the exact locations of the new Flock cameras. My request was denied three times, despite an extremely favorable opinion from the NYS Committee on Open Government (COOG).\nSo I sued. I filed an Article 78 litigation against the Village of Scarsdale (Index # 57090/2026 – February, 2026, Westchester County Supreme Court¹); last submissions to the judge were April 27. There is similar litigation, brought by the same New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) attorneys representing me, pending against Westchester County.2\n~~~\nA veil of secrecy is an essential component of Flock’s playbook, and what happened in my village is the playbook in municipalities nationwide. Flock makes inroads, secures support — and, I believe, personally coaches local law enforcement and trustees on how to keep it all on the down-low. Before you know it, Flock cameras are popping up everywhere.\nWorse, some communities vote them through “consent agendas” — bulk votes on what are supposed to be routine matters. One community, Lucas County Ohio, rammed through on a consent agenda and tried to cancel once local officials realized exactly what they’d done.\nThe story of what happened in my community was perfectly chronicled by independent journalist Jessica Burbank. She wrote a killer piece for DropSite News and produced an outstanding one-hour documentary. Jessica’s work was a catalyst in bringing mass surveillance front and center nationwide. Her work, along with that of 404Media and the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has been indispensable in the effort to rein in this out-of-control technology.\nUltimately, intense public outcry and the failure to secure grant funding led to the cancellation of the contract in my community.\nMy involvement in opposing mass surveillance continues through my ongoing litigation with the NYCLU and volunteer work with the Institute for Justice (IJ). I am slated to join an IJ webinar in the coming days to discuss my experience. To that end, I have put together the following “toolkit,” which I hope other like-minded folks will use as a roadmap in their local communities.\nEach and every tool in the kit was useful in its own way, and taken together, they are very powerful.\nGood luck!\nNOTE: FOIA/FOIL laws vary greatly from state to state. What works in NYS might not work elsewhere (and vice versa). Familiarize yourself with your state’s law so you can extract everything to which you are legally entitled.\n~~~\nLOCAL ALPR ADVOCACY: A CITIZEN’S TOOLKIT\nBe Vigilant. Be Engaged. Ask Questions.\nLocal surveillance programs can move from proposal to approval quickly—and sometimes with relatively little public attention. Residents do not need to be lawyers, technologists, or privacy experts to have an impact. They do need to pay attention, ask questions, obtain the records, and persist.\n1. KNOW WHAT YOUR GOVERNMENT IS DOING\n-Watch local government agendas. Search Board, Council, Police Commission and committee agendas for terms such as ALPR, license plate reader, camera, public safety technology, surveillance, and vendor names such as Flock Safety.\n-Attend or watch public meetings. Important details often emerge during discussion that never appear in the agenda or resolution.\n-Read the actual documents. Don’t rely solely on how a proposal is characterized publicly. Obtain the proposed contract, staff memoranda, policies, presentations and supporting materials.\n-Ask questions early. Who will have access? How long will data be retained? Who can search it? Can other agencies access it? Is data shared across jurisdictions? What audit controls exist? Where will cameras be located? What happens when the contract ends?\n2. USE PUBLIC-RECORDS LAWS\n-NYS FOIL is a powerful investigative tool (with a strong presumption of access). Request contracts, proposals, vendor correspondence, policies, data-retention rules, audit logs, camera locations, internal memoranda and communications with neighboring agencies. AI can be very helpful in crafting comprehensive requests that are impossible to dodge.\n-Ask for records—not answers. A well-crafted request identifies existing records rather than asking the government to explain itself.\n-Request native electronic records when useful. Spreadsheets and databases can reveal considerably more than PDFs.\n-Appeal denials. An agency’s initial “no” is not necessarily the final word.\n-Know the exemptions being asserted. Ask the government to identify specifically why records are being withheld rather than accepting generalized claims about “security” or “law enforcement.”\n-Use New York’s Committee on Open Government. COOG advisory opinions and guidance can be valuable when challenging an agency’s interpretation of FOIL. The Advisory Opinion I got — F19882 — could be very useful in other NYS municipalities.\n3. FOLLOW THE PAPER TRAIL\n-Build a chronology.\n-Save agendas, meeting videos, resolutions and contracts.\n-Preserve emails and correspondence.\n-Compare what officials say publicly with what the underlying documents show.\n-Follow the money: grants, purchase orders, contracts, renewals and amendments can reveal where a program is headed.\n-Set up a Google Alert for “Flock Safety” — stay current on what is going on nationwide.\n–Look beyond your municipality. Counties, neighboring police departments and other agencies may possess records involving the same system or vendor.\n4. USE THE PUBLIC PROCESS\n-Speak during public comment.\n-Write to elected officials both collectively and individually.\n-Ask specific questions that require specific answers.\n-Draft and circulate a petition (one targeted petition is better than several that are fragmented).\n-Encourage officials to adopt written policies before deployment rather than after cameras are operating.\n-Ask for meaningful legislative oversight—not simply administrative approval by a police department.\n–Bring other interested residents into the discussion. One inquiry is easy to dismiss; sustained public interest is much harder to ignore.\n5. LEVERAGE LOCAL MEDIA\n-Local reporters are often looking for well-documented stories about government, policing, technology and privacy.\n-Give journalists documents and facts, not merely conclusions.\n-Explain why the issue affects ordinary residents—not just people concerned about surveillance.\n-Simplify: A complicated technology story becomes much more understandable when framed around these simple questions: Who is watching? What are they collecting? Who can see it? How long do they keep it?\n6. DON’T ACCEPT FALSE CHOICES\nSupporting effective law enforcement and questioning government surveillance are not mutually exclusive.\nFalse question:\n“Are ALPRs good or bad?”\nBetter questions:\nWhat problem are we trying to solve?\nDoes this technology materially solve it?\nWhat information will be collected about innocent people in the process?\nWhat safeguards, oversight and transparency should accompany it?\n7. DO RESEARCH\nAccess the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) to get actual crime and clearance data for your municipality. Doing so can go a long way toward determining if you even have a problem that needs to be solved. I believe “Motor Vehicle Theft” should be the most relevant crime to explore. What is, or has been, the trajectory of clearance rates, i.e. are they rising dramatically, as they should be? This data is readily available and should match up to what you would receive from a FOIL request, without the wait.\n8. BE PERSISTENT\nGovernment processes move slowly. Records requests get delayed. Answers may generate more questions. Policies change. Vendors return with revised proposals.\nPersistence matters.\n9. THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON\nLocal government works differently when people are watching.\nYou don’t need special access. You need curiosity, public records, patience—and a willingness to keep asking reasonable questions until you get reasonable answers.\nFOOTNOTES\n1. JOSHUA FRANKEL v. VILLAGE OF SCARSDALE\nSpecial Proceedings – CPLR Article 78\n2. I am not a named party in the new case against the County, though that COOG opinion and my FOIL work were foundational. (Index # 57090/2026 – Westchester County Supreme Court)","kind":"highlight","is_publish_news":true,"is_publish_highlight":false,"is_publish_live":false,"is_publish_wemedia":false,"editions":null,"column":"","sentiment":"0","news_tag":"","news_rank":0,"isVideo":false,"video":null,"symbols":[],"gpt_button":0,"need_auth":false,"need_login_tip":false,"code":"91000000","status":"200"}}}