Bandera, Texas, a small town of around 900 residents located about 40 miles northeast of San Antonio, Texas, opted to cancel its Flock AI contract. Three of the five-member town council voted to end the AI company’s services, after months of complaints from people who are wary about AI-powered government surveillance. However, one of the two people who wanted the security program to continue has publicly crashed out: According to 404 Media, councilor Jeff Flowers proposes that the town go back to a pre-digital age if its people want complete privacy.
“For months, I have listened to the outcry regarding License Plate Recognition (LPR) technology. I have seen the eyerolls, and I’ve even been met with ‘Nazi rhetoric,’ the dangerous claim that believing in accountability and community safety is somehow equivalent to totalitarianism. Comparing a neighbor’s desire for a safe street to a dark chapter of history is a classic case of comparing apples to oranges; it is a distraction used to avoid the reality of the threats our town faces today,” Flowers wrote in the local newspaper.
He also added, “Let’s take Bandera back to 1880 properly. No double standards, no hypocrisy. If LPRs are ‘unconstitutional’ and invade our right to ‘public’ privacy, we need to be courageous enough to go all the way. I look forward to the ‘Privacy First’ crowd showing up to support these bans [...] just remember to leave your phones at home.”
The town received a grant from the state of Texas to have eight Flock Safety AI license plate readers installed, but it turns out that its people do not want it. One resident said during a town hall that the community did not vote on the installation of these cameras, with another saying, “We don’t need to implement mass government surveillance in our town.” Aside from the protests during town meetings, the cameras themselves were repeatedly vandalized and had their poles cut down. The town had to pay for these repairs, meaning keeping the cameras operational is costing it extra.
Flock’s AI-powered license plate readers are in the center of several debates about security and privacy across the nation. While law enforcement agencies have praised the central database system used by the company, it’s also the same feature that has many people concerned. It’s feared that the authorities will use the data gathered by these cameras for targeting minorities and protesters, especially as reports have surfaced that immigration authorities have allegedly accessed the data gathered by the company without informing local police.
Bandera isn’t the only municipality to have turned off their Flock cameras. TechSpot says that at least 53 other jurisdictions located in 20 states have rejected the surveillance system in just the past six months. Flowers is framing the townspeople’s rejection of the AI-powered LPR system as a pushback against technology — but residents’ concerns aren’t just about privacy: they’re also about trust.
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