Resident urges deeper review of 'Flock' vehicle surveillance after cameras installed

Buddy Huggins told the Board of Aldermen he has concerns about Ozark's use of the Flock camera system, saying the network of cameras can create persistent vehicle tracking and that data uploaded to the cloud may be shared widely. "When it goes on the cloud, it's there forever," Huggins said, adding he believes heat maps and vehicle tracking are being produced.

Huggins asked aldermen to allow time for a "deep dive" into the contract and vendor relationships before broadly deploying or relying on cloud-hosted video analytics. "We can police ourselves. We don't need that data going up on the cloud," he said.

Aldermen did not take a formal vote on the matter at the meeting. Huggins said he would like to return to the topic at a future meeting and asked the city to provide copies of contracts and data-handling policies so the public can better understand who can access footage and how long data is retained.

Board members acknowledged the concern but did not announce a staff directive at the meeting. The police chief had previously briefed the board (as referenced by Huggins), and Huggins said he had asked to see data showing instances of theft from city trucks; he said his informal observations did not match the theft reports he heard about.

Huggins also expressed a broader distrust of how some analytics vendors may share data with larger data brokers; he referenced Palantir by name in his remarks. City staff did not dispute his right to ask for contract and data-retention information and agreed to meet with him after the meeting to answer questions.

No ordinance, contract approval, or formal action regarding the surveillance system was on the agenda for the Aug. 18 meeting.