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Residents urge Ridgecrest to suspend Flock camera contract; chief and council weigh privacy against safety
Summary
Residents and a community group urged Ridgecrest officials to suspend the city’s contract with Flock Safety, saying the company’s systems capture tens of thousands of vehicle images and may use overseas contractors to annotate data; the police chief defended Flock as unbreached and credited it with aiding a recent arrest.
Michael Citra, speaking for a local group called Deflock Ridgecrest, told the Ridgecrest City Council that the city’s 24 Flock Safety cameras captured about 62,800 images in the past 30 days and raised privacy and security concerns about how those images are annotated. “These cameras record every vehicle that passes by them,” Citra said, adding that reporting from 404 Media and Wired indicated some image annotations were done by overseas contractors. He urged the council to place “Deflock Ridgecrest” on the agenda and to consider suspending the city’s contract with Flock.
Brenda, a Ridgecrest…
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