Residents urge Aspen council to reject Flock vehicle-surveillance cameras over privacy concerns

Multiple residents used the public-comment period at the May 12 Aspen City Council meeting to press the council to halt or reconsider a proposed deployment of Flock vehicle-surveillance cameras. Speakers warned the technology creates searchable movement databases, can be repurposed over time, and often stores data on private company servers.

"These are not ordinary traffic cameras," Andrew Sandler said. "They create searchable databases of vehicle movements, locations, patterns, and behavior. They normalize the collection and storage of data on ordinary people who are not suspected of committing crimes." Russ Singh Gadeem told the council Flock can build a persistent "fingerprint" of vehicles (make, model, color, identifying marks) and warned the company's terms can allow perpetual rights to use data after a contract ends.

Mayor Richards clarified to the public that the cameras were discussed at a recent work session and that the council was not scheduled to act on the item that night. He said Aspen's database access would be limited to the Aspen Police Department and asserted the information would not be shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "We were very clear that that database can only be looked at by the Aspen Police Department," the mayor said, while acknowledging residents' concerns and the possibility of additional public comment at a future meeting.

Several commenters recommended alternative approaches for addressing West End traffic, speed and noise concerns — including non-database technologies to measure speed and noise — and asked the council to review enforcement data and noise-ordinance measurement techniques. The council took no formal action on camera policy at the meeting and said it would accept written comments and may revisit the item later.