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Public commenter warns Clifton Park about Flock surveillance cameras' errors and privacy risks
Summary
A resident warned the Clifton Park board that commercial license-plate-reading networks such as Flock can generate massive numbers of scans, produce misreads that have led to wrongful stops and detentions elsewhere, and urged the town to prevent similar problems locally; the speaker noted no Flock cameras are currently installed in Clifton Park.
During public comment the board heard a detailed warning about the privacy and safety risks of commercial automatic license-plate readers, commonly known by brand names such as Flock.
A public commenter (speaker 3) said the technology is marketed as a crime-deterrent but is being used for immigration enforcement and has produced wrongful detentions. "They do about 20,000,000,000 scans with their cameras a month," the commenter said, adding that "over 1,000,000,000 of them are improper reads with messed up license plates or improper facts about the vehicle." The speaker cited cases including Thor Andrews in Redmond, Washington, who was handcuffed at his driveway after a camera matched his car to his son’s warrant, and Christiana Elser in Colorado, who was accused of theft because of a bad vehicle match.
The speaker said there are no Flock cameras inside Clifton Park but noted installations in nearby parking lots and urged the town to avoid the technology’s harms.
The remark drew brief thanks from other attendees and no immediate board action was recorded in the available transcript excerpt.
