Poll: Wisconsin voters believe Flock cameras are invasion of privacy

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(The Center Square) - Wisconsin voters, like many across the country, are increasing against the use of Flock cameras for public safety.

A new poll found that 63% of registered voters believe Flock cameras are an unacceptable violation of privacy rights while 37% believe that they are an important tool for police investigations.

Those polled were told that Flock Safety has 120,000 cameras that allow the company and law enforcement to track the movement of vehicles and then were asked about their beliefs about those cameras in the most recent Marquette Poll.

The Marquette Poll was conducted Sept. 16-23, interviewing 843 Wisconsin registered voters, with margin of error of +/-4.3 percentage points. For likely voters, the sample size is 692 with a margin of error of +/-4.8 percentage points.

This week, the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin and 44 other groups sent a letter to Milwaukee asking it to end its Flock contract and instead adopt a framework such as Community Control Over Police Surveillance with transparency instead.

The groups said that Milwaukee Police have misused Flock and department officials have not indicated if United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement have accessed data from the cameras.

“These cases demonstrate why automated license plate readers cannot simply be treated as another piece of police equipment,” the letter reads. “ALPRs allow the government to engage in the dragnet, warrantless collection of likely millions of images of vehicles and plates of people driving to work, church, union meetings, medical appointments, and protests in Milwaukee that are stored by a multibillion dollar company for AI-powered searches and predictive analytics.

“ALPRs enable users to reconstruct individuals’ patterns of movement and associations. When access is abused–or used as intended–the consequences can extend far beyond the person whose information was searched.”

Several other Wisconsin communities have ended contracts with Flock over privacy concerns.

Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling recently said that the department had an understanding that there was a 30-day retention period for data from the cameras for public safety and crime solving purposes only.

“This is not what we agreed to, and it is not what the public was led to believe,” Schmaling said in a statement. “The Sheriff’s Office will not participate in a system that appears to use public safety as a justification for mass surveillance and the collection and monetization of information about innocent people.”

State Rep. Calvin Callahan, R-Tomahawk, said he intends to call a hearing on surveillance cameras and their use in the state once a new legislative session begins in January in front of the Assembly Committee on Consumer Protection that he chairs.

Callahan previously was a sponsor of a Flock camera grant bill in the state Legislature.

“What was sold to us as a targeted public safety tool has rapidly evolved into something far more invasive and sometimes out of control, with reports of misuse, mistaken stops, and access to data that should concern every Wisconsinite,” Callahan said in a statement.