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Transcript

Flock Won’t Answer This One Town’s Simple Question · Question Everything

0:07
Speaker 1: At this time will be the Flock discussion, public hearing.
0:11
Speaker 1: On a Tuesday night in June, representatives from the company
0:14
Speaker 1: Flock Safety have shown up to a select board meeting
0:16
Speaker 1: in the town of Tewksbury, Massachusetts, just north of Boston.
0:21
Speaker 1: Flock makes surveillance cameras for police departments around the country.
0:24
Speaker 1: They're meant to take snapshots of license plates as cars
0:27
Speaker 1: pass by, which police can then run to solve crimes.
0:30
Speaker 1: Find stolen cars, track thieves, trace missing people. Tewksbury is
0:36
Speaker 1: one of about 6,000 towns in the U.S. that have
0:39
Speaker 1: Flock cameras. And while police rave about them for fighting crime,
0:43
Speaker 1: as Tewksbury's police chief did at the select board meeting.
0:46
Speaker 2: You know, I think personally that this is the best
0:49
Speaker 2: tool I've seen in 26 years of law enforcement.
0:53
Speaker 1: Flock is nevertheless finding itself in a lot of hot
0:56
Speaker 1: water lately. They've been all over the news and were
0:58
Speaker 1: even the subject of a congressional hearing the other week.
1:01
Speaker 1: Because all sorts of awful stories have been coming out
1:04
Speaker 1: about police using the cameras to spy on people in
1:07
Speaker 1: their lives. A cop in Florida allegedly tracked his estranged
1:11
Speaker 1: wife on the cameras more than 700 times. An officer
1:15
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin reportedly used them to see if his ex
1:17
Speaker 1: had visited an abortion clinic. And sheriff's deputies in Georgia
1:21
Speaker 1: were arrested for allegedly stalking people with flock cameras. It's
1:25
Speaker 1: very unnerving Big Brother stuff. Vigilantes in creepy masks have
1:29
Speaker 1: started tearing flock cameras down in some areas. And there's
1:33
Speaker 1: been public outcry in towns and cities across the country.
1:36
Speaker 1: More than 90 of them have canceled their contracts with
1:38
Speaker 1: flock in recent months. All of that led people in
1:42
Speaker 1: Tewksbury to start asking questions about how the cameras were
1:45
Speaker 1: being used in their town. There weren't any charges of
1:48
Speaker 1: the police there misusing the cameras, but residents were still wary.
1:52
Speaker 1: So at this meeting in June, the company sent somebody
1:55
Speaker 1: to try and quell concerns. Could you just give your
1:57
Speaker 1: name and your organization?
1:59
Speaker 2: My name is Trevor Chandler. I am the senior director
2:01
Speaker 2: of public affairs for Flock.
2:03
Speaker 1: Usually, Tewksbury's select board meetings are pretty empty. But for
2:06
Speaker 1: this one, maybe 50 people have shown up. They had
2:08
Speaker 1: to set up extra chairs. And things are a bit tense.
2:11
Speaker 2: We'll keep it very brief because your questions are the
2:14
Speaker 2: most important. The most important things that I want to
2:18
Speaker 2: emphasize going into this conversation. Number one, Flock does not
2:23
Speaker 2: sell data.
2:24
Speaker 1: Second, excuse me. Not even a minute into the flock
2:28
Speaker 1: rep's remarks, there's an outburst. Someone in the audience shouts
2:31
Speaker 1: at him. You can't make it out in the recording,
2:33
Speaker 1: but someone who was there said the person yelled at
2:35
Speaker 1: the flock rep, you're lying. Other people are holding signs
2:39
Speaker 1: that say flock lies. The chair of the select board
2:42
Speaker 1: tells everyone to settle down. That'll be the last time
2:44
Speaker 1: that anyone in the audience is going to be allowed
2:46
Speaker 1: to speak out like this. Again, we are here and
2:50
Speaker 1: we're going to be civil.
2:51
Speaker 3: If not, we will have you removed.
2:53
Speaker 1: And then. during the public comment portion of the meeting.
2:56
Speaker 1: A 40-something guy with a cleanly shaved head and a
2:59
Speaker 1: long salt and pepper beard walks to the mic. He's
3:02
Speaker 1: wearing a white T-shirt printed like a piece of needlepoint
3:05
Speaker 1: with a wreath of flowers around the words, don't argue
3:08
Speaker 1: with strangers online.
3:10
Speaker 3: My name's Dustin Weir.
3:11
Speaker 1: Dustin Weir. He's a big guy, 6'6, 325 pounds. The
3:16
Speaker 1: podium barely comes up to his belt.
3:18
Speaker 3: This isn't quite as high as it is at town meeting.
3:21
Speaker 3: Need the risers. I want to start by being clear
3:25
Speaker 3: about why.
3:26
Speaker 1: Dustin is a major reason Flock's rep was cajoled into
3:28
Speaker 1: coming to this meeting. For months, he's been asking Flock
3:32
Speaker 1: for one thing, a single document. He's asked in writing
3:36
Speaker 1: more than once, so has the town manager, even the
3:39
Speaker 1: police chief. Dustin still hasn't gotten the document. And now,
3:44
Speaker 1: he's going to finally confront someone from Flock face-to-face about it,
3:47
Speaker 1: in front of his neighbors. He stares right at the
3:50
Speaker 1: Flock rep.
3:51
Speaker 3: So I have one direct question for Flock representative tonight.
3:56
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you the story of how Dustin
3:57
Speaker 1: got to this moment. Looking a Flock guy in the eye.
4:01
Speaker 1: What his question was. And what came of him asking it.
4:04
Speaker 1: It's a question so basic, Flock should be able to
4:06
Speaker 1: answer it immediately. But for some reason, they won't. Dustin
4:11
Speaker 1: says they're hiding something from him.
4:13
Speaker 3: Here's who I can explicitly tell you I don't trust.
4:16
Speaker 3: And that's Flock.
4:18
Speaker 1: From Placement Theory and KCRW, this is Question Everything. I'm
4:21
Speaker 1: Brian Reed. We investigate how the truth gets buried, distorted,
4:24
Speaker 1: and denied, and the ways people are fighting to make
4:26
Speaker 1: it matter again. Today on the show, one man tries
4:30
Speaker 1: to get Flock to respond to a very simple question,
4:33
Speaker 1: a Kafkaesque tale about a technology that affects the privacy
4:36
Speaker 1: of millions of Americans. Stick around. Dustin recently stopped by
4:49
Speaker 1: one of his favorite spots in Tewksbury.
4:51
Speaker 3: This is the fishing hole.
4:53
Speaker 1: A dirt road comes down through the trees and runs
4:55
Speaker 1: right into a small pond where there's a boat launch.
4:58
Speaker 1: A couple picnic tables are on the grass. A man
5:00
Speaker 1: is out in the water kayaking.
5:01
Speaker 3: I bring my daughter out here. She loves fishing. She's
5:05
Speaker 3: a huge fan.
5:06
Speaker 1: His daughter's nine. He also has a 13-year-old son. Dustin
5:10
Speaker 1: didn't grow up here. He moved to Boston for college
5:12
Speaker 1: about 20 years ago and has lived in Tewksbury for
5:14
Speaker 1: about 10 years, which makes him something of an outsider.
5:18
Speaker 1: Lots of people here are born and raised, he says.
5:21
Speaker 1: Dustin has a mechanical engineering degree and a master's in plastics.
5:25
Speaker 1: For any of you fans of the movie The Graduate
5:26
Speaker 1: with Dustin Hoffman, this Dustin really does work in plastics. Anyway,
5:31
Speaker 1: he's a pretty observant guy.
5:33
Speaker 3: Actually, this is where I was driving by when I
5:36
Speaker 3: first noticed them.
5:38
Speaker 1: Where he first noticed the flock cameras, at this fishing hole.
5:41
Speaker 1: He was in the car with his kids about a
5:42
Speaker 1: year ago.
5:43
Speaker 4: And, um.
5:44
Speaker 3: You know, I looked up and saw this black pole
5:46
Speaker 3: with the camera and a solar panel. There go the geese.
5:53
Speaker 1: The flock camera is right on the corner of the
5:54
Speaker 1: dirt lot, pointed at the road you take to get in.
5:58
Speaker 1: Dustin remembers being like, is that a surveillance camera?
6:01
Speaker 5: You know, it.
6:02
Speaker 3: Stands out to me as being a piece of surveillance
6:06
Speaker 3: near a public place that I like to go and enjoy. So,
6:09
Speaker 3: you know, the question is, That kind of popped into
6:13
Speaker 3: my head that got it all rolling. It's like, why
6:16
Speaker 3: does the Sixbury Police Department need to know when I'm
6:18
Speaker 3: going fishing?
6:20
Speaker 1: Dustin didn't like the idea that these cameras could be
6:23
Speaker 1: watching his every move around town. So he started doing
6:26
Speaker 1: some research.
6:27
Speaker 3: Learning more about them, learning about the concern that a
6:30
Speaker 3: lot of people have over them.
6:33
Speaker 1: He wanted to know exactly what kind of information these
6:36
Speaker 1: cameras were capturing. So one day, after dropping his kids
6:39
Speaker 1: at school, He drove by the camera here at the
6:41
Speaker 1: pond and noted the time between 735 and 745 in
6:45
Speaker 1: the morning. Then he sent the police department a public
6:48
Speaker 1: records request asking for the image the camera captured at
6:51
Speaker 1: that time. Do you have that email?
6:54
Speaker 3: Basically, they sent me a picture from the flock camera.
7:00
Speaker 3: It's got the address. It's got the time stamp. It's
7:04
Speaker 3: got my plate and it's got a picture of the
7:05
Speaker 3: back of my car.
7:06
Speaker 1: So that was his first question answered in about a day.
7:09
Speaker 1: What are these cameras collecting about him? He also found
7:11
Speaker 1: out from town records that Flock had 20 cameras in town,
7:14
Speaker 1: but didn't know where they were.
7:16
Speaker 3: I took a weekend to drive around, and I'm sure
7:20
Speaker 3: it's no secret, I'm sure I'm on camera doing it,
7:22
Speaker 3: to the places where I thought they would be. And
7:24
Speaker 3: in most cases, it was confirmed correct, because I sort
7:28
Speaker 3: of saw their pattern, right? They ring the town, there
7:30
Speaker 3: was pretty much one relatively close to every single border area.
7:33
Speaker 1: Dustin figures over the past two years, driving his kids
7:36
Speaker 1: to school, hockey practice, commuting for work, Tewksbury has taken
7:40
Speaker 1: probably 4,000 photos of his two cars. Dustin did some
7:45
Speaker 1: online sleuthing to figure out how the cameras work and
7:48
Speaker 1: what happens to the photos they take.
7:50
Speaker 3: I believe they're motion activated. There's an infrared ring on
7:53
Speaker 3: them so they, at night, they'll shine infrared light that
7:57
Speaker 3: you can't see with your naked eye, but it illuminates
8:00
Speaker 3: your plate so they can take a good picture of
8:03
Speaker 3: at night, but there's no flash or anything like that,
8:07
Speaker 3: it sends that image back to flock headquarters. Then it
8:11
Speaker 3: does optical character recognition to identify your plate. And then
8:16
Speaker 3: it runs that plate number against their hot list.
8:20
Speaker 1: A hot list is a list of plates the police
8:22
Speaker 1: are looking for. Stolen cars, amber alerts, people with warrants.
8:26
Speaker 1: Police can look for any plates they need to find.
8:29
Speaker 1: If your plate matches one, officers get an alert in seconds.
8:32
Speaker 1: If it doesn't, nothing happens. But the picture doesn't stay
8:35
Speaker 1: in Tewksbury. It goes to Flock. And that's the thing
8:39
Speaker 1: that really bothered Dustin. The fact that Flock cameras are networked.
8:43
Speaker 1: If your town turns on their sharing feature, police departments
8:46
Speaker 1: in other towns, in other states, can search the images
8:50
Speaker 1: your town's cameras collect. And the cops can do all
8:54
Speaker 1: of this without a warrant. There's this open source website
9:00
Speaker 1: that tries to track which cities have cameras like this
9:03
Speaker 1: and which other cities and towns have access to the
9:05
Speaker 1: data on them. It's called DFLOC. And if you go
9:09
Speaker 1: on there and look at certain towns, it's scary to
9:12
Speaker 1: see the massive web of connections across the U.S.
9:15
Speaker 5: Map.
9:16
Speaker 1: To look at some random mid-sized city in Iowa and
9:18
Speaker 1: see how many thousands of other police departments can access
9:22
Speaker 1: their residents' data. Dustin did not like it.
9:26
Speaker 3: If the Tewksbury PD has speed cameras... I have a
9:30
Speaker 3: direct influence on who the Tewksbury PD is, right? So
9:33
Speaker 3: I vote for the councils and then take it up
9:36
Speaker 3: a step further. Maybe it's a state camera on a
9:38
Speaker 3: highly or something like that. Well, I still have sort
9:41
Speaker 3: of democratic agency there where I can raise my voice
9:45
Speaker 3: to the elected officials. I have a vote. Same thing
9:47
Speaker 3: applies at the federal level. But what I don't have
9:51
Speaker 3: is input into local municipalities that have nothing to do
9:54
Speaker 3: with Tewksbury. pick any town, a random town. Like if
9:58
Speaker 3: they have a flock camera camera, contract, that local PD,
10:02
Speaker 3: they have access to all of our data. But I
10:05
Speaker 3: have no democratic agency in that organization. So I can't–
10:10
Speaker 3: like if people start to abuse it elsewhere, I can't
10:14
Speaker 3: vote them out. I can't raise my voice. Massachusetts abortion
10:21
Speaker 3: is legal, right? And abortion is legal in part because
10:26
Speaker 3: I have a democratic voice and I support a woman's
10:31
Speaker 3: right to choose. So at one point, is my daughter
10:35
Speaker 3: going to be passing through the panhandle to Texas to
10:40
Speaker 3: go to school? And if she does, are they going
10:44
Speaker 3: to find out she happened to be pregnant at that point?
10:49
Speaker 1: In this theoretical, if police in Texas get a report
10:52
Speaker 1: that she got an abortion, could they use flock to
10:55
Speaker 1: track her, even out of state?
10:57
Speaker 3: Are they going to try and enforce those laws outside
11:01
Speaker 3: of their jurisdiction? And I didn't want to turn this
11:04
Speaker 3: into a whole abortion debate.
11:06
Speaker 1: But yeah, but there's at least an instance that's documented
11:09
Speaker 1: where police in Texas used flock cameras to track down
11:11
Speaker 1: a woman they suspected of having an abortion, right?
11:15
Speaker 3: Exactly.
11:16
Speaker 1: And they called it a missing person case. So the
11:24
Speaker 1: next thing Dustin wanted to know is, where does the
11:26
Speaker 1: data collected by Flock cameras in Tewksbury go? Who has
11:30
Speaker 1: access to it besides the Tewksbury PD? And who gets
11:34
Speaker 1: to decide that? And he figured there was an obvious
11:37
Speaker 1: place to look that up. The contract. The signed agreement
11:41
Speaker 1: between Flock and his town. Dustin asked the town manager
11:45
Speaker 1: for it, and he gave it right over.
11:47
Speaker 3: That told me absolutely nothing. What do you mean? It's
11:50
Speaker 3: the contract.
11:51
Speaker 1: Between the town and Flock.
11:54
Speaker 3: It has a signature on it. It has a cover page.
11:58
Speaker 3: It has a listing of the prices of the different
12:01
Speaker 3: levels of service and different options. And it has a
12:06
Speaker 3: link to Flock's website.
12:09
Speaker 1: You know how most contracts have, like, you know, terms,
12:12
Speaker 1: lots of clauses with legal language? This document was not
12:16
Speaker 1: like that. It was closer to an invoice. It shows
12:19
Speaker 1: the town agreed to pay Flock just over $ 250, 000 for
12:22
Speaker 1: five years for using its cameras. And then where the
12:25
Speaker 1: term should be, just a single hyperlink that directs you
12:28
Speaker 1: to Flock's terms of service. Wait a minute.
12:31
Speaker 5: Yep.
12:32
Speaker 1: So it's not like a custom contract or even really
12:35
Speaker 1: like a full normal contract between the town of Tewksbury
12:39
Speaker 1: and Flock.
12:40
Speaker 5: Correct.
12:40
Speaker 1: It's like a terms of service the way I agree
12:42
Speaker 1: to a terms of service when I sign up for
12:44
Speaker 1: a Facebook account?
12:45
Speaker 5: Yes.
12:46
Speaker 3: That's basically what we did. We just said, yep, whatever
12:49
Speaker 3: you want. Whatever you want to post to your website
12:51
Speaker 3: is fine with us. And we signed the contract.
12:55
Speaker 1: Wait, extrapolate that out. That means?
12:57
Speaker 3: Basically what it means is that we are locked into
13:00
Speaker 3: a contract with flock safety that has a specified term
13:06
Speaker 3: and a specified amount. And the details of those terms
13:11
Speaker 3: can be changed by flock safety at any point. for
13:16
Speaker 3: basically any reason by just updating their website.
13:20
Speaker 1: Dustin couldn't believe it. He clicked on the link for
13:23
Speaker 1: the terms of service.
13:24
Speaker 3: I don't even think that original URL is correct. I
13:26
Speaker 3: think you have to put in another backslash or something.
13:30
Speaker 1: He read the terms of service, but he realized the
13:32
Speaker 1: current website might not have any relation to the terms
13:36
Speaker 1: the town originally agreed to. It had been years since
13:39
Speaker 1: Tewksbury had hired Flock. Who knows how often the website
13:42
Speaker 1: had changed. So Dustin asked the company... for the terms
13:45
Speaker 1: that were in effect the day Tewksbury signed the contract.
13:48
Speaker 1: That was December 22, 2023. Flock wrote back, the terms
13:53
Speaker 1: that govern the Tewksbury contract are the most recent terms
13:56
Speaker 1: of service, and pointed to the same link. So Dustin thought, fine,
14:00
Speaker 1: I'll look up the old version myself. He figured the
14:03
Speaker 1: internet archive, the Wayback Machine, should have it. That site
14:06
Speaker 1: takes snapshots of webpages to create a historical record across
14:09
Speaker 1: the internet. There was just one problem.
14:13
Speaker 3: They blocked the Wayback Machine from capturing their website.
14:19
Speaker 1: The message read, sorry, this URL has been excluded from
14:22
Speaker 1: the Wayback Machine, which left Dustin with his very basic
14:26
Speaker 1: question still unanswered.
14:29
Speaker 3: What does our contract say? What did our contract say,
14:32
Speaker 3: you know, every day between when we signed it and today? Like,
14:37
Speaker 3: if I want to go back and sue the town
14:39
Speaker 3: in February 14th of 2025... What were the terms? What
14:44
Speaker 3: were the obligations of the two parties at that point
14:46
Speaker 3: in time between each other? I have no clue. And
14:52
Speaker 3: there's no way to figure that out as soon as
14:53
Speaker 3: I can tell because Flock has not produced the contract.
14:58
Speaker 1: So your town's lawyers let this happen?
15:03
Speaker 3: I don't think my town's lawyers thought that hard about it.
15:07
Speaker 1: Which is another way of saying they let it happen, right?
15:10
Speaker 3: It's another way of saying they let it happen.
15:12
Speaker 1: That's a yes to my question. Dustin's very deferential to
15:16
Speaker 1: his town officials. He doesn't blame them or the police
15:19
Speaker 1: for the situation with Flock. The town attorney didn't respond
15:22
Speaker 1: to us, by the way. But since he wasn't getting
15:24
Speaker 1: answers from the company, Dustin did start asking questions of
15:27
Speaker 1: the Tewksbury Select Board at their meetings, raising these issues
15:31
Speaker 1: in public. After doing that at one meeting in April,
15:34
Speaker 1: Dustin says one of the five board members came up
15:36
Speaker 1: to him.
15:37
Speaker 3: James Mackey came up and said, hey, I'm working on this.
15:40
Speaker 3: Maybe I could tell you what I've got going on,
15:42
Speaker 3: or maybe I'd be able to answer some of your questions.
15:45
Speaker 3: And that's how we kind of got started communicating.
15:48
Speaker 1: James Mackey had been looking into the cameras, too. He's
15:51
Speaker 1: a fourth-generation Tewksburyan who ran for the select board in
15:55
Speaker 1: 2021 because, as a retired Army guy, he wanted to
15:57
Speaker 1: keep doing public service. James says he initially got curious
16:01
Speaker 1: about Flock because he was hearing so much about the
16:04
Speaker 1: controversies they were causing in other towns in the news.
16:08
Speaker 4: I didn't know if we had Flock. So started asking
16:11
Speaker 4: some questions, found out we did have Flock.
16:14
Speaker 1: James's day job is running a cybersecurity company. He worked
16:18
Speaker 1: in cyber operations in the Army. So he's uniquely qualified
16:22
Speaker 1: to read through the contract for a surveillance camera company
16:25
Speaker 1: and figure out what they're doing with the data. The
16:28
Speaker 1: main thing that worried him about Flock had to do
16:30
Speaker 1: with something called open source intelligence. Flock's software can take
16:34
Speaker 1: the data it captures from your license plate and combine
16:37
Speaker 1: it with other information about you, Info from internal police records,
16:41
Speaker 1: from court records, but also just other stuff it finds
16:44
Speaker 1: online about you.
16:45
Speaker 4: So your Yelp reviews, what you're posting on Reddit, what
16:50
Speaker 4: you're doing on social media, things like that. With the
16:53
Speaker 4: advent of AI, it's terrifyingly easy to comb through data
16:58
Speaker 4: that previously wasn't of value, right? Nobody's going to look
17:02
Speaker 4: through a million still photographs that are taken until you
17:07
Speaker 4: introduce AI. Now with AI being able to look through
17:11
Speaker 4: those photographs almost instantaneously and find what you're looking for
17:15
Speaker 4: and identify patterns of people, identify patterns of travel, identify
17:18
Speaker 4: who's in vehicles, identify bumper stickers that may be political
17:23
Speaker 4: or religious.
17:24
Speaker 1: In a way, like the volume of data collection previously
17:27
Speaker 1: up to this point almost was a protection against it
17:30
Speaker 1: being misused because it was so voluminous. And now that's
17:34
Speaker 1: no longer the case. In fact, it's like suddenly more
17:36
Speaker 1: dangerous because of AI. 100%. This is a category of
17:40
Speaker 1: information that's so new, the learnings of AI models. James
17:44
Speaker 1: says there isn't a name for it.
17:45
Speaker 4: There's not really an industry term yet. Like we have
17:48
Speaker 4: HIPAA data for health, medical records, etc. But there is
17:52
Speaker 4: nothing for this new class of data that's been emerging recently.
17:57
Speaker 1: So James, as a cybersecurity professional who works with this
18:00
Speaker 1: type of data, recently made up a term for it.
18:03
Speaker 4: Aggregate surveillance information, which is... That data being combined from
18:08
Speaker 4: disparate sources to be able to identify people's behaviors, patterns, etc.
18:14
Speaker 1: He didn't expect his new term to be in Tewksbury's
18:16
Speaker 1: contract with Flock, but he wanted to see what the
18:19
Speaker 1: contract did say about what Flock was allowed to do
18:22
Speaker 1: with Tewksbury residents' data, his constituents.
18:25
Speaker 4: What data privacy protections do we have in place? How
18:28
Speaker 4: is this contract being managed? What is the contract? And
18:32
Speaker 4: I was expecting to receive answers to those questions.
18:35
Speaker 1: So just like Dustin, James had also independently asked the
18:39
Speaker 1: town for the contract, something he, a tech wizard, refers
18:42
Speaker 1: to as the master services agreement. His request went to
18:45
Speaker 1: the town manager, who went to Flock, and what came
18:48
Speaker 1: back was.
18:49
Speaker 4: The first response I got to questions was an order
18:55
Speaker 4: form and some blog posts. And I was like, okay, well,
18:59
Speaker 4: this isn't what I was looking for. Like, where is
19:01
Speaker 4: the master service agreement? Like, where is the legal contractual
19:04
Speaker 4: language that protects our residents, protects our data, defines how
19:08
Speaker 4: things are handled, et cetera.
19:10
Speaker 1: This is the same document Dustin had seen, and it
19:12
Speaker 1: had the same link pointing to the same current terms
19:16
Speaker 1: of service. What did you think when you saw, like,
19:18
Speaker 1: this is our agreement? It's like just this kind of
19:21
Speaker 1: terms of service thing. There's no actual contract, you know,
19:23
Speaker 1: written specifically for our town or that we negotiated and
19:26
Speaker 1: agreed to that we can refer to. And not only that,
19:29
Speaker 1: but like, the company can just change these terms of
19:32
Speaker 1: service at any point.
19:34
Speaker 4: I was very concerned. Like, wait a minute, what are
19:37
Speaker 4: the terms that were in force when we signed?
19:41
Speaker 1: James asked to see the terms of service from the
19:43
Speaker 1: date his town had signed the order form. And also
19:46
Speaker 1: like with Dustin, Flock wouldn't provide them. Just a link
19:49
Speaker 1: to the current terms of service. And reading through what
19:52
Speaker 1: he found at that link raised some worries.
19:55
Speaker 4: Well, Flock is publicly saying in the marketing material was
19:57
Speaker 4: repeating that you own your data. Well, a master service
20:02
Speaker 4: agreement would define what data, what specific data do we own?
20:06
Speaker 4: What does Flock own? That was missing completely. It did
20:10
Speaker 4: not leave me with a warm, fuzzy feeling. It did
20:12
Speaker 4: not inspire confidence in the organization. It did not inspire
20:18
Speaker 4: faith that what statements they were making, such as you
20:21
Speaker 4: own your data, were factual or could be trusted. A
20:25
Speaker 4: picture of my license plate, a single point in time picture,
20:28
Speaker 4: is not a concern. And I don't like it. Nobody
20:32
Speaker 4: likes to be photographed. They want to be privacy when
20:33
Speaker 4: they're going about their business. But if you then have
20:37
Speaker 4: photographs everywhere across the country where I pass a flock camera,
20:43
Speaker 4: at that point it's very easy to ask for pattern recognition. So, hey,
20:48
Speaker 4: what grocery store, what doctor's office, what church does James
20:52
Speaker 4: Mackey go to? How often does James Mackey go into
20:56
Speaker 4: the city of Boston? Who does he frequently travel with?
20:59
Speaker 4: Who's in his car? And once that data is collected,
21:03
Speaker 4: it's very difficult to control who accesses it, what they
21:08
Speaker 4: do with it, etc.
21:12
Speaker 1: James desperately wanted to ask Flock questions about this. Who's
21:16
Speaker 1: accessing our data? What are you doing with it? And finally,
21:20
Speaker 1: he was able to get the company on the phone.
21:23
Speaker 1: It didn't go great. That's after a quick break. In March,
21:32
Speaker 1: after urging from James Mackey, the select board member, Flock
21:36
Speaker 1: agreed to have a phone call with representatives from Tewksbury.
21:39
Speaker 1: The town scheduled a video call with the police chief,
21:41
Speaker 1: the town manager, James, and two people from Flock. James
21:45
Speaker 1: was expecting to ask technical questions about the types of
21:48
Speaker 1: data the cameras collect, how it's stored and managed, and
21:52
Speaker 1: what legal terms govern it. The cameras are sold as
21:54
Speaker 1: license plate readers only, but do they ever capture other things? Drivers' faces?
22:00
Speaker 1: Is the data stored on the cameras, on the cloud?
22:03
Speaker 1: Is it encrypted? Is some of it encrypted? How long
22:06
Speaker 1: is it stored before being deleted? All that stuff should
22:10
Speaker 1: be clear, in James' experience, in any agreement between a
22:14
Speaker 1: town and a tech company. But it wasn't, given the weird,
22:18
Speaker 1: shifting terms of service situation between Tewksbury and Flock. But
22:23
Speaker 1: when he got on this video call, James says they
22:25
Speaker 1: sent people who weren't equipped to answer his questions. A
22:28
Speaker 1: sales rep and a PR person. Do you think Flock
22:31
Speaker 1: didn't expect to kind of encounter someone like you in
22:35
Speaker 1: their dealings with local municipal governments? Like, this is your profession.
22:39
Speaker 1: You're a data expert. This is your business. Like, they
22:42
Speaker 1: kind of met their match.
22:44
Speaker 4: I did repeatedly ask for a technical person who would
22:48
Speaker 4: be able to engage at the level I was looking for.
22:51
Speaker 4: Explicitly asked that someone from legal who can give binding
22:54
Speaker 4: answers provide the responses so that we were getting binding
22:58
Speaker 4: answers and not links to blog posts and marketing material.
23:02
Speaker 4: I just don't think that was taken seriously.
23:04
Speaker 1: On the call, James asked, do the Flock cameras ever
23:07
Speaker 1: photograph drivers' faces? How about a pedestrian on a nearby sidewalk?
23:12
Speaker 1: How about motorcycle drivers? Do you get their faces?
23:15
Speaker 4: I explicitly asked the question, if people are captured, Flock
23:18
Speaker 4: essentially said no. And Chief Columbus, our police chief, had
23:22
Speaker 4: to jump in and say, well, People can be captured.
23:25
Speaker 4: It's not the intent, but you might have two cars
23:28
Speaker 4: go in the opposite direction. You may have somebody in
23:31
Speaker 4: the background who is captured. So people are being captured.
23:34
Speaker 1: So your police chief who uses the photos that are
23:37
Speaker 1: gotten on these cameras basically caught the flock representative in
23:41
Speaker 1: a lie?
23:42
Speaker 4: I think he rightfully framed it as a correction. He goes,
23:44
Speaker 4: in the interest of making sure that we're disclosing everything
23:47
Speaker 4: here and being honest, people are captured and can be
23:50
Speaker 4: captured in these photographs.
23:53
Speaker 1: Right now, Flock's website says its cameras capture, quote, vehicles,
23:57
Speaker 1: not people. Recently, a group of hackers broke into a
24:00
Speaker 1: Flock camera to see what data was on there and
24:03
Speaker 1: then gave what they found to the tech outlets 404
24:05
Speaker 1: Media and Wired to independently analyze. Much of the data
24:09
Speaker 1: was encrypted, but some of it wasn't, and 404 and
24:12
Speaker 1: Wired's analysis showed, quote, software running on the device explicitly
24:17
Speaker 1: detects people as well as vehicles, license plates, and bicycles.
24:21
Speaker 1: The news outlets didn't see any evidence of facial recognition
24:24
Speaker 1: technology being used on the camera. After their call with Flock,
24:30
Speaker 1: the town of Tewksbury sent the company a list of
24:32
Speaker 1: written questions. One of them asked Flock to identify every
24:36
Speaker 1: material change made to the terms of service since 2021.
24:40
Speaker 1: Because Flock kept changing them and updating them on their website,
24:44
Speaker 1: Tewksbury wanted to know what those changes were. Flock responded,
24:48
Speaker 1: I asked James to read their answer to me. And
24:50
Speaker 1: he said he wanted to pull it up on his
24:52
Speaker 1: computer so he could quote it accurately.
24:54
Speaker 2: All right.
24:55
Speaker 4: They wrote N-A.
24:57
Speaker 1: I just find this very funny that you had to
24:59
Speaker 1: pull up the exact quote of their response and it
25:02
Speaker 1: was N slash A.
25:04
Speaker 4: To be clear, they didn't even take the time to
25:06
Speaker 4: spell out not applicable. It was N slash A.
25:09
Speaker 1: Okay. I mean, that, I don't know, part of my language,
25:13
Speaker 1: but that's kind of a fuck you to your question.
25:16
Speaker 4: Honestly, that's how the entire process felt. A number of
25:20
Speaker 4: the questions were responded with links, not even an answer.
25:24
Speaker 4: So there's a multi-part question that gets a link. There's
25:28
Speaker 4: questions where we asked about the Flock platform access controls
25:32
Speaker 4: and how something works. We were getting things like, see
25:36
Speaker 4: this page on our website. You can go find the
25:39
Speaker 4: answer yourself.
25:40
Speaker 1: This is a company the town is paying $ 250, 000 to.
25:42
Speaker 1: They're customers. James had had enough.
25:47
Speaker 4: After that call, Multiple emails, the two formal written requests
25:52
Speaker 4: for information that were sent of not getting anywhere over,
25:55
Speaker 4: I think it was four months, five months at that point.
25:58
Speaker 4: I told town manager, like, I'm done engaging with Flock.
26:03
Speaker 1: Instead, he decided to document everything in one massive report
26:07
Speaker 1: for the town's select board. 109 pages altogether. And then
26:11
Speaker 1: he pushed for a formal board meeting about Flock. Dustin,
26:15
Speaker 1: who'd also been trying to get answers from Flock and
26:17
Speaker 1: was also speaking at the board meetings... was pushing for
26:19
Speaker 1: the same.
26:20
Speaker 2: One thing I want to leave on before we get
26:23
Speaker 2: to the question specifically.
26:24
Speaker 1: And that's how two Flock representatives, once again a sales
26:27
Speaker 1: rep and a PR person, ended up coming to the
26:29
Speaker 1: Tewksbury Select Board that Tuesday night in June.
26:32
Speaker 2: This tool, the Flock LPR tool that this town uses,
26:38
Speaker 2: it is the most transparent law enforcement tool in the country.
26:41
Speaker 1: It wasn't exactly what James and Dustin had been wanting.
26:46
Speaker 1: They'd asked for a more formal board discussion about Flock
26:48
Speaker 1: rather than a PR person trying to spin the company
26:51
Speaker 1: to resonance. But they took what they could get. The
26:54
Speaker 1: Flock guy who did a lot of the talking from
26:55
Speaker 1: public affairs was named Trevor Chandler. Dustin says he was
26:59
Speaker 1: a pro.
27:00
Speaker 3: Very well spoken, well put together. If I needed to
27:03
Speaker 3: hire somebody to do his job, I'd be at the
27:05
Speaker 3: top of the list.
27:06
Speaker 1: After that early outburst where somebody in the audience calls
27:09
Speaker 1: him a liar... Chandler brushes it off and then on
27:12
Speaker 1: his own goes right to the issue Dustin and James
27:15
Speaker 1: have been pestering Flock about for months.
27:17
Speaker 2: I know there have been questions about Flock's terms of
27:20
Speaker 2: service and conditions. It's very important to note that the
27:25
Speaker 2: changes and updates to that have been about streamlining the language.
27:29
Speaker 2: As you'll probably notice when you click accept on your
27:33
Speaker 2: iPhone terms and conditions, those seem to get longer and
27:35
Speaker 2: longer and longer. We actually shortened ours. We made it
27:38
Speaker 2: simpler and so that our customers could have a clarity.
27:41
Speaker 2: Nothing has changed in ownership of the data.
27:44
Speaker 1: So according to Flock, the company changed the terms to
27:47
Speaker 1: make it easier for their clients to understand them, and
27:50
Speaker 1: nothing that matters is different. A hard explanation for James
27:54
Speaker 1: and Dustin to swallow. When it's the board's turn to speak,
27:58
Speaker 1: James starts off pretty heated.
28:00
Speaker 4: We actually requested in our last request for information that
28:04
Speaker 4: somebody who could give binding answers on behalf of Flock
28:07
Speaker 4: respond to those questions.
28:09
Speaker 2: That didn't happen.
28:10
Speaker 4: So I will ask tonight, are you gentlemen able to
28:12
Speaker 4: give binding answers on behalf of Flock?
28:16
Speaker 2: I'm not our legal counsel. Our legal counsel gives binding answers.
28:20
Speaker 4: Masterfully done.
28:21
Speaker 1: And then back through the looking glass.
28:24
Speaker 4: So we've asked repeatedly for the terms and conditions that
28:28
Speaker 4: we signed on December 22nd, 2023. Do we have the
28:33
Speaker 4: ability to get the history of the changes that have
28:36
Speaker 4: been made?
28:39
Speaker 2: The terms and conditions that are applicable to the contract
28:42
Speaker 2: are those that are currently published on the website. There
28:46
Speaker 2: may be an archived version of the website that it
28:49
Speaker 2: would be accessible on, but we traditionally don't publicly make
28:53
Speaker 2: available every single version of our terms and conditions.
28:56
Speaker 4: So there's actually not an archived version, at least publicly,
28:59
Speaker 4: because Flock as a corporation went through the process to
29:03
Speaker 4: have themselves removed from Internet archiving. So those prior terms
29:07
Speaker 4: cannot be looked up because that was the first thing
29:09
Speaker 4: I tried to do when I went to look for them. Again,
29:11
Speaker 4: I would love to be able to take your word
29:13
Speaker 4: for it, but I'm big on show me the proof.
29:18
Speaker 1: And then it was time for Dustin to come to
29:20
Speaker 1: the mic.
29:21
Speaker 3: This isn't quite as high as it is at town meeting.
29:26
Speaker 1: By now, I imagine you can guess what Dustin's simple
29:29
Speaker 1: question was to the flock rep. Same as James's question.
29:33
Speaker 1: Same as the town's question. Same as the question Dustin
29:36
Speaker 1: had been asking Flock again and again for months. Except now,
29:39
Speaker 1: Dustin got to do it while looking a flock flack
29:42
Speaker 1: straight in the eye.
29:42
Speaker 3: I have one direct question for flock representative tonight. Will
29:47
Speaker 3: you commit right now in front of the board to
29:50
Speaker 3: producing the complete terms and conditions as they existed on
29:54
Speaker 3: December 22nd, 2023 when we signed our contract and all
29:58
Speaker 3: subsequent revisions of within seven days to this board.
30:03
Speaker 2: I can check with our legal team on that.
30:07
Speaker 1: You can hear the audience laughing at the flock rep's response.
30:11
Speaker 1: Maybe he checked with the legal team. Maybe he didn't.
30:14
Speaker 1: No one knows. Because two weeks later, Dustin emailed Trevor Chandler,
30:18
Speaker 1: copying the town manager and the police chief, saying.
30:21
Speaker 3: Hey, you've had a week or two to work on this.
30:23
Speaker 3: You said you were going to go ask your lawyers
30:25
Speaker 3: for an answer to my question, and I got no response.
30:29
Speaker 1: He never got back to you?
30:31
Speaker 4: Nope.
30:32
Speaker 1: So you guys have still not been given the contract
30:35
Speaker 1: that the town signed?
30:37
Speaker 3: To my understanding, we have not.
30:40
Speaker 1: My team and I repeatedly asked Flock to talk to
30:42
Speaker 1: us to answer our questions. We also asked the guy
30:45
Speaker 1: who went to Tewksbury, Trevor Chandler, to talk to us.
30:48
Speaker 1: Nobody ever responded. I asked James, why do you think
30:54
Speaker 1: Flock wouldn't give you the original terms of service the
30:57
Speaker 1: town agreed to? I don't understand. Like, why not just
31:00
Speaker 1: give that to you?
31:02
Speaker 4: It's a great question. My only assumption, and to be clear,
31:05
Speaker 4: this is an assumption, is that they changed materially from
31:10
Speaker 4: what we signed to what is there now. Because otherwise,
31:12
Speaker 4: if there was no changes, why would you not provide it?
31:15
Speaker 1: Back at the select board meeting, after more than two
31:17
Speaker 1: hours of discussion, James made a motion.
31:21
Speaker 4: We don't know how many times agencies pulled data. We
31:24
Speaker 4: don't know the controls on those data once it is pulled.
31:26
Speaker 4: There is entirely too many open questions to allow this
31:29
Speaker 4: sort of passive surveillance to continue. So I personally am
31:36
Speaker 4: in favor of the third-party assessment, and I would actually recommend,
31:41
Speaker 4: and I'm going to apologize to the chief and the PD,
31:43
Speaker 4: that we cease use of this platform until that assessment
31:48
Speaker 4: is done. I will make that in the form of motion.
31:50
Speaker 1: Okay. We have a motion on the floor to cease use.
31:54
Speaker 3: Do we have a second? OK, seeing none.
32:01
Speaker 4: I didn't expect that to pass.
32:03
Speaker 1: Nobody seconded it. It never even got to a vote,
32:06
Speaker 1: which I found surprising. James told me he hasn't run
32:09
Speaker 1: into anyone in town who seems opposed to him trying
32:12
Speaker 1: to take Flock to task. And towns all over the country, conservative, liberal,
32:16
Speaker 1: in between, have been canceling their contracts with Flock. Lots
32:20
Speaker 1: in Massachusetts, too. So why not Tewksbury, where Flock has
32:24
Speaker 1: given them such a runaround? James says he doesn't really
32:27
Speaker 1: know why his fellow select board members aren't receptive to
32:30
Speaker 1: him pushing on Flock. We reached out to a couple
32:32
Speaker 1: of them, but they didn't respond to us. Of course,
32:34
Speaker 1: the police chief says the cameras are the best crime-stopping
32:37
Speaker 1: tool he's used in his whole career, so that might
32:40
Speaker 1: be affecting their thinking. It might also be that James,
32:44
Speaker 1: the one who's raising these questions about Flock, has clearly
32:48
Speaker 1: pissed off his fellow select board members. Earlier this year,
32:52
Speaker 1: he accused three of them of violating open meeting laws.
32:55
Speaker 1: They denied the allegations. And in a recent meeting just
32:58
Speaker 1: the other week, you could get a flavor of the
33:00
Speaker 1: dynamic between the board members when James brought up Flock.
33:03
Speaker 4: If you go back and read the transcripts of the
33:06
Speaker 4: last three meetings where Flock was discussed, I'm going to
33:09
Speaker 4: reuse the word knife fight on what I've had to
33:12
Speaker 4: do to get any sort of traction across this entire topic.
33:16
Speaker 1: And another member said, James, I.
33:20
Speaker 3: Please don't, I hope you don't take this the wrong way.
33:21
Speaker 4: I know you feel like you're on an island, but
33:24
Speaker 4: to be quite frank, you continuously put yourself on that
33:26
Speaker 4: island with some of the things.
33:28
Speaker 1: That you do in these meetings at times.
33:35
Speaker 3: Not for nothing, but those are your choices. And again,
33:38
Speaker 3: you're an adult. You're responsible for yourself. You make those choices.
33:41
Speaker 4: It's my choice to be told no when I ask
33:44
Speaker 4: for something to be put on an agenda. It's my
33:45
Speaker 4: choice to be told no when I request a meeting.
33:47
Speaker 4: I'm trying to work together. Like, what do we need
33:50
Speaker 4: to do?
33:50
Speaker 3: What do we want to see?
33:52
Speaker 1: The resistance to James's effort to get rid of Flock
33:55
Speaker 1: might have less to do with Flock and more to
33:57
Speaker 1: do with how other select board members feel about James.
34:02
Speaker 5: Anyway.
34:03
Speaker 1: James' next move was to go around the select board.
34:08
Speaker 1: In Massachusetts, towns like Tewksbury have something called Open Town Meeting,
34:12
Speaker 1: where any registered voter can show up and vote directly
34:15
Speaker 1: on local laws. So James decided to take the surveillance
34:19
Speaker 1: camera issue to the people. He drafted up two proposals
34:22
Speaker 1: about the technology. They're known as warrant articles. One of
34:26
Speaker 1: them would require public approval before any quote-unquote surveillance technology
34:31
Speaker 1: is bought by the town of Tewksbury. There'd be no
34:34
Speaker 1: more agreeing to terms a company can rewrite whenever it wants,
34:37
Speaker 1: and the town would own all the data and prevent
34:39
Speaker 1: it from being used to train AI models. The other article,
34:44
Speaker 1: if approved, would cover the cameras the town already has.
34:47
Speaker 1: It would allow them to essentially do one thing. Check
34:50
Speaker 1: a plate against a list of specific vehicles police are
34:53
Speaker 1: looking for. No hit, and the picture has to be
34:56
Speaker 1: destroyed within three minutes. Neither of James' articles mentioned flock
35:01
Speaker 1: by name. they'd apply to any vendor supplying this type
35:04
Speaker 1: of technology to Tewksbury. If there were to pass, James says.
35:08
Speaker 4: Flock would need to comply with the requirements or we
35:12
Speaker 4: would need to end the contract.
35:14
Speaker 1: James needed 100 signatures to get each of these on
35:17
Speaker 1: the agenda for the town meeting.
35:18
Speaker 4: We got that in a single outing. We went to
35:21
Speaker 4: the town farmer's market and got our signatures in a
35:25
Speaker 4: few hours.
35:27
Speaker 1: They were scheduled for a vote next week on October 6th.
35:31
Speaker 1: And then, On Friday night, just a few days ago,
35:34
Speaker 1: Dustin got a text from a reporter in Boston.
35:36
Speaker 5: It was a summary of a statement that Chief Columbus
35:39
Speaker 5: had made that said that they were going to cancel
35:41
Speaker 5: the Flock contract.
35:43
Speaker 1: The Tewksbury police posted on their Facebook account that they
35:46
Speaker 1: were ending their relationship with Flock. Signed by the chief,
35:49
Speaker 1: the statement said that after several months of conversations with residents, quote,
35:53
Speaker 1: it has become clear that this technology does not have
35:56
Speaker 1: the community support needed to continue its use. Although it
35:59
Speaker 1: has tremendous value in helping us investigate serious crimes, we
36:03
Speaker 1: believe stopping its use is the right decision until the
36:06
Speaker 1: Massachusetts legislature or the courts establish clearer guardrails.
36:10
Speaker 3: That's good. It's good progress.
36:13
Speaker 5: I've got to think he's going to be looking for something,
36:15
Speaker 5: you know, an effective tool. And I'm sure next time around,
36:19
Speaker 5: he's going to be really paying closer attention to Not
36:22
Speaker 5: just a sales pitch, but the privacy implications for the innocent.
36:26
Speaker 3: People in town.
36:27
Speaker 5: It's a good win. Thinking about the democratic angle of
36:31
Speaker 5: this is a really good feeling. I feel like there's
36:35
Speaker 5: a big success for people's ability to control how they're ruled. And,
36:40
Speaker 5: you know, now I'm getting a little sappy, but it's
36:44
Speaker 5: good stuff.
36:45
Speaker 1: It's good stuff. But if you think Dustin's response is
36:48
Speaker 1: a little muted after the months of fighting... It's because
36:51
Speaker 1: he's already thinking about what's next. James Mackey's two proposals
36:55
Speaker 1: are still on the agenda for next week's town meeting.
36:58
Speaker 1: They're proposals that are still important because if passed, they
37:02
Speaker 1: could help the town avoid getting into another situation like
37:04
Speaker 1: they did with Flock, entering a relationship where they don't
37:07
Speaker 1: know what they've agreed to. Again, the proposals apply to
37:10
Speaker 1: any vendor of surveillance technology. And running that town meeting
37:14
Speaker 1: next week, where Tewksbury residents will vote on this, will
37:17
Speaker 1: be the person they've elected as the town moderator.
37:20
Speaker 3: I've got the gavel and I try and just keep
37:22
Speaker 3: the discussion under control. Yep.
37:25
Speaker 1: It's Dustin. He's the moderator. He oversees the town meeting.
37:29
Speaker 1: He helps his neighbors debate proposals and reach decisions. You
37:32
Speaker 1: do have a very calming presence. So that's what you
37:35
Speaker 1: do as the moderator. You keep everybody kind of, you know,
37:38
Speaker 1: communicating and civil.
37:39
Speaker 3: That's the idea.
37:40
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
37:41
Speaker 3: That's the, that's the hope.
37:43
Speaker 5: Okay.
37:44
Speaker 3: I'm also quite large. I'm six, six and about three 25.
37:46
Speaker 4: Okay.
37:48
Speaker 1: How's that relevant to your role as moderator?
37:51
Speaker 3: If the calmness doesn't work, I can sort of step
37:54
Speaker 3: it up a notch. Got it.
37:57
Speaker 1: Do you ever have to?
37:58
Speaker 3: No, not really.
38:01
Speaker 1: On Tuesday, as Tewksbury residents weigh in on what a
38:04
Speaker 1: post-flock future will look like for their town, Dustin will
38:07
Speaker 1: be there, quietly savoring the win, while he runs his
38:11
Speaker 1: town's democratic process, calling on people, keeping it civil, and
38:15
Speaker 1: helping to count the votes. Thanks, as always, for listening
38:28
Speaker 1: to Question Everything. Please rate and review our show highly
38:32
Speaker 1: on whatever app you listen to us on. Share us
38:34
Speaker 1: with a friend and follow us on Instagram at questioneverything.podcast.
38:42
Speaker 1: Today's show was produced by Kevin Sullivan and Sam Egan
38:45
Speaker 1: and edited by Neil Drumming. We first heard about Dustin's
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Speaker 1: story in the Boston Globe. Thanks to producer Patrick McNamee-Kings.
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Speaker 1: Robin Simeon and I are the executive producers of Question Everything.
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Speaker 1: Our team also includes producers Tracy Hunt and Zach St. Louis,
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Speaker 1: contributing editor Jen Kinney, and associate producer Kevin Shepard. This
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Speaker 1: episode was fact-checked by Annika Robbins and Marisa Robertson-Texter, mixing
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Speaker 1: and sound design by Brendan Baker. Our music is by
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Speaker 1: Matt McGinley. Evie Kwong runs our social media. Our partners
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Speaker 1: at KCRW include Arnie Seipel, Tejal Jamera, Natalie Hill, and
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Speaker 1: Jennifer Farrow. See you next week.