Hey guys, podcast producer Pascal here with Aaron working on an upcoming story about flock cameras or automated license plate readers. They and Val talked about all things flock related from the cost to the concerns These cameras have local advocates worried about surveillance by both ICE and local law enforcement. One thing that was mentioned was the website de flock. Do me. This site maps flock cameras across the US and worldwide, and as I'm recording this intro, this website lists over 30 cameras in Spokane County. It's honestly pretty interesting and if you wanted to look at the website yourself, you can find it@deflock.me. That's D-E-F-L-O-C k.me. This week's episode title may or may not be a song reference. Anyways, here's the episode. I'm Aaron, that's Val, and today we'll be doing a bit of a preview on an upcoming story of mine. Have you heard of flock cameras? If you read our Monday civic section, you might have mentioned here and there as something the city or the county is planning on spending money on. You may think of them as just traffic cameras, or you might have them mixed up with the red light cameras that issue you tickets. But local advocates are nervous about these flock cameras. They're nervous about just how much they're used as surveillance methods, where they're placed, the sheer amount of them and what they do. So Val and I are gonna do well. I'm gonna do a little primer for Valerie on flock cameras and what you need to know to understand this issue. Wait. Okay. So real quick, um, going back to confusing them with red light cameras, um, I definitely thought they were red light cameras, or I thought flock cameras were the same as red light cameras. So can you tell me what the difference is? Yes. So the cameras that I think most people, especially if you live in city limits, are most familiar with are the red light or speed cameras mm-hmm. That are placed at dangerous intersections or intersections that are near schools. Across the city, you might have gotten a $300 ticket and a photo of you driving too fast in a school zone. That's a really specific example. Yeah. Yeah. In my defense, I thought school wasn't in session. Okay. I was like, it was like, you know, August, September, I thought school hadn't like started back up yet, but it had, I paid my ticket that went into the Safe Streets fund, hopefully. Yay. And hopefully they spent my, uh, my owning up to my mistake, money on making streets safer across the city. But I feel like those are the cameras that most people know about. Mm-hmm. It's the cameras that we've written about the most in civics. Mm-hmm. Um, I usually do a little update on just how much money the city has made off of them, or how many tickets they've issued. Flock cameras, no pun intended, fly under the radar a little bit more. And the difference is that the tickets that you're familiar with are triggered. So they take a photo when you trigger the radar gun that tells you that it's going too fast. Or when you trigger the motion sensor that says that you've like, run a red light, they snap the photo, that photo ends up in your ticket in the mail as evidence. Mm-hmm. For you breaking the law. Flock cameras, they are a little bit different. And Flock is a specific kind of, it's a brand of software. Okay. So like the difference between a flock camera and like an Axon camera or like a Motorola camera is gonna be the difference between an iPhone and Samsung. Okay. They do the same thing. It's a different brand. What we're really talking about here are A LPR cameras, automated license plate reader cameras. Okay. And those are not red light or speed cameras? No, they go Interesting. They go, um, they're just placed on poles around the county and. Whether you're breaking the law or not. Mm-hmm. They snap a pic of your license plate. Hmm. They take, uh, imaging, I think, I don't know if it's a picture or a video, but they do imaging that basically collates every license plate number that has driven past that camera. And it's not just the license plate number that they're taking. They also take information on the make model and color of the car associated with that license plate number. That's all. Put into a big database. Mm-hmm. So these cameras, I guess the key difference, what I'm trying to say as I ramble is that the red light and speed cameras are triggered by a breach of the law. They snap a picture when you, that makes sense. Go too fast or you run a red light. Mm-hmm. Um, flock cameras are taking pictures constantly of every single vehicle that drives past them. Logging that information in a database that then law enforcement officers can access to solve crimes is the stated purpose. Got it. That feels a smidgen Big brother, but I will reserve judgment. Um, okay. So those are flock cameras are A LPR cameras and flock is the software that most of the jurisdictions in our region have contracts with. Okay. Gotcha. Um, okay. So why, I guess, why do we have them? What are the pros? Yeah. The biggest pros that I see a lot are that they. Help police solve crimes. Mm-hmm. So let's say that your car gets stolen. Mm-hmm. Right? My car has gotten stolen. Uh, let's say my car got stolen and the police are looking for that car. Mm-hmm. They obviously are not that interested, nor do they have the time to be driving up and down every street in Spokane looking for a stolen car. Right. With flock cameras. If my car had been driven past one of those cameras, it would have flagged, like it would've taken a picture of the license plate. Would the, I guess, would the Flock database have known that they were looking, that it was stolen? Possibly. Okay. There's a feature within the flock software mm-hmm. Where you can do what's called creating a hot list. Okay. Um, and a hot list is a list of license plate numbers that will like send a notification if they get spotted. Okay. Um. In Spokane County, they say that they're using these flock cameras to solve major crimes. I have approximately 47 tabs open on my computer right now 'cause this has been a beast of a project to research. Um, but they have a transparency portal for the Spokane County flock cameras and there's some prohibited uses for them. Uh, but the primary uses that they say they do them for is retroactive search to solve crimes after they've occurred. Mm-hmm. Uh, they also utilize real time alerting of hotlist vehicles to capture wanted criminals. So. They set the bar a little bit higher. I know in some of the training materials I've seen, it has to be kind of a serious crime mm-hmm. For them to want to use the flock cameras. So a stolen carb might not rise to that level, but if there was like an amber alert out okay, and a car was associated with a suspected kidnapping, they could potentially put that car's, make model color, license plate number in a hot list, and then if that car drove past any of the county's flock cameras mm-hmm. Or potentially any. Flock a camera in the national database mm-hmm. That the county has a data sharing agreement with. Then detectives could get a notification that's like, Hey, this car that you were looking for just drove past this intersection. This was the most recent info we have on it. And that would help them hypothetically narrow their search down. It could also be used for evidence. So let's say a crime is committed at a certain location and they have a couple of suspects. They could look through flock data to see if any of those suspect's cars had driven near the site of the crime. If there was cameras that were near it. Okay. That's the biggest pros is that it's a tool in law enforcement's toolbox for solving potentially serious crimes. Mm-hmm. Potentially ongoing crimes. If there's like a kidnapping or a robbery and they have a getaway vehicle's number, they can be like, oh, it drove past this intersection. So alert all officers to go search that area instead of, uh, casting a wide net across the city. Does that make sense? Yeah, and I mean, I guess you mentioned earlier that you know, it, there's some parameters, like it has to be a serious enough crime. So like how, I guess, how often have these cameras been used to solve a major crime As far as we know? That's a good question. So there's some debate about this. Mm-hmm. Um, one of these tabs has the Spokane County case study. So Spokane County has what's called a real time crime center, um, where they have not just this technology, but lots of other police tech that they use to respond to serious crimes, um, like theft, burglary, drive-by shootings, murder. Et cetera. Mm-hmm. They have this graphic of total success stories of times that a real time crime center, tech or staff has successfully resolved an incident. So we don't know if this was specifically flock cameras or a different tool that they have. We know that they have, uh, arrested 150 people or charged with a crime 150 people. Uh, as a result of tech. They have recovered 88 stolen vehicles. Um, they have identified suspect vehicles 42 times. They've located nine missing people as a result. This is just with tech in general. Tech in general from the real time crime center. And this was as of June 21st, 2024 was the most Okay. Up to date, um, stats I could find. And are these stats like all time or are they just for like a span of a year or something? I think, uh, the real time crime center. I'm really working off of some faulty, like reading a bunch of articles. Mm-hmm. I wanna say it came online in like 20 20, 20 21. Okay. So it's like a couple years worth of stats. Um, got it. Okay. Actually it was fully launched by 2023. Okay. So this was one year's worth of stats. Um, sorry, I, again, I have yeah, like 2023 active flock tabs open right now that I'm like toggling between for this research. So like there are some mm-hmm. Some real benefits to it. Do we have an idea of like a percentage of crimes that are solved using flock cameras yet? Like I would assume the percentage of crimes would be really small because there's a lot of crimes committed and they're saying that they only solved like 150 crimes in one year as a result of all of the tech in the real time crime center. I wish I was better at on the fly math because, no, that's cool. I could tell you how many, the county has more than 60 active flock cameras as of right now. As of right now. Okay. I don't have an exact number, um, but I know that they have more than 60 or at least, so the county has not been incredibly forthcoming with me when it comes to information. I submitted a public records request asking for the location of all of their flock cameras, and they sent me a list of like 30 cameras and their intersections, however. I am insane. And so I went through all of their, uh, flock any time that flock was mentioned in their board of County commission agendas, and I found all of the contracts that they'd approved with flock. Oh, wow. So. That combined with reporting from a couple of other outlets that say they have more than 50 cameras. Mm-hmm. Um, I was able to find like 59 intersections that they say they have cameras at according to contracts. And then they also have a few mobile cameras. So they have two cameras on wheels, which are essentially outfitted sheriff's cars that are just like parked and left. Oh yeah. I see those like outside the courthouse all the time. Yeah. Um, not all of the cars that you see are actually outfitted with cameras. Sometimes they just place old decommissioned cars to make you think they're like checking speed. Or sometimes they might have a speed radar, but they have at least two flock cameras that are mobile and then they have six radar flock trailers that can be placed anywhere. Okay. At least according to. The, um, Spokane County Sheriff's Officer's training materials when they started implementing flock that I was able to public records request. Do you know when they started implementing flock? Yes, I do. Well, I have contract dates. Okay. I don't know exactly when the installation was finished. Mm-hmm. But Spokane County installed their first batch of cameras in 2022, or, um, the first batch of cameras was approved in 2022. Okay. And then a second batch of cameras was approved on May 20th, 2025. So this year, and I don't know if all of those cameras have been installed yet, but I do know they've all been approved. They all have road intersections that they're headed towards, so there could be as many as 60 cameras, um, out and about in the county so far. Interesting. And have you asked, um, like the county, like why their list was almost half. Gone? No, not yet. I, so I've been calling the county Sheriff's, PIO I've called once, Aaron Hedges called once or twice and I haven't heard back yet, which is kind of par for the course. I don't know that Mark Gregory has ever responded to me. So there's that. Mark, if you're listening, you can call me back and you can tell me about flock. I'm really nice. I swear. Uh, I just saw like double horns sprout out of your head. No, I'm nice. I just wanna know where the flock cameras are. No, Erin is very nice, I promise. Um, so that's, that's kind of been my fascination. And those are just the county affiliated flock cameras. Oh, okay. Um, Liberty Lake has 19 cameras installed and thank you. Liberty Lake. I just got, uh, a. A list back from them. Mark, if you are listening, you could also get a shout out for answering with the flock information. Um, and Cheney is slated to install, uh, I think 12 cameras. Mm-hmm. Those have not been installed yet, but they have picked the locations for where those cameras are going. And Airway Heights has, oh wait. Cheney has eight cameras installed. Airway Heights is getting 12 cameras. Okay. Um. And I don't know where those are going yet 'cause I haven't heard back from them. Does Spokane City have any? So this is where I ran into a little wrinkle mm-hmm. In my reporting. Um, back in February, Spokane City Council approved a contract with Flock that would put, would this be for the first time that you know of? That I know of, and I could be wrong and please call me if I'm wrong and you can tell me if I'm wrong. Um, but I do know that the Spokane City Council, uh, approved a contract with flock that would put 30 flock flock cameras. Mm-hmm. In city limits. So right now actually the Spokane County cameras, the permanently installed ones, none of those are on city or state roadways. Oh, interesting. I wanna say interesting. Um. The state thing I'm not so sure about. I saw that in the county training materials, but when I look at the map, I'm like, I think that's a state roadway, but it's kind of honestly hard to tell sometimes. Who's responsible for maintaining what roadway? Uh, and then there are three privately owned flock cameras in the county. Who are they owned by? Lowe's. Oh. Every Lowe's in the county has a flock camera in their parking lot. Is that those like trailer thingies that are like really tall up usually? Or are these like, 'cause I've seen a like trailer with a camera on it that like beeps in a Safeway parking lot. Those I think are gunshot detection cameras. Oh, there's, or at least, sorry, don't quote me on that. Yeah, as far as I know, those are not tied into the county flock network. Okay. Um. Maybe they got an off brand one. Yeah. Again, A LPR, uh, automated License plate Reader Tech is not exclusive to flock. So there could be contracts with other A LPR readers. It's just Flock is the one that's kind of been making headlines most recently. Mm-hmm. And is sort of has a monopoly on this tech or a growing monopoly? Yeah. I mean, usually what happens with like police technology, you know, they're always kind of monopolies. It's like, like Axon. Yeah. Like if your agent, if one agency in a region uses one brand, you know, then all of the other agencies kind of tend to use that other brand, that brand because you know, it makes collaborating. Yeah. Or swapping information easier. Oh, sorry. Mm-hmm. I never answered your question about C. Mm-hmm. So. The wrinkle is that I reached out to the city mm-hmm. Police Department's, PIO, Dan Strasberg. Mm-hmm. And he got back to me, I was like, Hey, do you have access to the county's flock network? And is the city planning on getting their own flock network slash cameras? And he said the city did not have a plan to get their own flock network. So what? I don't know for sure, but they signed a contract in February. What I'm trying to figure out is, is that contract from February not going anywhere? Mm. Because there have been times before when council has allocated Monday money to be spent on a contract. Mm. And then it just like doesn't get spent. Um, are they going to be buying those cameras and then those cameras are getting tied into the county flock network? Mm-hmm. So in that case, the city wouldn't be standing up their own network. They would just be participating in the counties. Um. I sent a follow up email, haven't heard back yet, but I'd be curious. I'm trying to get clarification on that. I probably need to start harassing the city council too, to be like, mm-hmm. You executed this contract back in February, what's going on with that? Yeah. I'd be curious if like the police chief has anything to do with that decision too, because he was just coming on. Mm-hmm. And he's like, you know, a little bit less, uh, I don't know how to describe it. Like less, he might be less interested. Yes. There we go. In the surveillance state. Yeah. It's hard to say. He might be, I don't know. Um. Okay, so sorry I threw a ton of information. No, that's okay. So I hope this is somewhat interesting. This is, I've been so mired in flock. I'm interested in this. Um, okay. So do we know if like the state, like Highway Patrol is installing these? We do not as of yet. Um, I did get a public records request back from Liberty Lake, so a little primer here. Mm-hmm. There's, you've heard me say Flock Network. Mm-hmm. Spokane County has their own flock network. Okay. Their cameras are tied to that network. Spokane County can access that information if anybody in the county has a login to that. Mm-hmm. Other, uh, law enforcement JU jurisdictions have their own network. Mm-hmm. Um. And the, it's like a subscription service. Yeah. So they opt into a certain, or pay for a certain level of the subscription service. Spokane County pays for what's called Flock os, and some of the features that they get in that subscription is that they can access statewide and national data from other flock systems. Okay. So let's say Seattle Police Department had a flock system and a suspect from Spokane fled to Seattle. Mm-hmm. If Seattle was opted into statewide data sharing, um, if that car was picked up on their network, Spokane City or Spokane Sheriff's Office would get a ping if it showed up there. However, not every department is opted in to share their own data. They have the automatic ability to search other people's data. Mm-hmm. For those jurisdictions that have been like, yes, mm-hmm. Opt us in, let other people search our data. But that doesn't mean that our data is necessarily opted into that. Okay. And I'm waiting on a public records request or a call from Mark Gregory to confirm whether or not Spokane County Sheriff's Office has opted into state or national, national data sharing. Okay. Who would make that decision? Do you know? Probably the sheriff. Um, yeah, because I was reading the contracts that the Board of County Commissioners approved. Mm-hmm. And they approved the level of subscription that would allow that. Mm-hmm. But there was nothing in the contract that said specifically whether or not Spokane County was going to opt into data sharing. Just that they had the ability to access other people's data who had opted into sharing. Okay. So. I guess, where's the funding to pay for this? Usually coming from the funding, at least at the city level that was allocated was from a grant from Okay. The state, I think. Um, so like the, but in general, I think the money for this kind of tech comes out of police departments budgets. Okay. I'm curious then specifically about the contract for Spokane City is like, if the police department is just like, no, we're not gonna, if they're not spending it, where's that money going? This wouldn't be the first time. One of the weirdest things that I was trying to get abreast of when I first started mm-hmm. Was this debate over two cameras that the county or that the city had approved, and then the, the police department just didn't buy those cameras, even though the $50,000 had been allocated for them. And then people were like. Okay, well, where did the money go? Mm-hmm. And why didn't you buy the cameras? If you asked us to buy the cameras and then we said, sure, here's the money to buy the cameras. Uh, and then you just didn't buy them, so it's, it wouldn't be, yeah. Do you know where that money actually ended up going or, oh God. It's been like a year since I last touched base on that. I just remember that debate happening. Yeah. So it wouldn't be the first time that money had been allocated and then not spent. Um, how much are these cameras usually? I know that Chaney's contract is for $52,000, I think. Okay. Um, the county's contract is like 750 K, but that's like a four year contract, I think. Okay, I see. Um, and that pays for the physical cameras? Mm-hmm. All of your software? Some like, I think it pays for like tech checkups. Like, oh, if something breaks, they'll like, come fix it. Um, the, the contract language is pretty dense, but I have a folder on my laptop of all of the different contracts in our, in our region. Fun. Okay. So, um, I, I had confused flaw, like I had confused A LPR cameras with red light cameras. And so one of my questions I had written down is, how much money do these generate for the city? Is there none? Yeah, none. Well. I mean, if the city seized found property Oh yeah. Through the camera usage that they were then able to seize through asset forfeiture and auction off. I guess they could kind of help make money, but like yeah, that would be a really roundabout process. Yeah. Um, so, um, I guess what are the biggest cons? Yeah. Well it sounds like there's a lot, there are cons of flock in general. Mm-hmm. What I've been trying to figure out and what I still don't necessarily have answers for, so I don't wanna freak anybody out mm-hmm. Preemptively is how big those cons are in Spokane County. 'cause there's certain precautions that individual jurisdictions can take to limit these cons, however. Mm-hmm. In the big one right now, that's kind of hot topic mm-hmm. Is immigration. Okay. So these flock cameras pick up license plates from across the country. And like I was getting a little jargony about with the nationwide lookup, there are jurisdictions across the nation mm-hmm. That have these cameras. There's like, I mean, even just looking at the list of jurisdictions in Washington that have flock cameras, it's like a hundred. Um, wow. So and so jurisdictions count like cities, like city, counties, counties, states. Yeah. Um, there's so many places have these cameras. Yeah. So many of these places, cameras, just Lowe's counts, collect this data. I'm not even factoring Lowe's into this, who was like, does Lowe's count as just jurisdiction? No, but Lowe's, uh, and Home Depots across the country Yeah. Are widely known for putting flock cameras in their parking lot. Mm-hmm. So there's like all of these cameras collecting data. Mm-hmm. And many of these. Jurisdictions are opted into national sharing, which means. Any jurisdiction in the country mm-hmm. That pays for this subscription can search all of this data for license plates. Mm-hmm. For, for hits on these license plates for like, where did this person end up? Have I seen their car anywhere? They can put in like a, the info that they have and it'll pop up, hits all over the country. Okay. It's a little scary. Mm-hmm. People are worried about this tech being used for immigration enforcement purposes. Mm-hmm. And it in fact, already has been. So there have been places that have given ICE officers logins. To their, um, network, which then allows them to make searches to find this. Mm. There have been cases, I wanna say it was in Oregon of ICE officers who had a close connection with a police officer who was like, Hey, can you search for this? And then hit me back with the info. So like a back doorway? Oh, into search info. Um, sorry, that was in Oregon. I think it was in Oregon. Okay. But please don't quote me on that. I remember it was somewhere somewhat close to here. Okay. Um, and when you make a search, you have to give a reason. Mm-hmm. But, and like each jurisdiction has policies like Spokane, uh, county, you're not allowed to use immigration as the reason to search. Mm-hmm. But the like, auditing and enforcement of this tech is pretty lax. Mm. So you might be wanting to make a search for an immigration enforcement reason, but you could just put violent crime suspect. And I don't know that there's anybody who's regularly going through these searches being like, oh, you searched for this under violent crime suspect. This person wasn't suspected of a violent crime. Why did you put this in as your keyword search do? Um, that's interesting. So like. I guess, where does that rule come from then that you have to have a reason? Is it like a law or is it just like a policy from flock? That's just the flock tech. Okay. When you make a search, you have to put in like your reason why that seems, and some places have put in like immigration enforcement. Okay. There have been like 4 0 4 media has done a really good job mm-hmm. Of putting in public records requests at a bunch of different jurisdictions and it'll pop up results of mm-hmm. Searches that were made with immigration enforcement or ICE or, uh, federal immigration warrant. Mm-hmm. Or ice warrant given as the reason for the search and those pop up. But what doesn't pop up is like searches. They're like, oh, violent crime suspect. Where you were maybe lying about the reason right. That you were searching. And these cameras have been used for some relatively nefarious purposes. Yeah. There was a case of a police officer who, um, was domestically abusing his partner, and when she left him, he was using flock cameras to track her movements all over the city. She's little, he was just like constantly looking up his ex's car. Um, there was, I don't remember what the city was, but there was Did he get in trouble for that? Yeah, I mean, it made news. I think he, I don't know exactly what the, the penalty was, but, um, there was a city where, uh, there was some sort of racial profiling, like the cameras were being used to do racial profiling. Um, we've seen in some cities where flock cameras are like overwhelmingly placed in poor or mm-hmm. Bipoc areas of a city. So like over surveillance of marginalized communities. Um. So there's just like a lot of potential for misuse mm-hmm. Of this tech. Uh, the most famous case that actually kind of caught my attention and is why, uh, I started looking at this locally. Mm-hmm. Um, that, and the fact that our urbanism column to s Lauren Pangborn was like, I'm really interested in flock. We should work on this. Uh, was a case out of Texas where a police officer was looking for a woman who had left the state to seek reproductive care. He says it was because she was missing, or like, said that there was like family concern about it, but the search field reason he gave was like abortion. Oh. Um, and he was searching cameras all over the country for this woman's plates. And in fact, some of the cameras that. Popped up results or that he was searching from were cameras in Washington. We don't know if any Spokane cameras were utilized in this search, but in the article 4 0 4 said that there was specifically Washington cameras mm-hmm. That were used, which is particularly concerning. Mm-hmm. Because Washington is a sanctuary jurisdiction for people seeking reproductive healthcare and immigration. Mm-hmm. So it's kind of scary to know that like if you come from a red state to seek reproductive healthcare here, a police officer from Idaho might be able to search Washington's cameras. Mm-hmm. And when you come back to the state, hold you accountable or like prosecute you for seeking reproductive healthcare and be like, your car pinged near an abortion center in Washington, here's this as evidence that is really scary. Mm-hmm. Like, yeah. 'cause and that bumps up into like kind of the, the question of the whole, like the. Story, I guess is like, um, like what do we, wait, sorry. Um, so one thing I've noticed in your story, um, that kind of goes into like any police officer can like search the database, is that warrants are not required for these searches. And we kind of touched on it. Is that just why that's Oh, that's a good question. I'm not a crime reporter necessarily. Mm-hmm. So I don't know if I can give a concrete answer as to why warrants would not be required, but it's just like, in the same way that. Tech companies can decide how much of your mm-hmm. Like you, nobody reads the terms and services. Right. Right. Yeah. So if you use Facebook mm-hmm. There might be something in the terms and services that says, like, if you're suspected of this, we can turn your data over to the police. Mm-hmm. They might have something in there that says they can give it for free without a warrant. Mm-hmm. There's, they definitely use your data to do advertising stuff mm-hmm. Without your necessarily explicit consent. Um, and so I think it's just emblematic of the way that big tech companies have moved faster mm-hmm. Than the law. Um. This tech popped up before any kind of regulation over whether or not they would need a warrant to search, flock. And the pervasive argument from law enforcement has been, we need this to solve ongoing cases. Mm-hmm. We need this to know, like if your kid gets kidnapped right now mm-hmm. I can search this database and find out that the kidnapper showed up here 10 minutes ago. That's the like argument for this tech. And so in that scenario, having to get a warrant would make it so much less effective. Mm-hmm. And I'm not arguing for against us. I'm just saying this, this is the argument for it. Yeah. And then also they're just like. There states haven't regulated this in a way that moves with the times I, I know a lot of states or a couple of states now are looking at regulation that would prohibit, uh, like sanctuary cities or sanctuary states from opting their data into national lookups. Mm-hmm. So in that way, you know, if Washington wanted to do this, wanted to pass regulation that says, okay, if you are a law enforcement agency in Washington mm-hmm. You can't opt your data into the national search. That might be a way to help limit Washington data being used for federal immigration enforcement when we have the Keep Washington Working Act, which is that no state or city resources should be used for. Mm-hmm. Immigration enforcement and it would be state and city resources. 'cause it's the state and city paying for this tech and these contracts. Um, and then flock itself potentially to avoid liability, has pulled a couple of states out of the national lookup. Oh right. Like California, I think California was pulled out. There was like three other ones, uh, that all have sanctuary state policies. So it's really unclear to me why Washington wasn't pulled out at the same time. Um, I don't know if there, if it's because of ongoing legislation in California. Mm-hmm. Or if there's something in the way that Washington State law is written that makes it less risky for flock to operate that way here. Um, or if there just haven't been like, complaints about Washington's data. Wild. So I have a lot of questions that I don't have answered. Sorry. I can't make a ton of definitive statements. Totally. 'cause this whole thing is so big and complex. Mm-hmm. And nobody is as transparent with their data as I want them to be. Totally. Ken. Um, so are these searches, do you know if they're limited to just law enforcement or is it something that like you can public records request? Great question. You can. Public records request flock searches. That's how 4 0 4 media has done. A ton of their reporting is, um, keyword searching. However, and this is where it gets tricky. In Spokane County, the flock data is only maintained or they say it's only maintained on the database for 30 days. Okay. That's what they say. Interesting. Um. So by the time you put in a public record request and it's processed and you give a date range that's like X date to X date, all of those searches might be gone or all of the license plate, I don't know, like search history might last longer than 30 days. Okay. But like license plate info is limited mm-hmm. To 30 days. So like what you can request is more so what searches have police officers made and less so like what cars passed this camera on Division Street. Um, which is probably a good thing. I don't know if we would want the public to be able to know which cars drive by this, uh, camera on the daily. Mm-hmm. Um, so it is public records requestable, but in general, like the only people that have easy and quick access to it are law enforcement officers, however. Mm-hmm. And this is where it gets funky. Um. I, one of my public records requests was for a list of authorized users of the Spokane County Flock Network. Mm-hmm. So those are people who have been given a login to log into their network. They can search everything on that network. They can make national searches. Mm-hmm. They can make statewide searches. Um, a lot of, most of the people on that list were Spokane County Sheriff's Officers. Mm-hmm. But there were also people who were like, maybe dispatchers, there was people with like Shrek emails, like Spokane Regional Emergency Communication emails. Um, and there were folks from other jurisdictions besides ours. Hmm. So they let, like the Chiney police have a login to their. Um mm-hmm. Flock network. And that makes sense. They let post falls police have a login and Coe d'Alene police. Mm-hmm. And that should flag alarm bells for you. Mm-hmm. Because post falls and Coe d'Alene officers are from Idaho. Mm-hmm. Which is explicitly coordinating with ice. Mm-hmm. They don't have to worry about the Keep Washington Working Act. Mm-hmm. So again, SP County still is the policy that's like our flock network can't be used to make immigration sources searches. But there's no real way to hold Idaho officers accountable to that, especially if they're lying in the search field. Right. It's like violent crime suspect or might have stolen a car and then they're just making searches that they can then freely turn over to ICE with no consequences because Idaho officers are allowed to coordinate with immigration enforcement officials. I recall you were talking in the newsroom about, um, some of the, the like emails that had access or that came back in that list. Mm-hmm. And there were some that you couldn't identify what, uh, organization they were with, like Yeah. Have you gotten down to the bottom of that at all yet? One of them. Um, okay. One of the weird emails on the list was rig9@spokanesomething.com. Mm-hmm. And I did find out that that is like. The login for the realtime crime center, I think. Okay. Or like the login that they give the real time crime center folks. 'cause some of the marketing materials for that said that it was coordinated through Rig nine. I don't really know what that like term means, but I know that that one is associated with Spokane County. Oh, maybe it's like rigg, like a, like a, like the vehicle that, I don't know. It was, it was, yeah. Very weird. But I do know that that is like an official email despite looking funky. Mm-hmm. There have been a couple that we still haven't been able to nail down. The one that's the weirdest is that one of the authorized users on the Spokane County Flock network is Spokane temp@gmail.com. Hmm. So not associated with a government email, uh, could belong to anybody and mm-hmm. I wanna know, I've put in a request for mm-hmm. What searches have come from that account. Um, so I can maybe see like, mm-hmm. Was it a dummy account? Yeah. That they just made to like test something? Might be, yeah. That would be, might be the best, best faith. Mm-hmm. Uh, reading. Is it an email that they give or a login that they give to all of the Spokane Police Department? Mm-hmm. Is it an email that they give to ice officers? Like there's a full range of extremely innocent to not that this could be, um. And because they won't just take my calls and answer me, I have resorted to submitting a copious amount of public records requests that I'm waiting for answers on. Amazing. Um, so just to review, we are talking about automated license plate readers. Um, AKA, the brand name is Flock. The, that's the brand that Spokane County, um, city and surrounding cities use. And we're talking about the implications of that because Aaron has been doing a ton of research on it. And Lauren, our urbanism columnist mm-hmm. We're working on some flock reporting. Yes. Um, so I, I guess I have, uh, one like question, um, is there any like AI element to this, like artificial intelligence there? I am so glad you asked Valerie. The answer is yes. Oh, sorry. Yay. Yay. Big brother. Um, yeah. So there is not like currently a massive AI involvement mm-hmm. But it's being studied for like future tools. So, um, flock, like leaked audio that was obtained by 4 0 4 showed that they were flock was building a massive people lookup tool. And one element of that was, um, predictive data. So the best way I can explain predictive data mm-hmm. Is that. Let's say you work Monday through Friday. Mm-hmm. Nine to five. Um, most of us have like a coffee habit, right? Mm-hmm. Like you start to get into a rhythm. If you have, uh, have to be at work Monday at 9:00 AM maybe you get up at eight and you leave your house at eight 30. You get coffee at the coffee shop on the way to work at 8:45 AM you to work by 9:00 AM your car stays in the work parking lot until five. Mm-hmm. And then you drive home. That's all information that like, you know, um, however, hypothetically mm-hmm. AI could analyze. Pings from flock cameras and be able to put together your regular schedule from where your car has pinged on, which flock cameras at which times, and they'd be able to say, or the AI would be able to say like, oh, we've noticed a pattern. Mm-hmm This car does this at this time. And then they'd be able to predict like, oh, you're looking to arrest Val oer. Well, usually she's at this coffee stand at 9:00 AM We've analyzed that from our predictive model. Joe, you, I'm unpredictable. You always think you are until AI starts analyzing you. So that's one element that AI is tied to this. There is also, um, ICE has tapped into nationwide AI enabled camera network. So those like Lowe's and uh, home Depot. Home Depot cameras are an AI enabled and they can also, there's been some really weird reporting about. How this AI has enabled, like tried to identify su quote unquote suspicious behavior and then preemptively notify police that suspicious behavior or suspicious car patterns might be occurring. Mm-hmm. So, you know, when. Like on Nextdoor when people are like, I've seen the same black car on my block three times. Yeah. Are they kissing my house? Mm-hmm. It's kind of like the ai, big brothers surveillance state version AI of that big bear, big brother Karen. Yeah. Who's like, um, hey girly. This black SUV has driven past lows 15 times in the last hour. You might want to pull them over and see what's going on. Um, this is like editorializing a little bit. Yeah. Because I'm trying to put more of this in like a plain language. Mm-hmm. Or explain how this could be used for evil. Um, explaining how things can be used for evil. Yeah. It's our jobs, but that is how like AI has been. Involved or could be further involved as all of these tech companies are trying to integrate AI into everything. Yeah. We just all love that, don't we? Um, so on kind of the, the same vein of like AI and, um, you know, tech, that's not necessarily like explicitly ai, but it's like machine learning and um, is there a way, are, are there people out there, I guess, and I'm not like encouraging, like breaking the law or anything like that, but like, are there like, people out there, movements out there that are, people are figuring out how to like lawfully obscure their license plates? Mm. Just to like a camera reader. Like, you know how like people like the AI makeup? Yes. Yeah. Something like that. I don't know that I've seen that. Mm-hmm. I have seen nationwide movements to kind of. Track and document and make the public more aware of this tech. There's a website called De Flocked. Mm. Um, and they do their best to log the presence of AI cameras. Okay. What network they're from. I know firsthand that they don't have all of the information. 'cause they only had about six of the cameras that I've Oh wow. Been able to find. Uh, and to be fair, I had to go through like Yeah. And, and Lauren had to go through multiple council agendas mm-hmm. And like going back to 2021 Wow. Yeah. To track all of this. So it was a ton of effort. Mm-hmm. Um, have you talked to anybody from that website? No. No I haven't. Okay. Um, I'm probably going to try to turn over my coordinates to them once we publish. Yeah. So that they can add all of the cameras mm-hmm. If they're interested. Just 'cause I think that the more widely available public information is the better and like everything I got, I got from public documents. Mm-hmm. Or, um, but. Uh, I'm sorry, I forgot the question. I'm sort of rambling. Oh, uh, lawfully obscuring your license. Yes. I haven't seen anything like that. Okay. But I have seen, and like locally there's a movement mm-hmm. There's been a petition and some push to get counsel to not install those cameras Okay. Or to pull back the contract. Um, and I'm still trying to figure out how far along in that process they are. 'cause the, the SPD says that no cameras have been installed yet. Okay. Um, I don't know when they would be installed. If they will be installed. What's going on with that? Just that the funding to install them and that the intersections have been chosen for if they get installed. Is there any like legislation like either nationally or statewide or in any state that you know of, like that's trying to hit on any of this? California is trying to hit on some of the immigration stuff. Okay. Um, to do data protection that like, doesn't allow, um, nationwide or federal searches of California's data. Um, Washington could do something similar. Mm-hmm. I they could. Mm-hmm. Um, we do have, like the counties privacy settings seem to be as low as they, or like as good as flock allows for. Mm-hmm. So they only keep data for 30 days. Mm-hmm. As opposed to like a 60 or a 90 day keep. Um. They, you know, say that you can't use it to search for, uh, traffic enforcement mm-hmm. Or for immigration enforcement or for a variety of like, lower caliber crimes. Okay. Um, so the bar that you're supposed to clear to be able to search the county's flock network is supposed to be pretty high. Okay. I think that there could be legislation that would require audits. Mm-hmm. Regular audits of, um, flock usage and searches to make sure that people are actually, like the search queries that people are giving actually line up with real crimes or suspects. Yeah. Um, there's also the flock transparency portal, which is through their software. Mm-hmm. Uh. Uh, jurisdictions can opt more or less data into that transparency portal. Spokane County has opted very little data in. Okay. Uh, some jurisdictions will let you see like the number of searches police have made, oh, the kinds of searches they've made, the search queries, and that's all on that transparency portal publicly for anybody to search. So there might be a way for state legislation to require mm-hmm. That any jurisdictions with flock software opt into like the maximum level of public transparency with how they're using the tech. Okay. And so, I forgot my train of thought, um, with the, uh, I'm sorry. I totally just lost it. So what do we. So you kind of already went like, we don't know a lot about like flock specifically because, oh, I have a, I remember now, sorry, listeners. Um, do you have an idea or like an estimation of like how many flock cameras are there are nationwide? Like if there's 60 in Spokane County? Yeah. And there's like nine Inni, like are we talking thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, et cetera? So the most, this was from as of 2023. Mm-hmm. It was estimated that there were. Uh, sorry, I'm like power scrolling. This article definitely threw this question that you're in. I know, I know. And I have a source for this. I wanna say it was, there were tens, tens of thousands of a LPRs in the country as of 2023, but like even locally, the majority of Alps were installed after that. So I have to imagine that numbers. Yeah. Jumped. Um, according to the Borough of Justice Statistics, 93% of police departments in cities with populations of 1 million or more utilize A LPR systems. And in cities with populations of a hundred thousand or more, 75% of those police departments use a LPR systems. Hmm. And that was as of 2023. I have to imagine that, um, just with. The way that tech progresses. Mm-hmm. That number has probably exponentially, yeah. Increased. I mean, especially with like all of the AI advancements and stuff, like, it's even more likely. Mm-hmm. Um, I think, um, for folks who are. Curious about this. I do have a story coming out. There is still a lot, uh, a lot more questions than I have answers. Like, I thought I had a really solid short, easy story here, and then the more I dove into it, the more I was like, oh, I found answers on this one thing. But it opened up four more questions. Uh, so it's, it's kind of turned into a lengthy project. Mm-hmm. Um, but 4 0 4 media mm-hmm. Is a worker owned independent newsroom that has a ton of reporting on flock cameras. They've been kind of at the cutting edge of covering. This tech. Mm-hmm. Um, it's definitely where I've done a bunch of my research and background reading as I start to look at this locally. Okay. And then the big project that I'm working on, um, is mapping all of the mm-hmm. Active or incoming flock cameras in our county so that folks have a sense of where those cameras are. Mm-hmm. Spoiler alert, they're on almost, they're already on almost every major roadway entering or exiting the county of Spokane. So Amazing. Yeah. That's so exciting. So, last question, on a scale of one to 10, how worried about Big Brother are we? Hmm, hmm hmm. I'm honest. The more I dive into this, the more stressed I get. Mm-hmm. Um. Probably like an eight out of 10. Okay. And I was tussling in the comments sections back in the day, uh, fighting to protect red light and, uh, speeding cameras. Mm-hmm. And I do think it is important to distinguish Yeah. That these are two different things. Mm-hmm. They keep data for a different amount of time. They give data to a different amount of, a different, different sources in order to access that data. Mm-hmm. It takes different steps. I, I need to stress that, like the red light cameras also generate a lot of money income that goes straight into creating safer streets programs in Spokane. And like, in order for those cameras to even log your data, you basically have to be suspected of doing a crime. Mm-hmm. Because it's like you triggered the Yeah. Over 25 miles an hour camera. These are just passively collecting. Yeah. All of this information from you that. Like, even if we assume the Spokane County Sheriff's Office has the absolute best of intent mm-hmm. And is only ever using this to solve violent, serious crimes mm-hmm. The data is still owned and hosted by Nationwide Tech company. Mm-hmm. That moves quicker than the speed of regulation. And it's, and I think that is always something to be nervous about. Yeah. And I, I just like quickly Googled, like, who owns flock safety? And it's owned by a couple of rich people. It's privately owned, you know, or, um, I actually don't quote me on that. It was founded by some private rich people. Um, so that is fascinating. Um, I'll be real, I'm really excited to see your story. Um, thank you. And, and, um, I was gonna ask one more quick question and it flew out of my brain. That's okay. Yeah. I hope this wasn't too, um, wonky and weedsy, and I know it might be frustrating as a listener to be like. Well, why are you talking about this if you have more questions than answers? Um, but I also think it's indicative of just mm-hmm. How much information about you the government can collect. And I am like mm-hmm. Battling in the public records sections of these government websites to figure out what questions do I ask, how do I phrase them correctly? Like, am I actually even getting back mm-hmm. All of the info that they're supposed to give me with the county's like incomplete list. Yeah. there's so much, so many questions that I have about this that I'm trying to get answered. Yeah. Well, I think this was a really good primer. Um, it was a good primer for me as your editor who's gonna have to read your story. Um, and it's like A OBR. What's that? Yeah. And right off the bat I was like completely wrong about something. So I love that. Um, so that is our time this week. Erin, do you wanna play us out? Yeah, I can do that. Free Range is a weekly news and public affairs program presented by Range Media and produced by Range Media and KYRS Community Radio, KYRS, medical Lake Spokane. Thanks for listening.