Lewiston’s ill-conceived experiment with Flock surveillance cameras should conclude at the end of the trial period. Aside from the personal privacy invasions that most city councilors seemed to ignore or willfully misunderstand, there are very practical issues that should make all citizens and law enforcement wary.

First is the issue of accountability. It would be one thing if the footage captured was housed and managed by local officials. Instead, Flock is a Georgia-based, private equity-funded company with loose data sharing rules that make it easy for out-of-state jurisdictions to access local data.

At the same time, Flock outsources administrative burden and costs to the local community. Flock’s contracts place ownership of images with the municipality. That means that surveillance footage gathered is subject to Freedom of Information requests, as recently concluded in Washington state. The costs of processing and executing these requests falls to local taxpayers.

Back to privacy: Flock is planning to release a product that matches the vehicle data it collects with purchased, and even hacked data to identify the vehicle’s owner and the owner’s family members and associates. By adopting Flock cameras, Lewiston is opening itself up to a liability nightmare. I’m happy to live in Auburn.

Matthew Jones
Auburn