Waka Flock-uhhh?
WFAM - Waste of the Week
Quick WFAM Project Updates
- Our database is at 257 WFAM examples
- 📈 +57 WFAM examples since last post
- Current WFAM Total: ~$23.4mil
- 📈 +$3.4mil since last post
- Stacks on stacks, racks on racks - Waka Flocka Flame
Waka Flock-uhhh? (or Flock Automated License Plate Readers)
Today, we're calling out spending opioid settlement money on Flock and other automated license plate readers (ALPR):
Automated License Plate Readers (+$80k)
- Vendors: Flock, Motorola Solutions (Vigilant), et al.
- Where: Illinois, New Jersey, West Virginia
- Initial Spending: Device + subscription
- Long-term Costs: Maintenance, replacements, training, subscription fees
- Other Considerations:
- As always, the purchasing process may have issues: Was there an open bidding process for these devices? How was the specific model evaluated for the stated purpose? What contact was there between the company and the government? These questions could generate other concerns and are worth investigating.
- The decision-making process might have issues: Was the public notified about this purchase? Who was consulted before the purchase? Who approved the purchase?
- The stated outcomes might have issues: What are the metrics that law enforcement provided to decision makers to evaluate whether this spending is a “success?” Is there data or research showing that ALPR reduce overdose deaths or improve access to treatment? If not, why would opioid settlement money go towards ALPRs?
- The implementation might have issues: How are the ALPR going to be used? Will they respect privacy and civil liberties, or disproportionately target marginalized communities? What safeguards are in place?
- The legacy of these decisions might have a long tail: How were ongoing costs, including litigation risks, factored into the decision-making process?
- Good Spending Alternatives: Naloxone distribution in high-risk communities, integrating Eat-Sleep-Console into labor and delivery services, lowering barriers to medication to treat opioid addiction with transportation vouchers, peer recovery supports, and paying for under/uninsured people to receive care.
From our standpoint, no surveillance system can address a community's need for addiction prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery supports. Therefore, anytime we see spending like this, it's going to end up on our database as WASTE.
Background
As we talked about last week, we don't think that all law enforcement related spending of opioid settlement funds is inherently WFAM...it just so happens that a lot of it is. We advocate for spending that is aligned with evidence-based prevention, harm reduction, and treatment, not punishment and definitely not furthering the technoauthoritarian surveillance state (like ALPRs).
When Tricia Christensen first flagged Flock's ALPR, my inner dialogue was, “Flock, uhh, that's very bad.”
So, what is an ALPR?
ALPRs are cameras that record activity in public spaces. They automatically capture license plate information, location, date, time, vehicle characteristics, and sometimes the driver and passengers (depending on the camera angle). This information is then uploaded to a central server. This data can be triangulated with other cameras or other data to track your movements.
...so why is this creepy?
Lots of reasons. Now that you know what an ALPR is, it might be obvious that ALPRs are another way to track your movements and violate your 1st and 4th amendment rights. This is because ALPR don't just capture “criminal” vehicle details, they capture all vehicle details when someone goes past a camera. Those license plates are then entered into a nationwide database. That database is then searchable by all “law” enforcement (in-state, out-of-state, ICE, CPB, DEA, you get the picture...)
Jason Koebler
Paywall 🔏 and worth paying!
You may think: “I'm not a criminal!! Why do I care if my movements are tracked with opioid settlement dollars that are supposed to go towards evidence-based prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery resources but instead are going towards an ever-increasing technoauthoritarian surveillance state with the sole purpose of controlling free speech and movement?”
First, great question! Very specific!
Second, it is not a stretch to see a government that is already engaged in drug-related extrajudicial killings and deportations using information from an ALPR in a way that further harms people the opioid settlement money is intended to help. There’s also no guarantee that ALPRs will only target “criminals” and the evidence shows they don’t. These systems enable profiling, wrongful arrests, and blanket surveillance that treats entire communities as suspects.
Adam Schwartz
Take this healthcare examples regarding a potential abortion. Upon request, a sheriff’s office in Texas searched data from 6,809 Flock ALPR cameras, including in states where abortion access is protected by law (e.g., Washington and Illinois), to track down a single person who might have had a self-managed abortion. And there are basically no meaningful limits on using the ALPR in this scary way:
Cops are able to search cameras acquired in their own district, those in their state, or those in a nationwide network of Flock cameras. That single search for the woman spread across 6,809 different Flock networks, with a total of 83,345 cameras, according to the data.
Third, we must reject any system that records people’s movements continuously without warrants, probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion. Privacy isn’t about concealing wrongdoing; it’s about preserving autonomy, dignity, and the fundamental right to live free from surveillance. Privacy is a human right, and ALPRs blatantly violate this right. And it’s on all of us to push back.
Stop funding the technoauthoritarian surveillance state
Like with the drones and dogs from our last newsletter, it is concerning to see opioid settlement money go towards increasing the technoauthoritarian surveillance state. Funding privacy invasive technology, especially with opioid settlement money, intentionally threatens at-risk communities that this money is supposed to support. In this case, that's the explicit goal of spending the money on ALPRs. That's fucked up.
Here's an exemplary quote justifying spending opioid settlement dollars on surveillance equipment in Cranford Township, NJ:
So now anyone going to or from a pharmacy in Crandord Township is surveilled. Cool.
How could this spending happen?
The usual mix of not engaging the public, not having a strategic plan, and not having clear oversight.
When you propose stuff like ALPRs and don't have people in the room who know better, it results in WFAM. The opioid crisis requires solutions rooted in compassion and evidence informed by people who understand these issues. Let’s work together to ensure every dollar from the opioid settlements is used to save lives.
What can you do?
This post might be your entryway into the larger problem of technoauthoritarianism fueled by opioid settlement spending.
It's scary.
We can fight back.
First, engaging with opioid settlement decision makers can help prevent this spending. We provide those sample questions above for journalists and activists to root out the w/w/w/w/h of these decisions. The goal is preventing this type of spending in your community and hopefully rolling it back in the ones that already approved this spending.
Second, you can join the broader anti-ALPR movement. If you're in a community that uses these devices, consider organizing or joining the resistance.
Chad Marlow, Jay Stanley
Lastly, consider traditional analog surveillance approaches that are cute, but erratic.
With all our examples, we're just scratching the surface of how much money was wasted on this specific issue. We'll update this page periodically to reflect new data.
Have you seen this spending in your community?
Report it to our database!
Previous article in this series
Jonathan JK Stoltman, PhD
Opioid Policy Institute by Jonathan JK Stoltman, PhD is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
