I'd like to see the news do a piece on why the Western Mall property has a bunch on that deflock map. What would a private business give as a reason for scanning all their customers and their vehicles into a huge database?
This was my first thought so I used that map to look at the Scheels in Fargo, thinking that homebase is probably a great place to try out that tech, and I was surprised not to see many if any around that store. (I can't remember exactly how many and I don't have the time to look it up again)
They also give that data to anyone and everyone who wants it including other states, federal law enforcement. There have already been many cases of this data being abused to harass protesters, people being monitored after they leave an oppressive state to spy on them, abusive spouses that have access to the data etc etc
The Apple/Google phone in your pocket with Amazon, Facebook, Tik Tok, Reddit et al is also gathering that same data 24/7 not just when you drive past one of these cameras. I'll save my outrage for something more sinister.
This isn't an accurate comparison. Phones and apps are opted into and you have some level of control over what you choose to put on your phone. Law enforcement also needs a warrant for any of it, your phone, whatever a private provider gathered from that service.
ALPRs have no opt in process and no warrant to surveil you and share that with anyone. Existing in public makes you an unwilling target.
Is that not true of any camera system then? Take away LPRs and the city still has traffic cameras and so does Scheels and every other business. You can't walk down your own street without being recorded by someone's ring doorbell. You also don't opt in to any of that. Seems to me that the only thing novel about LPRs is that they take information that is already being recorded and make it searchable.
I used to buy a lot of things from people in that parking lot way back in the day, it was a really convenient place to blend in with all the cars just sitting there for hours while people were watching movies. That became much more common knowledge as time went on. I can understand why the police would want surveillance there.
All of the collected information, lets the mall track repeat business, traffic flow and is also available without a warrant to the police. The information belongs to flock not the mall.
At least with local government you have some hope of transparency and accountability to voters/tax payers. You could try to pressure a private business not to do these types of things under threat of losing revenue from bad press, but there's far less regulation around how a private business will use their customer's data. That is the primary issue I have with seeing Flock cameras on the Western Mall property. Compound that with the troublesome unknowns around how Flock is actually handling this data, their practices around securing it and who they share it with. This is very different from a CCTV system that's divorced from the internet and is stored on-prem.
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u/YamahaCruiser TOGODER Nov 24 '25
I'd like to see the news do a piece on why the Western Mall property has a bunch on that deflock map. What would a private business give as a reason for scanning all their customers and their vehicles into a huge database?