Story by Maxwell Gardoce and Maxine Messineo
Staff Writers

Illustration by Lanah Kim
Co-design Editor

Flock Safety, a public safety and mass surveillance company that makes cameras that read license plates, captures vehicle details, and builds a searchable database of this information. South Pasadena remains the first city in Los Angeles County to discontinue contracts with the company. On Wednesday, March 18, council members decided to prematurely end one of two of the city’s contracts, while allowing the other to expire five months later. 

Flock Safety, a public safety and mass surveillance company, continues to be regarded as quite controversial, with the American public largely viewing its products as excessive surveillance.

The city currently leases 27 cameras from Flock that track almost every vehicle moving in and out of South Pasadena. 

The conclusion, sparked by organizations such as the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other out–of-state third parties, resulted in a 4–1 vote. These organizations collected and utilized data including when the cameras mistook nonstolen cars for cars on Flock’s hot list, or list of stolen vehicles. The decision left 13 active cameras near the perimeter of the city up and running while city officials searched for another company offering similar services to replace Flock. 

“So a lot of [the policies for Flock are] actually not necessarily pertaining to crime within. Flock [is] a network,” South Pasadena Mayor Sheila Rossi said. “It’s connected to a hot list. And so that was actually Flock’s main point, was that they were connected to a nationwide hot list of stolen vehicles. So when it drives past a Flock, it pings. Right? That this car is on this hot list. But there have been reported incidences of it being wrong as well.”

Discussions about the removal of the city’s Flock cameras have brought controversy among South Pasadena residents and members of city council. 

SPPD reassures that they will maintain their ability to keep an eye on vehicles entering South Pasadena during this time. Meanwhile, council meetings have suggested alternative services such as PlateRanger to replace Flock. PlateRanger is an advanced automated license plate recognition service similar to Flock — which has garnered disagreements from the community due to a continued reliability on AI services and data collection.

“I feel like [you should] give everything a chance, so if you [use another company], and it starts causing problems and people get upset about [the change], then that’s something that needs to be reevaluated,” sophomore Oliva Regalado said. 

These cameras can be helpful. Cameras deter crime and auto theft, solve cases much faster, and are more cost effective compared to constant human or armed private security. However, some have said that the cameras are invasive. They record citizens who are not suspected of committing any crimes, and every trip someone makes, such as going to school, getting together with friends, attending doctor appointments, and going to work, and log the information into a database.

“I feel like, in some ways, [Flock Safety surveillance] can be good because if someone commits a crime, you could track their phone,” Regalado said. “So on one hand, that’s actually pretty good. But on the other hand, what are they gonna do with that data other than that, you know? But I think it can be good if used the right way.”

While there have been concerns about surveillance cameras in other countries being used for their unintended purposes of suppressing free speech or political freedom, Rossi says that the benefit of surveilling theft provides a balance to that concern. 

“I have personally seen [surveillance cameras] used in other countries to repress speech, suppress democracy quickly, and to go after political dissidents, so that’s where my concerns come from,” Rossi said. “So I have a very real awareness about this kind of technology used to both suppress speech and to suppress political decadents. But most people don’t have that experience and they have the very real experience of having things stolen, the fear of their vehicle being stolen, something from their porch being stolen, or their house being broken into. So that’s kind of the balance that we’re always looking at.”Another concern is that when communities sign contracts, it is often unspecified how long the data is stored, who has access, or how protected the data is. This concerns another facet to the discussion of the use of the cameras. 

“We need public thought [and] public discussion.. It seems like a good idea. We just have to question what regulations [should be in place],” Rossi said.