Flock cameras
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Flock cameras are automated licence-plate readers. Asked about them directly, John Kiriakou describes the hardware plainly: "it's like a let's say like a license plate reader," sometimes mounted on the back of police cars, sometimes on poles that are made to look like telephone poles.

The camera behind the White House

His own encounter with the system is routine and unresolved. One reader in particular, at 15th and Constitution Avenue, a block from the White House, stops him "all the freaking time", because he once reported a licence plate stolen. Not both plates, he notes, just one; and every time he is pulled over he asks the officers when they are going to get their act together.

The civil liberties objection

Kiriakou's verdict is unqualified: "I think Flock cameras are a direct assault on our civil liberties. Seriously. I think they're far more dangerous than people realize because they're blanket surveillance, constant surveillance." The harm he identifies is not the individual stop but the continuous positional record, "The authorities know where we are at any given time of the day. I mean, maybe we're going to the dry cleaners or going to the grocery stores or going to a clandestine meeting. You never know. But they're on us."

Asked whether Edward Snowden's predictions are coming true, he answers that the tense is wrong: "They've already come true. Yes." He adds that what makes it dangerous is the absence of any political constituency against it, "nobody on Capitol Hill cares. It's just not important enough."

See also

- Mass Surveillance
- Edward Snowden
- NSA Surveillance
