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.[1]
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.[2]
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.”[3]
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.”[4]