Whether warranted or not, Flock Safety has received a lot of negative press in Skagit County, Georgia, and other areas.
Why?
“If you boil down the controversies about Flock Safety…and other investigative software packages, some of them come down to…data sharing issues.”
But in the end it doesn’t matter, because as long as there are still buyers for Flock Safety’s products, Flock Safety will continue to sell them.
Until they don’t.
“The Los Angeles Police Department…stopped working with [Flock Safety] over concerns about the data’s use, according to an LAPD official.”
Not cancelled entirely, but suspended temporarily.
“Dean Gialamas, LAPD’s chief information officer, told several news outlets that the LAPD is seeking more protections around the information collected by the agency.
“’The sticking point is around having very clear terms about who owns the data, what happens with the data once they collect it,’ said Gialamas.
“He said the LAPD would stop using Flock ‘until we can get those data, privacy, security and sharing concerns ironed out through a contractual relationship.’”
You will recall that in the state of Washington, those issues of ownership were murky. Jose Rodriguez requested camera data from the City of Stanwood, but Stanwood claimed they didn’t have the data but Flock Safety did. Except that Flock Safety claimed that the data was the property of Stanwood. Oh, and the relevant records had been auto-deleted. (There were also some issues regarding whether those records were “public record.”)
Will Los Angeles and Flock Safety reach a definitive agreement that clearly specifies who owns the data…and who can receive the data? From Los Angeles’ perspective, it doesn’t want its data to go to Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Bredemarket 