Close All Tabs - 'Get The Flock Out': The Fight Over License-Plate Readers Heats Up

Episode Date: July 8, 2026

Flock Safety’s license plate readers have become a flashpoint for a debate across the country. On one side: law enforcement and their supporters, who say the cameras reduce crime and improve public safety. On the other: residents and advocates worried about a creeping surveillance state and the myriad security issues Flock has already been exposed for. Morgan talks to Bay Area reporters Roselyn Romero and Riley Cooke about the fight over Flock spreading throughout the region, what we still don’t know about how Flock’s data is used and how some residents are finding creative ways to push back. Guests: Roselyn Romero, public safety journalist at The Oaklandside  Riley Cooke, reporter at Palo Alto Weekly  Further Reading/Listening: We Hacked Flock Safety Cameras in under 30 Seconds — Benn Jordan, Youtube  Palo Alto license plate data searched by hundreds of out-of-state agencies — Riley Cooke, Palo Alto Weekly Flock is quietly training Bay Area police to sway city leaders to buy surveillance tech — Roselyn Romero, The Oaklandside  Flock Exposed Its AI-Powered Cameras to the Internet. We Tracked Ourselves — Jason Koebler, 404 Media Does Flock Safety Keep Women Safe? — Jayme Kusyk, Knock LA Police Have Reportedly Used License Plate Readers to Stalk Romantic Interests at Least 21 Times in Recent Years - Institute for Justice   Home Depot and Lowe’s Downplay Customer Surveillance Threats — Whitney Curry Wimbish, The American Prospect Flock cameras in Hampton Roads surveil Black communities more intensely than white ones, CNU study says — Toby Cox, WHRO  ICE Taps into Nationwide AI-Enabled Camera Network, Data Shows — Jason Koebler & Joseph Cox, 404 Media Who is paint bombing Oakland’s Flock cameras? — Eli Wolfe, The Oaklandside Across the US, people are dismantling and destroying Flock surveillance cameras — Brian Merchant, Blood In The Machine Has S.F. cracked how to fix the car break-in crisis? Here’s what is driving the decline — Rachel Swan, San Francisco Chronicle   Read the Transcript here Email us at [e-mail] Follow us on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok⁠ Credits: Close All Tabs is hosted by Morgan Sung. Our team includes producer Maya Cueva, editor Chris Hambrick and senior editor Chris Egusa who also composed our theme song and credits music. Additional music from APM. Audio engineering by Brendan Willard. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad. Jen Chien is our Director of Podcasts. Ethan Toven-Lindsey is our Editor in Chief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This summer, switch to Xfinity and get Wi-Fi so reliable you can host the world. And now you can lock in your price for five years, guaranteed. Xfinity, imagine that. Restrictions apply, select plans only. Before the next track starts, have you ever wondered, who are the people in my old family photos? Or what brought them to Canada? With ancestry, you can start finding answers. Start with a name and we'll guide you from there.

For just 499, try our new 30-day beginner's pass and uncover generations of family. stories. No experience necessary. You've got questions. We've got ancestors. Offer ends July 22nd, 22nd, 26. Visit ancestry.ca slash beginners for details. Terms apply. From KQED. Having flock cameras will not keep us safe. These cameras will go up in the neighborhoods where people of color live, and we can be damn sure that this information will be taken by the feds and shared with ice. They do what they want. So don't believe anybody who says this information is private and secure. In April, Bay Area residents crowded into the downtown Oakland administration building. It was supposed to be a routine budget meeting for the Alameda County Board of Supervisors.

But it was unusually packed, thanks to one agenda item, approving a contract extension for flock safety cameras. This would allow the controversial surveillance tech company to continue running its network of AI-powered license plate readers throughout the county, including. including unincorporated areas outside of cities like Oakland and Berkeley. The contract expired last summer. If approved, the extension would buy another three months of flock surveillance. The room was packed with residents, from Oakland to Castro Valley.

Even more attended virtually to give comments. More than 100 residents spoke during the meeting. Close All Taps producer Maya Cueva was on the scene. Good evening. I urge you to reject flocks $854,000 contract distinction. This isn't a camera system. It's a mass surveillance network that will track every single one of us making a searchable database that tracks our movements. You guys say you care about immigrant communities, but this system puts them directly in danger. Flock's license plate readers have become a flashpoint for a debate across the country, not just in the Bay Area.

On one side, law enforcement and their supporters, who say the cameras reduce crime and improve public safety. On the other, residents and advocates who are concerned about a creeping surveillance state, an erosion of the rest of, to privacy, and the myriad security issues flock has already been exposed for. Alameda County residents of all ages have been fighting against flock in their neighborhoods for a while. And some aren't even able to vote yet. Hi, my name's Narayan. I'm 17. I go by He-Ham pronouns and I'm from East Oakland. Hello, my name's Kalin. I'm 17 years old and I live in Oakland. My name's Tyson. I'm 18 He-Him pronouns and I live in Albany.

I'm here to stop the implementation and extending of a flock contract. in my county, Flok is a multi-billion dollar corporation that is focused on hyper-surveillance of people, and we've already seen that it is in the wrong hands. Three years ago, Alameda County leaders approved a contract to install 100 plate readers throughout the county. Berkeley has just over 30, and Oakland recently approved a $2 million contract for nearly 300 more cameras in the city. Other residents have been speaking out about the issue for years now. I've been fighting Flock since 23, but now it's a lot more in the cultural zeitgeist. A lot of people have become a lot more aware of the surveillance systems that are being used to

surveil them to watch and kidnap their community members. We don't want mass surveillance. We should be investing in communities. We should be spending our money on that as opposed to programs like Flock, which contribute to a surveillance state and have no evidence. of actually reducing crime. But some residents spoke in support of extending flocks contract. I was raised in San Leandro for 25 years.

I owned property in San Leandro and I've been robbed 24 times. Recently, they put flock cameras in San Leandro, and it seems to be that they haven't been breaking in. So please vote yes on renewing the contract with the flock cameras. The board of supervisors kept calling for decorum when attendees clapped for anti-Flock speakers. So one resident used his a lot of time to scold the board. I mean, it seems like a majority of you are just ready to reject the overwhelming majority of your residents who are telling you to vote no on this contract, not spend $300,000 plus more dollars to extend this contract and basically just say, tell us to go fuck ourselves is what I'm hearing from you. The meeting lasted hours.

And after all that, the board of supervisors voted three to two in favor of extending the contract. Protests broke out. The backlash we're seeing against flock in Alameda County is part of a bigger nationwide fight against normalizing mass surveillance. Flock vandalism is up across the country. The Kalamazoo County Sheriff's Office says someone intentionally cut down a flock license plate reader camera along D Avenue in Cooper Township. Auburn normally has 12 in the city. Now, they're down too. Take a close look at this automatic license plate reading camera and you'll notice gold paint covering the lens. People have put stickers over the camera's lenses, covered them with trash bags, paint-bombed entire devices,

and joked online about pointing lasers at the cameras to destroy the sensors. In Oregon, someone cut down six poles holding flock cameras, leaving a note that said, quote, ha ha ha, get wrecked, you surveilling fox. No arrests have been made in either jurisdiction, but this is considered criminal mischief. That's local news station, K-E-Z-I-9, which actually broadcasted the uncensored note. But aside from resorting to criminal mischief, how else are people fighting the installation of these cameras in their neighborhoods? Today, we're digging into the heated debate around flock cameras, what exactly they're doing with your data, and why this might not. matter more than you think. Ready?

This is Close All Tabs. I'm Morgan Sung, tech journalist, and your chronically online friend here to open as many browser tabs as it takes to help you understand how the digital world affects our real lives. Let's get into it. Automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, have been rapidly rolled out by cities and communities around the country, with flock safety's tech at the lead. Before we get any, deeper into this, we need to talk about what Flock actually is and how it was adopted so quickly. Let's open a new tab. Why is Flock so controversial? Let's get into the origin story. So Flock's safety is based in Atlanta, Georgia. It operates a whole host of surveillance devices,

cameras, drones, and importantly for this story, ALPRs. Back in 2017, this Georgia tech alum, Garrett Langley, noticed the uptake and break-ins around his Atlanta neighborhood. Police told him that Graney surveillance camera footage was actually unhelpful, and what they really needed to find perpetrators were license plates. So Garrett called up two of his college buddies. Together, they worked on a prototype camera that could record and share what he called evidence, not just footage. Here he is, speaking to Forbes last year. Yeah, it's pretty why I'm at end of 17.

We're sitting at my dining room table in Atlanta, building cameras by hand. And now today we're in a roughly 100,000 square foot facility, building cameras, building trailers, building drones, all right here in Georgia, which is pretty fun. Fun is certainly one way to put it. This entrepreneurial, neighborly concern has grown into an operation of at least 90,000 cameras nationwide,

scanning over 20 billion license plates per month. Over a thousand private businesses have also installed the cameras, adding to Flock's massive surveillance database. In Oakland, the push for installing Flock's ALPRs was fueled by local frustration over bipping. You know, breaking into a parked car and looting whatever's inside. Here's Rosalind Romero, a reporter for the independent local news outlet, the Oakland side. She's been covering flock safety cameras for the region. Bipping or car break-ins were also understandably making a lot of residents angry. The city took action around 2024. The Oakland Police Department eventually

signed a contract with flock safety for cameras to be installed throughout the city, primarily on freeway entrances and exits. And right now, today, there are 293 flock cameras in Oakland, specifically automated license plate readers. Flock's ALPRs go way further than the standard traffic cam that tick its drivers for speeding. The cameras automatically capture the license plate of every car that drives by, as well as 6 to 12 images of other identifying information. All of this is used to create what Flock calls a vehicle fingerprint. The make and the model of that vehicle, if there is a scrape on the bumper,

or if there are bumper stickers on the car, Flock keeps a database of all of that information of every car that passes by the ALPRs. And that database can be used by the law enforcement agencies that contract with Flock to investigate crimes. Flock will send officers alerts when a camera captures a vehicle that's been marked stolen or wanted.

Or the police can search the database to trace a specific vehicle's movements across the country. car break-ins in San Francisco have plummeted since 2023. But whether flock has any part in that is dubious. The city started cracking down on car break-ins long before it adopted flock cameras. Still, supporters say that flock is necessary to prevent crime and catch those who do it. Now, the company says its devices are not equipped to track individual people, but recent expansions have residents concerned.

Flock also has cameras that are called pan, tilt, and zoom cameras. Those cameras, which are currently being used by the Alameda County Sheriff's Office, can be used to track pedestrians in addition to vehicles. All of the data collected by Flock cameras around the country is shared and stored in a massive aggregated database, which can be accessed by anyone in the network. That means that police in Texas can hunt a woman who travels out of state for an abortion, or that ICE agents can ask local police in Illinois to track undocumented families.

Both of these scenarios are real. They've already happened. Privacy activists and civil liberties groups are especially worried, given the Trump administration's recent immigration crackdown. People are scared, even putting flock cameras aside. Many immigrants are afraid. of immigration enforcement knocking on their doors. We're hearing a lot of newly arrived immigrants,

refugee and asylum seekers, and other vulnerable populations say that they don't even want to go outside anymore. They don't even want to go grocery shopping or send their children to school because they're afraid of ice coming in and taking them away from their families. We've been seeing reports of law enforcement agencies and police departments in places outside of California

that have shared data with Border Patrol, with U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement, and other federal law enforcement agencies that deal with deporting people. And so a lot of people are understandably afraid and really concerned about, well, if this technology is continued here in Alameda County, who's to say that that data is going to end up in the wrong hands? A big part of the concern is around data privacy. Flock says it deletes all the information after 30 days. But the company isn't very transparent about how they handle all of this data. There have been a lot of concerns from community members I've interviewed who say, you know, even if this data,

is stored in this database for 30 days. What happens after those 30 days? There have just been a whole host of concerns about the type of data that is stored for how long it's stored, and who has access to that data before and after it's retained. Flock also says all of this data and their camera feeds are encrypted.

These assurances fall flat, though. Around the U.S., amateur hackers have been able to get around the company's security system. Tech YouTuber Ben Jordan explained how he did it in a video posted last year. You may remember me from this video where I told you about 40,000 of these things that your tax dollars pay for that are tracking your every move and repurposing data collected about you every time that you drive past them. Upon further investigation, it turns out that there are over 80,000 of them. And we got some and we hacked them.

With the help of a cybersecurity expert, Ben was able to hack Flock safety cameras in a whopping 30 seconds. 30 seconds. First thing you're going to want to do is go ahead and press the button to turn on that police camera, then press the button on the back a number of times I can't disclose in this video. There she is. The flock wireless access point. Go on and connect. Send a command to enable ADB. Connect. And now you can connect to the flock safety device and access its data. Or install whatever the hell you want on it. Have fun. Apparently, hacking a flaw camera really is that easy. At least it was when that video was published.

And once you're in, there's a lot you can do. You can clone or decompile the apps. You could send the video stream data to a remote server. You could use it as a botnet client for malware. You could have it capture Wi-Fi handshake credentials and do middleman or honeypot attacks. Or replace or modify captured footage or images. And if that is the case, this could bring into question the integrity of the data being used as admissible evidence. court, like in general.

When these cameras can be hacked and used to spy on people or watch kids, watch everyday people, it really makes you think how comfortable are we with this type of mass surveillance in our communities. In a follow-up video, Ben showed how easy it was to find the control panels for Flock's cameras. 4-4 media confirmed that at least 60 of Flock's condor cameras, the ones that can pan, zoom, and tilt, were left unsecured on the open internet. That means that the live streams and administrator panels could be accessed by anyone with the right link, no login credentials needed.

With the panels, anyone could download 30 days of archive footage, manually control the cameras, and run diagnostics. So if flock cameras can be easily hacked or are left totally unsecured, what does it mean for the troves of data? All the photos, the live feeds, the vehicles, fingerprints that are stored on flock's cloud servers. How is a state of being used, authorized or not? Who can access it? That's a new tab. How is flock being misused? There have been a lot of red flags

raised by privacy experts and technology experts who say that flock doesn't have enough data privacy safeguards to protect itself from liability. as well as protect community members who may be vulnerable to civil immigration enforcement or enforcement as it relates to seeking abortions or reproductive health care in states where it's illegal. There have been reports of law enforcement using flock data for both of these purposes, as well as more personal uses. We've seen reports from other parts of the country where police officers have used flock's database to track down their ex-class. girlfriends and stalk them. A Wisconsin cop used Flock to stock his ex-girlfriend and her partner. He submitted 179 database searches for their license plates.

In fact, multiple officers have been accused of using Flock's database to stock romantic interests. There are at least 21 reported incidents of this in recent years. So even though we have Flock and law enforcement saying one thing about about Flock camera's original intent and purpose, there's always the potential for something to happen where this technology is used beyond its original intent. And that's all assuming the technology is working correctly. What if Flock's vehicle fingerprint is wrong?

Just a few months ago, police stopped a 62-year-old woman in Oakland who was driving to her job at a nursing home. Flock had connected her plates to a serious crime. So she exited the vehicle, with her hands up, her car registration was in her hand, and she saw these sheriff's deputies pointing their guns at her. And she was really confused.

And so eventually the sheriff's deputies told her, oh, you might not be the suspect we're looking for because the license plate reader tracked down your license plate, and we essentially connected your license plate number to a crime that had been committed not that long ago. What the woman didn't know was that her plates had been stolen and replaced with the ones associated with the crime. She came to the realization,

I'm being treated like I'm a violent criminal that could have gone so much worse than it did, right? But here's the thing. Flock flagged a black Honda Civic. This woman drove a silver car. Flock's vehicle fingerprint is supposed to be holistic, taking into account way more details about a car than just its license plates. Were these other details checked before officers made the stop? It opens up this scary question of, can this happen to me?

Can this happen to someone I love, someone I know, completely unsuspecting, who may have had their license plates stolen? And here's another issue with this technology, racial bias. Black and brown communities are already more likely to be overrequent. policed and are disproportionately targeted for traffic stops. The existing bias is evident in Flock's search records. Law enforcement officials still use racist and derogatory language when they search through Flock's ALPR database. And as one study showed, Flock safety cameras have been found to surveil predominantly black communities more intensely than white ones. In Virginia's Hampton Roads area, neighborhoods where at least 50 percent of residents are black have four times

a number of flock cameras as majority white neighborhoods. One of the highest concentrations of cameras is around the only HBCU in the area. In neighborhoods where black and brown people are already overly policed, overly surveilled, and overly criminalized, these cameras can play a big role in terms of the types of enforcement actions police take against these communities. And the company has been long resistant to. efforts to track and log its devices. Like in the case of a project called D.Flock, it's an open source community-run tool that identifies

and maps the locations of Flock's cameras. Flock CEO and co-founder Garrett Langley is not a fan. Here he is speaking to Forbes again. Unfortunately, there's terroristic organizations like D.Flock, whose primary motivation is chaos. They are closer to Antifa than they are anything else. And that I think is unfortunate because we don't want chaos or I don't want chaos. I like law and order. I like a society that has a bedrock of safety.

That interview is from September of last year. A few months later, he sent an unsolicited email to all Flock law enforcement clients. And in that email, the CEO attacked activist groups who were against Flock. He said that they wanted to normalize lawlessness and let murderers go free. The CEO also called. these activists, quote, terrorists. This prompted the city of Staunton, Virginia, as well as several others, to officially terminate their contracts.

And in a press release, the police chief of Staunton, Virginia, basically was like, we will not tolerate this type of rhetoric. They said, quote, the city of Staunton wants to make it clear that the flock safety The CEO's narrative does not reflect the city's values. Langley's comments also came amid intense debate over local police sharing flock data with ICE, which is a violation of city policy in some places. Altogether, it was a PR disaster. As of March, at least 30 localities have canceled their contracts with flock,

or deactivated the ALPRs. The city of Dayton, Ohio is still deciding whether to turn off their cameras. So while they deliberate, they cover them up with trash bags. Despite all the vocal opposition, Flock has a lot of support from businesses looking to improve public safety around their buildings, whether it's private companies trying to protect employees in downtown corporate offices,

or mom-and-pop shops trying to protect their storefronts. Flock safety cameras have been used by many business leaders and commercial districts throughout the Bay Area to address crime, prevent crime, crime, tracked down people who may have broken into restaurants, vandalized businesses. So there's just been a lot of support from large corporations in addition to local business leaders who argue that flock cameras have actually been a really good thing for business and for the safety of their employees and customers.

But residents are becoming more vocal about their distrust in flock, in part because it's unclear who exactly has access to flock's data once it's collected. Who is to say that these law enforcement agencies from other states can also use data from California law enforcement agencies? How far is this data being shared? Is flock breaking local laws? One reporter in Palo Alto uncovered a slew of flock search requests that violated the city's own policies. We're getting into that after this break. But first, we wanted to remind you that close all tabs depends on listeners like you to keep us going. You can support us by becoming a member at donate.kwed.org slash podcasts. Okay, after the break, Flok's data breach. Support for KQED

podcasts comes from Star One Credit Union. Give your savings account the love it deserves. When you keep your money with Star 1, you keep more of your money. Star 1 credit union in your best interest. Start your day with Marketplace Morning Report and me, Kimberly Adams. In 10 minutes or less, I'll explain the day's economic news, why it matters, and what it means for the way you live and work. Tune in each weekday morning for independent award-winning journalism that brings clarity to the economy. Listen to Marketplace Morning Report on your favorite podcast app. Okay, we're back. Let's open a new tab.

The Palo Alto Flock scandal. People were just as fired up about a pickleball debate a couple of weeks ago in Palo Alto. So there are certain issues that definitely get people to turn out, whether it's converting a pickleball court or cameras that are watching your every move when you're moving about the city. Riley Cook is a city hall reporter at Palo Alto Weekly. Earlier this year, a publication in nearby Mountain View had discovered that the city's flock data had been access by a slew of outside entities. Riley wanted to find out if the same thing was happening in Palo Alto.

So what I did is I filed a records request for these search audits that flock and the police department maintain. So every time a search is conducted, whether by a local officer or by an out-of-state agency or outside agency at all, into Palo Alto, that's logged in a giant spreadsheet with the time, the date, and the reason for the search. The request was approved, but at first, The police chief didn't hand over the specific documents that Riley was looking for. So I reopened the request and said, hey, I actually want these spreadsheets.

And eventually they gave them to me in March. And my editor was, he was out on some, like, coffee chat with a source. And so I was blowing up his texts. Like, we got the ALPR records. We got them. And it's thousands and thousands of pages that detail every single source. search, the time, the date, who conducted it. The search records revealed that police departments from all over the country were also searching Palo Alto's flock data without the permission of the city or the Palo Alto Police

Department. The police department told me that they didn't actually access any of the data or download it, but Palo Alto's cameras still appeared in search results from, you know, Mississippi, Illinois, basically all 50 states. including some federal agencies such as the ATF. ATF is short for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Riley's reporting shows that for about a year and a half, tens of thousands of searches from outside agencies were performed in Palo Alto.

I think my hope with doing that was to sort of beg the question of, what do these agencies have anything to do with Palo Alto? Or why is Palo Alto's ALPR data appearing in search results by, you know, police departments from halfway across the country. This is actually super illegal. California law prohibits the sharing of ALPR data with out-of-state and federal agencies, and this has been the case since 2016. The Palo Alto Police Department told Riley that they didn't know the city had been opted

into the national look-up feature. And they went above and beyond existing California law about not sharing with any out-of-state or federal agencies. and what my recording shows is that Flock was still able to bypass those without telling anybody. They didn't tell the police department. They didn't tell city officials. They just quietly rolled out this nationwide data sharing effort, which completely went past local and California regulations. I think city officials were really confident at first that they had enacted these protections,

that they were protecting residents and heating those surveillance concerns. And yet, at the end of the day, the company still did what to the, wanted to do. It begs the question. Why did Flock bypass the police department and make this data available nationwide? And what is the point of privacy protections if Flock can just access the data and share it anyway? Recently, there's been hundreds of people turning out to city government meetings to protest the Flock contract and urging Palo Alto to do what neighboring cities have done, which is to shut down the cameras or terminate their contract with Flock. Now, thanks to Riley's The Palo Alto Police Department is proactively sharing license plate search logs on its website.

So everyone's able to go and find that information on their own and can verify that no out-of-state or illegal searches are being performed. I don't know any other city that's currently doing that by proactively publishing those. So I think that's pretty cool. And Palo Alto is also auditing its flop contract. The consulting firm in charge of the company. the flock audit, called the OIR group, has managed to hold Palo Alto's cops accountable in the past, like standardizing body cam usage. Will these data protections do anything, though? Riley says that residents are concerned that flock could easily disregard them and go over the city again,

like it did in Mountain View. They don't like that they were lied to, and so I think a lot of residents had their suspicions about this, couldn't exactly confirm that it was happening in Palo Alto, and my reporting was just, again, that confirmation that they were looking for. Riley set the Palo Alto Police Department will probably listen to resident demands for greater transparency around Flock. But even if the city gets rid of Flock cameras, law enforcement will likely still use ALPRs. If not Flock's, then another companies. There's nationwide pushback against Flock. Are these community efforts going anywhere, though?

Let's open one last tab. Can Flock be stopped? We're heading back to Alameda County, where Oakland is partnering with Flock to operate nearly 300 ALPRs throughout the city. But organizers remain committed to protesting the contracts. Rosalind Romero, the Oakland side reporter from earlier, pointed out that Alameda County has a history of social movements. So because of Alameda County's location situated where all of these technological and AI advancements

are originated and the fact that Alameda County is home to many social justice movements over the years. I'm thinking about the Black Panther Party in Oakland, right? A lot of these social justice movements, racial justice movements, and activists are also on the side of we shouldn't have flock in our communities. and why are we continuing to expand these sorts of police technologies in our neighborhoods when there are already so many community members who are vulnerable and afraid? So I think it speaks to this crucial moment in Alameda County of everybody agrees that flock safety's cameras are really powerful. It's just now the debate is what, to you.

use that power for, how comfortable we are with that power, and where we see our society going with this type of powerful tool in our communities. In California, organizers have actually made real progress in stopping flock, or getting it removed. Santa Cruz was the first city to turn off its cameras. Mountain View, South Pasadena, Elserito, Campbell, Oxnard, and other California citizens. followed. And like we talked about earlier, some residents have taken matters into their own hands. In Oakland, we've seen people paint bombing these flock cameras where cameras in Oakland have just been splashed with paint and vandalized, if you will. And beyond the concerns about

flock's capabilities, the company's services are expensive. Flock contracts add up to millions of And this has many residents questioning how else this funding could be used. When crime is at near historic lows, why are we continuing to put more money and more power into these powerful technologies? Right now, the Oakland City Council is debating its budget for the next fiscal year. And we're seeing all of these programs for violence-preventing. and for other community events being cut. A lot of community members are saying, why are we continuing to invest in police technologies and surveillance tools

when we could instead allocate that money toward, say, health care or childhood education, early childhood education, more social programs for people who, really need it during the summertime or homelessness services. It's a really interesting and seemingly endless debate that we're seeing in Oakland, in Alameda County, and across the country. We have to take a vote on this. Back in April, at the Alameda Board of Supervisors meeting,

the board voted in favor of extending the flock contract until July 1st. That's despite the vocal pushback from residents. Get flops of our blocks. Get flogged. Last Tuesday, the day before the contract expired, the Alameda Board of Supervisors once again voted to extend Flok's contract, this time until the end of next year. So that motion passes. We're not entertaining comments from the gallery. Once that's up, the county sheriff's office will have the opportunity to look for alternative vendors.

surveillance tech companies that offer the same services as flock. There are about a dozen or so competitors that could replace flock cameras. So even if the board votes to end its contract, this larger question still exists. Does mass surveillance of people who aren't suspected of a crime violate their Fourth Amendment right to privacy? Is that worth giving up in the name of public safety? This debate is not unique to the Bay Area. we're seeing at the federal level, President Donald Trump's mass deportation agenda playing out in full force. What does that say about the type of surveillance, technology, and society that we want to have here in the Bay Area?

What does that say about the types of companies and businesses and values we want to support and continue funding, not just at the national level, but even here in our own communities. This debate gets at the heart of the right to privacy, guaranteed by the Constitution but chipped away at every year. Communities across the country have made it clear that they oppose the partnerships between surveillance tech companies and the government. Will city leaders listen? Who knows? But paint-bombing flock cameras is a growing trend. And as we've seen from other incidents across the country, people will find alternative and creative ways to make their anger heard. That's it for today's deep dive, but as usual, stick around after the credits for bonus

content. And if you're dying to open more tabs about flock safety and all of its controversies, check out our show notes. We have some further reading there. But for now, let's close all these tabs. Close All Tabs is a production of KQED Studios and is reported and hosted by me, Morgan Sung. This episode was produced and field reported by Maya Cueva. It was edited by Chris Agusa, who also composed our theme song and credits music. The Close All Tabs team also includes editor Chris Hambrick and audio engineer Brendan Willard, additional music by APM. Audience Engagement support from Mahas Sanad. Jen Gien is our director of podcasts and Ethan Tovin Lindsay is our editor-in-chief.

Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California, local. This episode's keyboard sounds were submitted by Alex Tran, and recorded on his white Epo Maker, High 75 keyboard with Fogridan Red Samurai keycaps, and Gatoron Milky Yellow, Pro V2 switches. This episode includes clips from WWMT News, WHAS11, TMJ4 News, K-EZI-9, Ben Jordan, and Forbes. Special thanks to Rosalind Romero and Riley Cook and everyone we spoke to at the Alameda County Board of Supervisors meeting. Thanks for listening. For the past couple of months, it's mostly been organized demonstrations,

and there's been a sign that's been going around that says GTFO, get the flock out, which I think is pretty funny. Support for KQED podcasts comes from Star One Credit Union. Give your savings account the love it deserves. Keep your money with Star 1, you keep more of your money. Star 1 Credit Union in your best interest. Each story you hear on Planet Money starts with a question. What happens if we refund tariffs? Why are groceries so expensive? At NPR, we stand for your right to be curious

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