Suburb blocks Flock records with huge fee

North Richland Hills, a Fort Worth suburb, demanded two point three million dollars from the Texas Privacy Coalition for public records on police use of Flock surveillance cameras.

City claims fourteen years of labor needed

Officials said searching about a terabyte of communications about errors, misuse, and effectiveness of the Flock system would take approximately fourteen years of labor at a rate of fifteen dollars per hour.

Requester calls fee designed to stifle

Phil Mynona, who filed the request on behalf of the Texas Privacy Coalition, told the Texas Tribune the fee seemed ludicrous and designed to stifle his public records searches.

“ludicrous”

Fees vary wildly across the country

Mynona has sought similar records from more than two hundred law enforcement agencies across the US. Some cities provided more than four hundred thousand pages for free, while others charged five thousand dollars or more.

Houston station quoted one hundred twenty-one thousand dollars

A Houston news station called KPRC saw officials quote up to one hundred twenty-one thousand dollars for Flock records, according to the Texas Tribune.

Transparency has exposed police stalking

High price tags may hide data that anti-surveillance groups note have triggered audits, arrests, and changes in how law enforcement uses cameras. Many cops have been found using cameras to stalk strangers and people in their personal lives.

Ex-cop pleads guilty to one hundred felonies

An ex-Texas cop, Zachary Anthony Klein, reportedly pled guilty to one hundred felony counts of misuse of official information in exchange for the state not pursuing charges related to stalking several people. His abuse was outed after USA Today submitted a public records request.

Governor halts Flock funding after case

Disturbed by Klein's case, Texas Governor Greg Abbott quickly halted Flock funding and stopped issuing permits, according to the Texas Tribune.

Judge rules Flock search unconstitutional

A federal judge in Oklahoma, Sara Hill, ruled that a cop conducted an unconstitutional search when searching a Flock database simply because a woman's license plate was from California, according to four zero four Media.

Judge calls Flock indiscriminate mass surveillance

Judge Sara Hill argued that Flock's network is a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance, with its ALPR technology creating a large-scale, dragnet-type surveillance system that should require a warrant to search.

“is a type of indiscriminate mass surveillance”

Hundred thousand warrantless searches monthly

Audits reviewed by four zero four Media show there are currently more than a hundred thousand warrantless searches of the Flock system every month. Sometimes innocent people are arrested based on Flock alerts.