Flock ignores Minnesota city’s orders not to reinstall AI surveillance cameras — citizens complain after spotting two cameras despite the city canceling its contract | Tom's Hardware

Flock's AI surveillance cameras are continuing to cause controversy, this time in Dayton, Minnesota, where it is alleged that the company reinstalled two cameras despite express orders from the city not to do so. The city's local government posted on Facebook to explain, claiming that the Police Department was made aware of a maintenance work order on September 17, to which Dayton responded the next day, stating the program had been put on hold and no work orders were to be completed. However, Flock went ahead and reinstalled them anyway without authorization from the city.

Dayton’s city council had already voted to suspend the automatic license plate reader program and Flock cameras on August 25, following community concerns over privacy and data misuse, The Drive reports. Flock is infamous nationwide, with instances of its cameras being used for unjust purposes, such as a car reviewer mistakenly being pulled over because one of its cameras misread the tags. In another case, Flock’s chief information security officer also falsely assured the Oshkosh City Council that Flock did not create a heat map of individual license plates, when it in fact does have a heat map feature in the Flock system.

Flock cameras in the city had already been broken and vandalized, leading police to disable and remove the cameras to prevent further damage on August 20, before the program’s suspension became official, local media reports. Despite the suspension, almost a full month later, on September 17, Flock submitted the offending work order, which led to this latest controversy.

We don’t know when Flock reinstalled the cameras, but Dayton citizens had already complained and reported spotting the two Flock cameras, leading to the September 29 Facebook post. The local government further stated that the Dayton Police Department had been informed and ordered to remove the cameras.

It is unclear what happened in the chain of communication from when the license plate reader program was suspended and canceled its contract to notify Flock to cease work orders; either Flock defiantly ignored the orders or instructions had not reached the people responsible for installing the cameras; either way, this could be another blow to Flock's reputation.

• Police Chief physically unplugs Flock cameras after the company ignores contract cancellation
• Flock seeks to have security researchers' map of Flock cameras taken down
• Hackers find encryption key stored on Flock camera

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