The Flock camera at First and Ellsworth, photographed last November, is the only one the Albany police have deployed. They plan to install three others.
Early on Saturday morning, an Oregon law enforcement agency searched the data of Albany’s lone police surveillance camera for a shoplifting investigation.
You could learn that much from the Flock Safety company’s “Albany OR PD Transparency Portal.” But that’s all you could learn about that search. There’s nothing about who did the search or whether it got any result.
The transparency portal has a column headed “camera count” without explaining what the count means. But Google AI says: ”This count is a metric used to … gauge the extent of the surveillance network.”
For that search for a shoplifting suspect at 5:18 a.m. on Jan. 10, the “camera count” was 166, suggesting a wide search well beyond Albany’s lone Flock camera.
The Flock portal says 21 Oregon police agencies are authorized to search data from the Albany camera. (Eugene and Springfield police are on that list. They’ve reportedly turned off their Flock cameras, but it’s not clear whether they can still search others.)
Albany has a $14,000 annual contract with Atlanta-based Flock Safety for four of the company’s license plate and car recognition cameras. But only one has been installed so far. It looks down on the intersection of First Avenue and Ellsworth Street.
I asked Police Chief Marcia Harnden for a Flock camera status update.
“The one camera is still in place,” she told me last Monday. As for the other three, “we are working with property owners around our high retail theft areas to get them installed. The focus areas are around Heritage Mall and Fred Meyer with an additional near Walmart. We don’t have a firm date yet for install.”
As of Sunday night, the camera on a pole at First and Ellsworth had recorded 59,965 “unique” vehicles during the last 30 days. During that period the data was searched 14 times.
There were two “hotlist hits.” What that means is not explained, but the camera seems to be alert for vehicles being sought by Amber Alert, the National Crime Information Center, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.
Agencies searching the Flock system are supposed to give a reason. For the 14 searches posted for Albany over 30 days ending Saturday, Flock shows, as reasons, two cases of “hit and run,” one “missing person,” two theft investigations, one shoplifting, one “ATL” (attempt to locate), and one unauthorized vehicle use.
For six of the 14 searches, no reason is listed. Transparency, it seems, goes only so far.
The searchers are not identified either except that one of the hit-and-run searches is listed as “LCSO.” Lane County is the only sheriff’s office among the authorized searchers that starts with an L.
The transparency portal has an entry for “recent success stories.” When I checked it Sunday night, that item was blank. (hh)
These cameras do not magically appear – their use involve budget request by some city agency. if peoples are happy with these cameras then no problem, otherwise we must discover them in budget and ask council to not spend taxpayer money on intrusive surveillance that does not provide meaningful deterrence of crimes, or provide needed transparency as article suggest.
what is a “Unique” vehicle? That word alone could cover a multitude of possibilities. To me in means anything and or reason it’s wanted to be.
I think it means different vehicles. Any one vehicle is counted only once in 30 days, no matter how often it appears. But I’ll try to confirm that.
Counting a vehicle “only once in 30 days” is downright stupid. A vehicle can be up to a lot of mischief in that span of 30 days. Doesn’t make sense at all.
Also, just heard the other day on TV news that several cities (I don’t remember in which states) are cancelling their Flock cameras, as what kinds of surveillance they are doing is too unclear.
No, the camera registers every vehicle. But the stats include the same vehicle only once.
Eat. Shop. Play. And get surveilled!
Any update on why this information is not shared with Corvallis?
These cameras are coded to create profiles made from scrapping the internet of your stolen data.
First and last name
License plate ( obviously )
Bank accounts
Screen names
Emails
SSN
Aliases
IP address
Anyone with any coding knowledge can find this.
So Albany had given up their citizens rights to liberty to catch some petty theft? Disgusting work
And with this being a private company YOU BET YOUR A$$ that data is for sale!!!
This is a civilian surveillance entity that does not just look at license plates. These cameras have fullvideo and audio surveillance. These devices flow into flock OS. Every device in their network becomes a deputized surveillance node. This includes other partnership devices such as homeowners associations, businesses, ring, cameras, etc.. searches can be Freeform meaning they can simply search green hat, red shirt, and it would pull up anyone meeting that criteria. Then they can investigate anyone using flocknova. which now can link Other electronic forms of identification, such as social media phone tracking, it can then identify anyone living in your house. They even have the ability to identify anybody visiting you by setting up a Geo fence search around your address through up device signals around your house. These searches do not require any kind of warrant, case number or reason! I do not know if Albany requires a warrant before they use nova. These cameras do in fact not capture personal information but a license plate is tied doing an identity and your identity is freeform searchable in their system. Because flock uses disparate systems, not just police systems a search looking for someone with a blue shirt, red hat and has a truck with landscaping business decals on it would be considered. And police agencies could based on information provided to them get a warrant and disrupt your life, even though you had absolutely nothing to do with Whatever was being investigated so you were presumed guilty not innocent based on information that had nothing to do with you . If you really don’t care about surveillance and that you have nothing to hide then the next time you shower just leave your door open! The problem with nothing to hide is that laws, Norms and interpretations of guilt are not fixed. Without privacy there is no preventing retroactive criminalization because you no longer control the evidence of your life. This just creates a system of presume guilt.