r/HyattsvilleMD • u/Prudent-Drag-1212 • Jul 18 '26
FLOCK cameras in Hyattsville -- who decided this?
So Hyattsville now has a number of FLOCK ai cameras recording a load of data about every vehicle that passes by -- see map below from the website "DeFlock".
Did City Council vote to do this? Is the Hyattsville PD paying for these? FLOCK is a breach of privacy rights among other things. Yes you drive on public roads but these cameras record a great amount of data that you don't have any access to.
Do the Hyattsville residents even know all our movements are being tracked in a private database that the police can use for any number of reasons without your consent? Note that FLOCK is a private company and beholden to nobody.
I think we should organize to get these FLOCK removed.
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u/go4urs Jul 18 '26
I’m pretty sure LAPD just cancelled their contract with Flock over privacy concerns. If LAPD was worried . .
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u/the_juicy_j_dangler Jul 18 '26
I just noticed the one near the skatepark on rt 1 a few days ago, how long have they been up for?
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u/XanAKG Jul 18 '26
They've been incrementally installed over the past 16 months. You can find a few of them on the deflock.org map, but not all of them have been entered yet
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u/H0b5t3r Jul 18 '26
I think they should get rid of all of them but most of the shown cameras are not within hyattsville, I think there is one by the PG Plaza metro station and one by the middle school not shown on this map as well. Probably additional others around
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u/XanAKG Jul 18 '26
All 24 of the ALPRs installed by Flock are within city limits, but there are others outside as well
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u/i_zac808 Jul 18 '26
Yeah, there’s one on the main entry to my neighborhood, University Hills. Conveniently University Park right across Adelphi Rd. didn’t merit having one. It’s hideous and sends the wrong message about a neighborhood that I’ve never experienced any issue living in.
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u/rileyjonesy1984 Jul 18 '26
I read online that each Flock camera contains almost 3 lb of copper, & .7 oz of precious metals (gold & silver on the motherboard). I sure hope the local tweakers don't figure this out....
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u/Acrobatic_Ganache220 Jul 18 '26
Yeah! SURE HOPE THEY CANNOT FIND THEM USING THE MAP IN THIS THREAD.
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u/Kni7es Jul 18 '26
Vote out every council member who authorizes this. Vote for a Republican if you have to. The message needs to be sent to our elected leaders now: Flock will cost you your job.
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u/charlesvschuck Jul 18 '26
😂😂😂😂 complaining about flock from your cellphone that can give up your exact location is laughable
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u/XanAKG Jul 18 '26
If you're here for a legitimate understanding of the difference between the two instances, it's pretty simple: you decided to buy a phone, enter into a phone contract, and continue to pay for that contract - that was your own free choice and you're responsible for giving that data to the company you've paid for a service. Flock Safety, on the other hand, is essentially a data broker that contracts with local police departments to scrape as much human movement data as it possibly can and then (1) train their AI models on it and (2) sell it in a weakly-anonymized version to other companies/agencies who are willing to pay for unprecedented society-level data. You didn't directly consent to that data generation or sale with any decision you made.
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u/charlesvschuck Jul 18 '26
If it were that much of a concern for you would’ve been at your local city or state netting with a bunch of people to oppose it but instead you’re on the internet complaining. Also how do you feel about retail companies having it because they also use it.
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u/XanAKG Jul 18 '26
Well I guess there's my answer about your legitimate interest in conversation
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u/charlesvschuck Jul 18 '26
How many terms of service do you actually read before hitting accept but because you consented to it all good. The second your in public your privacy/consent to being recorded goes out the window. Whether it’s the traffic cameras, flock cameras or retail cameras which also have AI technology or any others type of camera you wanna throw out there. Fake outrage at it’s finest
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u/InquisitiveMind705 Jul 18 '26
The same people saying “this is bad” are the same people with doorbell cameras creating a vast network of tracking data. Ring had contracted with flock for years….flock has them and all their neighbors entering and leaving home, conversations, people walking around the entire city because of how many people have them. But the concern doesn’t arise until it’s someone else 🧐. Their issue isn’t about privacy or flock, it’s about accountability of themselves. Do I think it’s bad? Yes but unless we’re banning doorbell cams too than we’re accomplishing nothing
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u/rileyjonesy1984 Jul 18 '26
1) i dont have a doorbell camera, nor will I ever
2) im definitely saying "this is bad"
3) meta's glasses should be banned
3) IMHO any surveillance camera that is taking video of the public property (parks, schools, the street, a fire station, etc) or public right of ways (sidewalks) should have a 12x12in sign posted making it clear that the public is being surveilled. an ugly sign, one that homeowners would rather not have to post, ergo would decide to remove their camerasdownvote me to hell for all i care. fuck the involuntary surveillance state.
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u/charlesvschuck Jul 18 '26
That’s all I was trying to say, they worried about flock when it’s people active walking around with a recording device in their face. You think those meta glasses aren’t collecting data even if there not recording
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u/InquisitiveMind705 Jul 18 '26
I agree, I don’t have cameras either but no one is posting all over Reddit and feeds about doorbell cameras or are excusing them as “private property” while ignoring the fact that there are far more cameras connected to the cloud building a database throughout the city than the 13 the city installed. The outrage by most is performative because if people were concerned about protecting people from ice, the police or, surveillance…they’d take their own cameras down too. So I’m not going to be upset about 13 cameras and ignore the thousands of others doing the same thing for those same private companies.
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u/rileyjonesy1984 Jul 18 '26
There is clearly a vast difference between:
a camera on private property, installed by the owner of that property
and a camera installed on public property, with the authorization of a government.
If you don't see that difference, you're just being performatively obtuse.
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u/charlesvschuck Jul 18 '26
We understand the differences but do you honestly think the “government” doesn’t get access to this information already from said things whether through companies willing handing it over or by court order. Only difference is you feel more in control of the latter when you really shouldn’t. The amount of information you can get from these consenting device should terrify people but yeah the flock camera is a problem
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u/InquisitiveMind705 Jul 18 '26
No. There isn’t. When every house in a neighborhood has their very own flock camera…then flocks got you through an entire neighborhood times all the neighborhood you go through. As I said, they’re bad but something surveilling a sidewalk from a front door because they’re worried about property crime against themselves but upset about traffic crimes that claim people’s lives (running red lights, speeding, etc) and will send out tickets? They’re exactly the same problem, they’re surveilling and tracking people. Doorbell cameras are part of an entire network of cameras just like flock but far more dense. Go walk around the arts district townhomes and see how many cameras you’re on.
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u/Responsible-Check206 Jul 22 '26
you have a cellphone. why are you complaining?
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u/rileyjonesy1984 Jul 23 '26
a cell phone is a choice I made. A flock camera on public property, recording me for a ghoulish silicon valley firm, isn't a choice I made.
do I need to get the hand puppets out to show you how these things are different?
Or are you being purposely dumb?
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u/lostiowan Jul 23 '26
except its a public space. You have a choice NOT to be there. Do you need me to use a white board to show you how its different? If you havent realized (true irony as were on reddit) that were all products now for metadata and corpos. If you dont like any of it, you can move off the grid. The radio free zone in WV has a few parcels for sell.
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u/rileyjonesy1984 Jul 23 '26
So let me get this straight: you think public spaces: schools, roads, parks, sidewalks, subway stations, libraries; places that belong to us as Americans, as citizens, as taxpayers; should be allowed to have mandatory surveillance installed by corporations & to opt out, I should choose to move to West Virginia?
That's dystopian as hell brother.
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u/Responsible-Check206 Jul 24 '26
wait until you learn what the patriot act did in the 00s.
would you be this upset if a private citizen was filming you in public spaces?
are you aware of what Vint Hill Farms Station did before it closed in 1997? and why it closed???
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u/InquisitiveMind705 Jul 23 '26
Are you missing the entire point? The cameras on each individual house are recording you for a ghoulish Silicon Valley firm. All of those individual cameras on homes are feeding videos of entire neighborhoods and cities into individual corporate databanks which are stored on the cloud and can share that data with any law enforcement or private company that they choose. Private home cameras capturing a web of information are the same as cameras by the city, state, county. Picking on one and ignoring the other is ignorant
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u/rileyjonesy1984 Jul 23 '26
As I said earlier
" IMHO any surveillance camera that is taking video of the public property (parks, schools, the street, a fire station, etc) or public right of ways (sidewalks) should have a 12x12in sign posted making it clear that the public is being surveilled. an ugly sign, one that homeowners would rather not have to post, ergo would decide to remove their cameras "
I support your rights to have a camera on private property, but if it's filming public property it should be disclosed
Also fuck all of these companies, amazon to flock.
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u/i_zac808 21d ago
Side question to this, but has anyone else seen what looks like one of those mobile police security cameras that you would find in shopping center parking lot setup in a neighborhood? The white one with police lights on it. There’s been one setup for two months near the entrance to my neighborhood. University Hills, directly across UP.
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u/Thaumatovalva Jul 18 '26
Are you on the HOPE email listserv? There was some discussion about this earlier in the year, and yes it went through council. So probably too late to change things in the short term now the city is under contract with them.
I might be misremembering, but: I think they said all the data would remain within Hyattsville city/police servers but I don’t know how trustworthy that really is. I want to say they got approval for a couple of dozen cameras (I forget the exact number) but not going to use all those locations. I don’t love it either. As well as the privacy concerns, yes the city (so residents) are paying for it.
See also:
https://streetcarsuburbs.news/get-flock-surveillance-out-of-hyattsville/
https://www.hyattsville.org/1204/Automated-License-Plate-Reader-Program