KFFR Forum Question 4: Public Safety Technology and Privacy
I joined Commissioner George, Liz Newsom, and Clerk Linke for a forum at the KFFR studios on Thursday, September 17. We each answered prepared questions in front of a studio audience. The event was broadcast live, streamed, and recorded.
Here is the fourth question of the evening:
Grand County approved the use of Flock Safety automated license-plate-reader technology for law-enforcement purposes. When commissioners evaluate whether to continue or renew technology like this, what evidence of public-safety benefits should they require, and what protections should be in place regarding privacy, data retention, and sharing information with outside agencies?
The county approved a Flock Safety service agreement in 2023, describing its purpose as locating stolen vehicles and vehicles associated with crimes.
And my response:
I am against mass surveillance technology like automatic license plate readers, especially when our data is controlled by an unregulated, multinational tech corporation like Flock. The contract approved by our county commissioners in 2023 is standard, and such contracts continue to be proven to allow for the abuse and misuse of the information with very little enforcement. This raises serious privacy concerns about how much power our government should have over our daily lives, and how much of that power they hand over to private interests. There is little more protection the contract could include to avoid these risks given who the company is and human nature.
The data I would care to see is whether taxpayers are actually getting a return on their investment. When the contract is up for review in a few months, I will want to know: how many crimes were stopped and how many criminals were caught using the 13 cameras our commissioners contracted, and could our police officers have caught those same criminals using other means? And does that ratio really justify losing our privacy and spending public funds?
I am also curious to know the rate of false leads, mistaken identities, and even crimes that the cameras failed to stop.
Finally, keep in mind that this contract only covers cameras in unincorporated Grand County. As of the 2023 contract, the towns of Granby, Kremmling, and Winter Park/Fraser have their own Flock camera contracts through their local police departments, which are not managed by the county.
You can listen to the full forum here: https://kffr.org/elections/
