Rarely has the Los Angeles Police Department found a police toy it doesn’t love. The third-largest police force in the US has major Palantir contracts in place, uses sketchy apps to track minority communities, and routinely sends drones to spy on peaceful protestors.
So when the LAPD ends a contract with a surveillance company because it thinks the technology is too dangerous, you know there’s a problem.
“This contract is not being renewed because of serious concerns around civil liberties and civil rights issues, particularly around privacy and the data that is being collected from these cameras,” LAPD’s chief information officer Dean Gialamas told ABC in a statement. “The LAPD had to make a difficult decision, in this case discontinuing using Flock services until we can get those data, privacy, security and sharing concerns ironed out through a contractual relationship.”
The news comes just days after our sister publication The Drive‘s Joel Feder reported how he was suddenly swarmed by armed cops while test driving a Range Rover with his wife in Minnesota. Officers said they had been tracking him for days using Flock’s AI-integrated cameras, which had erroneously tagged his car as stolen.
After the latest Flock contract news broke, 404 Media revealed that a July 10 audit by the LAPD Office of the Inspector General caught the department’s ALPR cameras generating 161 false stolen-vehicle alerts in just two months — each one ending with officers pulling over an innocent driver. Factoring in 337 alerts which “resulted in the recovery of stolen vehicles,” the LAPD’s cameras carry an error rate of 32.3 percent, effectively giving officers a one-in-three chance at pulling an innocent person over.
“During the review period, officers acknowledged 161 alerts as accurate license plate matches; however, subsequent investigations determined the vehicles were not stolen,” the report reads. “In addition to creating an inconvenience for vehicle owners, these inaccuracies can affect individual liberty interests, erode public trust, and potentially create substantial legal and financial liability concerns.”
The OIG report notes that officers are required to “attempt to verify all records prior to conducting an investigative stop,” though it didn’t disclose how many of the 161 wrongful stops were the result of an officer’s failure to do so. Instead, investigators blamed license plate records it says were “not updated in a timely manner,” which “may” lead cops to “act on inaccurate or outdated information, increasing the risk of unnecessary enforcement actions, including vehicle stops and wrongful detentions, or a confrontation with serious consequences.”
As 404 flagged, the LAPD approaches potentially stolen vehicles as “high-risk” stops. For the LAPD, these stops require drastic shows of force, including “calling for back up, air support, and a supervisor and ordering the suspect out of their vehicle,” the report reads.
It doesn’t take a large language model to figure out that this is an incredibly dangerous scenario for Black people in Los Angeles, who account for 19.5 percent of those killed by the LAPD, despite making up only nine percent of the city’s population.
Whatever way you slice it, it seems one of the most notorious police departments in the US has finally met its match.
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I find it interesting that the co-founder & CEO of Flock Camera Safety has a surname of LANGLEY.
You know as in Langley, Virginia. Home of the masters of surveillance none other than the CIA. Wouldn't surprise me if Flock is actually a CIA cutout or other intel agency.
Anyway, Garrett Langley is a nobody (almost like he was conjured out of a lab) but last year he said anyone, namely privacy activists who don't like his cameras is a terrorist. A few days ago he apologized. The company was not founded with his money, but with money from Peter Thiel who co-founded Palantir with the CIA after Total Information Awareness was shutdown in early 2000s after a Congressional investigation found them to be violating the Constitution as well as numerous civil rights. Thiel named the company after the Palantir crystal in Lord of the Rings.
That's just PR damage control. Behind closed doors he still calls those who oppose his cameras, terrorists.
"“It’d be interesting to know where the douchebag factory is that turns out billionaires in t-shirts who run our most powerful companies. Who is that guy? He’s a billionaire,” [Tucker] Carlson said of the Flock CEO." Gizmodo
"Flock lobbies local, elected officials and police; and it is possible they will flood our city with propaganda in coming months. Flock Safety rep Lily Ho wrote to one councilmember around the city’s Flock meeting, calling local critics of Flock cameras “conspiracy theorists.” Langley has called critics “Antifa” and “like terrorists.” Santa Cruz Sentinel
Sun Valley resort, where the wealthy gather for secret meetings, mock the sheeple and strategize how they can gaslight the whole population behind closed doors. F*ck that artificial billionaire.
There's another company that wants to attach Bluetooth readers to these Flock cameras. So, anytime you are using Bluetooth in your car or your car is using Bluetooth, that particular address is aligned to your license plate which by default creates what?
A Digital ID.
So, 'they' know exactly who is driving that car, when, where it's going, how many times you travel a particular street, etc.
The other Flock founder, a financier is Ben Horowitz, an Israeli Jew. He's also a big financier of Shield AI, an American aerospace and defense technology company, similar to Palantir except for AI fighter jets & drones. Peter Thiel's (Christian vampire and JD Vance's mentor) Palantir has been deployed to slaughter the enemies of Israel and was used extensively on Gaza genocide including Lebanon. Every time Nuttyanyahu went on camera and announced "precision bombing" that was Palantir precision. War is war but domestic usage in America should be banned.
So, when you have Flock cameras being setup all over the country financed & managed by the same people who are fully supporting the Mossad & IDF going after opponents of Israel...these Flock cameras true purpose may be to track down antisemites in the USA.
Where is the line drawn? Next, it'll be Christians or anybody that criticizes Israel or the Establishment. Sound nuts, like a giant crazy conspiracy? Look at how many people were arrested (some deported) for criticizing Israel in protests or sending a mean tweet.
You're right it does and is, and it gets much worse when they start passing laws on it, but this is the unfortunate dystopian world we live in. Just keep your head down and your mouth shut and you'll be fine. That goes for your car too! No mean bumper stickers or tinted glass (varies state to state).
Flock/Palantir will simply tweak the software, lobby congress for new amendments to privacy & civil rights laws and force the LAPD to use it. Along with every other PD.
Meanwhile, organizations like DeFlock will keep raising awareness.
How It Actually Works
The Dragnet Problem
Where It's Being Used
The Legal Pushback
