Lynnwood terminates Flock Safety cameras due to trust and oversight issues

LYNNWOOD—The Lynnwood City Council voted unanimously on Monday, February 22, to terminate its contract with Flock Safety, scrapping a controversial network of automated license plate recognition cameras that had drawn months of fierce community backlash over privacy invasions and potential misuse for immigration enforcement. The Council’s decision was a swift reversal for a program once […]

The Technical and Ethical Failure of Mass Surveillance in Lynnwood

As someone who takes privacy and the 4th Amendment seriously, I have grave misgivings about the surveillance contract Lynnwood has with Flock. In what LPD claims was a misconfiguration, they exposed this surveillance database to outside agencies, which used it for immigration-related searches. This is contrary to explicit promises made to the Lynnwood City Council. As […]

Somebody’s watching me: Flock versus red light cameras in Lynnwood

LYNNWOOD—In reaction to several members of the community voicing their concerns that the City of Lynnwood’s Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) technology may have been accessed for immigration-related queries at its October 24 meeting, the Lynnwood Police Department (LPD) announced last week that it temporarily paused the law enforcement tool known as Flock Safey cameras citing public […]