Just a few feet off the corner of Sixth Street and Warren Avenue, a black pole with a solar panel and sleek oval black camera rises between two full desert holly bushes. On the oval camera is a small raised image of a stick with two branches: the logo of Flock Safety, a company that sells automatic license plate reader technology to companies and localities across the nation.
A little further down, another image: a sticker printed with 1984, with an “A” in the University of Arizona style saying: “A” is watching you.
In recent weeks, a group of community members at the University of Arizona have raised concerns about the university’s contract with Flock Safety, part of a national wave of concern about how the company shares data it collects through its readers.
In recent months, Flock Safety has come under fire since it was revealed by 404 Media investigation in May that local police were using data collected by Flock cameras to do immigration-related searches for federal officials.
Since then, Flock confirmed it has been running a pilot program where it shared data with federal agencies aiming to combat drug distribution. Several towns including Sedona in Arizona and Evanston and Oak Park in Illinois have paused or deactivated their Flock Safety cameras in recent weeks.
Now, a group of Tucsonans have started a new group, Deflock Tucson, to push the university to end its contract with Flock Safety.
Desert Rising Tucson, the group that initiated the campaign and which includes university students, have shared a letter stating concern about how the university is sharing information about its work with Flock Safety and saying it must end its use of the license plate readers or risk a complaint to the Department of Education.
“There appears to be no informal announcement to either University students, staff, or the public,” the letter states, citing the Jeanne Clery Act. The act requires universities to share policies and procedures they use for campus safety. “Such undisclosed surveillance constitutes a failure to include accurate and transparent policy statements regarding campus facility security and monitoring, as expressly required by the Clery Act.”
Leila Hudson, chair of the Faculty Senate and a professor of Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the UA, said she was surprised to learn this summer that the university had a contract with Flock Safety and wanted to know more about the contract itself.
“At the heart of my concern is data security and data privacy and data sharing and potential for misuse for third parties for contractual arrangements that are not fully understood by the people whose data is being collected,” Hudson said.
In a statement, Chris Olson, chief of police with the University of Arizona Police Department, said the agency uses the license plate technology for campus security, and deletes records after 30 days.
“This license plate reader system strengthens our ability to maintain a safe and secure campus environment,” said Olson. “Third-party access to the data is prohibited without prior approval from UAPD or a court order.”
Flock Safety said it’s up to the customer whether or not the data collected by the company is shared with other law enforcement, and whether those agencies share it with federal agencies.
“Flock never sells customer data, and can only share customer data with an explicit customer request,” a Flock Safety spokesperson told Luminaria. “The decision to work (or not work) with federal authorities will always be a local decision; not Flock’s decision.”
The company also apologized for the confusion around its pilot program with federal agencies.
A statement from the company’s CEO Garrett Langley dated Aug. 25 recognized the confusion over how the company shared data it collects, and that some public statements from Flock Safety inadvertently provided inaccurate information.
“While it is true that Flock does not presently have a contractual relationship with any U.S. Department of Homeland Security agencies, we have engaged in limited pilots with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), to assist those agencies in combatting human trafficking and fentanyl distribution,” the statement said.
“We also didn’t create distinct permissions and protocols in the Flock system to ensure local compliance for federal agency users.”
The company said it would work directly with customers to understand the options for how their data is shared, and had paused all ongoing federal pilots as of the week of Aug. 18.
In Arizona, localities have engaged with the controversy around Flock Safety in a range of ways.
Sedona paused its Flock Safety program in August, and Flagstaff is considering whether to do the same. The Navajo Nation is also considering newly adopting the technology.
The concern over information sharing by local law enforcement and the company comes as immigration authorities tout an unprecedented expansion of the 287(g) Program, driven by agreements that allow local officers to function as deportation agents during routine policing.
For Hudson, at the University of Arizona, learning how campus police store and share data is also a key part of security in this moment. “It is part and parcel of ensuring our campus safety in the age of big data,” she said.
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