As Wisconsin Cities Flee Flock, Its Shared Camera Network Loses Value
Arthur T Knackerbracket writes:
As Wisconsin cities flee Flock, its shared camera network loses value
[...] Over the past few months, a spate of Wisconsin towns and cities have withdrawn from Flock deals over privacy and trust concerns. As they did so, another issue revealed itself: With each city that leaves, the Flock network becomes less useful to the cities that remain. And cities are starting to notice.
Consider Dane County, which includes the city of Madison. It's one of the most populous counties in Wisconsin. It was also a significant Flock user, with a contract for 24 license plate cameras. But after complaints from citizens and privacy experts, the Dane County Board of Supervisors on April 16 voted to cut the $80,000 in county funding for Flock cameras and banned "further expenditures on the system."
"There are well-documented concerns about how this company operates and uses its technology to violate people's Fourth Amendment rights [against unreasonable searches]," said County Board Chair Patrick Miles. "The board's action supports protecting our community from a proven bad actor. We have full confidence in our Sheriff and deputies, and we are open to considering other companies that have stronger safeguards in place."
[...] Because much of Flock's value comes from access to cameras in other jurisdictions, the loss of Dane County and Monona meant Flock was suddenly less useful to nearby police departments. The town of McFarland, which neighbors Monona, announced on May 15 that it would not move forward with its plan to deploy Flock cameras "in light of a shrinking database in Dane County and input from residents."
"Once Dane County lost their funding for Flock, we lost about half of the potential camera network within Dane County," said McFarland Chief of Police Brian Redman in a statement. "I had to ask, 'Were we still going to get the return on our investment with that loss?' With the network being chipped away, that wasn't going to be the case."
[...] Public resistance was crucial to many of these decisions to de-Flock. Indeed, the broad backlash against Flock has grown so strong that the surveillance company last week announced mandatory new audit controls and lower default data retention periods for US users.
Flock now knows what Kaukauna and McFarland realized: The same "network effect" that helps build a business can also work in the other direction once customers start to flee.
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