If you drive through the campus of the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, there’s a good chance Flock cameras are watching you. But who is watching the footage?
The answer surprised Mark Spencer Williams, a Wilmington attorney who obtained the cameras’ search data through a public records request to UNC Pembroke.
About 3,480 law enforcement agencies searched the 10 cameras more than 1.5 million times between April 24 and July 24 this year, according to Williams’ findings. Nearly 285,000 of the searches were conducted by four Texas agencies: the Houston, Dallas, and Fort Worth police departments and the Texas Department of Public Safety. Law enforcement in Georgia, Florida, Kansas, and Oklahoma also accessed the cameras’ database.
“A camera on a rural North Carolina campus is, in practice, a node in a nationwide dragnet,” according to the citizen-led group DeFlockILM, which Williams oversees.
Flock cameras are widely used across the country, including in North Carolina. The Atlanta-based company Flock Safety says its license-plate readers and other devices can help law enforcement solve crimes and locate people who are missing. Critics argue, however, that they contribute to mass surveillance.
Jennifer McCarrel, vice chancellor for communications and marketing at UNC Pembroke, told the Border Belt Independent the school has safeguards in place to ensure the camera system is “used for its intended purpose.” She did not elaborate on what the safeguards entail.
“We recognize our responsibility to balance the safety of our campus community with the thoughtful and appropriate use of this technology,” McCarrel said.
A spokesperson for the Houston Police Department declined to comment for this story. The Fort Worth Police Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Stalking, Traffic Violations
The UNC Pembroke Police & Public Safety, which spends $33,500 a year to operate the Flock cameras on campus, searched the cameras only 295 times during the three-month period, according to Williams. Officers cited stalking in about 41% of the searches, followed by welfare checks, theft, and alcohol offenses.
Law enforcement cited traffic infractions in more than 10% of the roughly 1.5 million searches overall–more than any other reason except auto theft. North Carolina agencies, including the sheriff’s offices in Polk and Union counties, ran about 5,000 searches for traffic infractions.
Under state law, North Carolina law enforcement can access Flock footage as part of “criminal investigations, arrests, prosecutions, post-conviction confinement, or supervision.” They can use the cameras to apprehend someone wanted for a felony, locate a missing or endangered person, or find a lost or stolen vehicle.
Agencies cannot use footage to enforce traffic violations. But North Carolina law enforcement cited traffic violations in about 5,000 searches of the UNC Pembroke cameras during the three-month period,Williams found. Out-of-state agencies also used the justification thousands of times.
Williams, who practices family law and aims to help communities understand the ways they are being watched, said he was also concerned that law enforcement accessed the UNC Pembroke cameras more than 800 times for immigration-related searches during the three-month span. The university is among the most diverse in the South: About 43% of students are white, 30% are Black, 12% are Native American, and 10% are Hispanic, according to the school’s data.
Pembroke is home to the headquarters of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, which has more than 60,000 members and a territory that spans Robeson, Scotland, Hoke, and Cumberland counties. About 40% of residents in Robeson County are Native American.
‘Entitled to That Conversation’
The three other Border Belt counties – Bladen, Columbus, and Scotland – also have Flock cameras, according to the system’s national database. Robeson County Sheriff Burnis Wilkins said footage has helped investigators solve multiple major crimes.
Williams practices family law but took an interest in Flock cameras earlier this year. Now he wants to help communities understand the ways they are being watched. He said he requested information about camera searches across the University of North Carolina System’s 17 campuses.
“I want people to learn what [the cameras] do and have a voice on whether they want to have their image captured and have their movements tracked,” Williams said. “I think we as Americans are entitled to that conversation.”
The ACLU of North Carolina is hosting a virtual town hall on August 20 to raise awareness about what it calls Flock’s “creepy” license plate readers.
“Across North Carolina, more community members are organizing to push back against these invasive surveillance systems and demand stronger privacy protections,” the organization said in a Facebook post, noting Pittsboro and Hillsborough ended their license-plate-reader contracts.