Texas City Demands $2 Million For Public Records On Flock Usage
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: As bipartisan backlash against Flock grows, some cities are asking anti-surveillance advocates and media outlets to pay eye-popping fees -- including charging tens of thousands or even millions -- to get information about how police departments are using and potentially abusing AI-enabled camera systems that track every vehicle that passes…
As bipartisan opposition to Flock intensifies, certain cities are demanding exorbitant fees from anti-surveillance advocates and media outlets seeking public records related to AI-enabled camera systems. The Texas Tribune reported that North Richland Hills, a Fort Worth suburb, recently requested payment of $2.3 million before providing information about the Flock system's usage and potential abuses.
Officials claimed that retrieving data from about a terabyte of communications related to errors, misuse, and effectiveness of the Flock system would require approximately 14 years of labor at $15 per hour. Phil Mynona, representing the Texas Privacy Coalition, described the fee as "ludicrous" and intended to discourage his public records requests.
Mynona had sought similar records from over 200 law enforcement agencies nationwide, noting the inconsistency in cities' fee assessments. While some cities offered more than 400,000 pages of documents free of charge, others charged up to $5,000 or even $121,000 for Flock records. These high prices may conceal data that has led to audits, arrests, and changes in law enforcement's use of cameras.
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