Coral Springs Police tried to calm Flock camera fears. It didn’t go well.

An apparent attempt by Coral Springs police to quell residents’ concerns about the use of Flock Safety road surveillance cameras backfired in spectacular fashion on Facebook this week.

The police department on Tuesday posted a myth vs. fact list about their use of the controversial license plate reading technology. Based on thousands of the 22,000 comments, the post did little to ease concerns about government overreach and privacy.

Some of the purported myths listed by the department were:

• “License plate readers are used to track everyone in Coral Springs.”
• “Police can access this information without limits.”
• “The cameras don’t make a difference.”
• “This technology is unique or invasive.”

The facts listed were:

• “License plate readers are an investigative tool that captures license plates and vehicle characteristics to help identify vehicles connected to reported crimes. They do not identify drivers or passengers, and they are not used to monitor people’s daily activities.”
• “Access is restricted to authorized Coral Springs Police Department personnel for legitimate law enforcement purposes and is governed by department policy and applicable law.”
• “License plate readers have helped our officers recover stolen vehicles, locate wanted and violent offenders, identify suspects in robberies and homicides, and generate investigative leads in minutes that once took investigators days or weeks to develop. Our year-to-date violent crime clearance rate is 63%, well above the national average of 35–40%, and technology like this plays an important role in helping us solve serious crimes.”
• “Technology is part of everyday life. Cell phones, navigation apps, toll systems, security cameras, banking transactions, and countless other technologies collect information to provide services people rely on every day. Law enforcement uses License plate reading technology for one purpose — to help solve crimes, recover victims’ property, and keep our community safe.”

Commenters immediately tore the post to shreds, accusing the department of pushing inconsistencies in the post.

“‘They won’t track you.’ sincerely, the only people who can see if they are tracking you,” read the most popular comment.

“Was this written by Flock AI?” another asked.

“And remember kids, the next time that somebody tells you, ‘the government wouldn’t do that,’ oh yes they would,” wrote another.

Coral Springs police didn’t respond to New Times’ request for comment.

The post features a community note (a feature Facebook implemented as a fact-checker for posts containing incorrect or misleading information) saying, “While many points in this post are true, it doesn’t address the bigger concerns with how Flock is handling the data they’re collecting or instances of stalking using Flock’s system, which likely wouldn’t have happened as easily with traditional license plate readers that only record to the individual police agency in the region.”

The potential danger for misuse is evident from past stories of officers using other license-reading technology. As the Institute for Justice points out, police officers around the country have used other license plate readers to stalk romantic interests. The group found 22 instances of such stalking in recent years, including one where a Monroe County deputy allegedly used the state’s license plate database to track a woman he met while working security on the set of a TV show.

Flock cameras are becoming increasingly popular in neighborhoods and municipalities across the country. According to the ACLU (which strongly opposes the use of Flock cameras), Coral Springs Police are correct that the cameras don’t record everyone — they just record every driver who passes one of their 100,000 cameras nationwide.

“Then an AI algorithm catalogs the make, model, color, license plate number, bumper stickers, and even scratches,” according to the ACLU. “This personal information is then uploaded into a nationwide database that any law enforcement agency with a Flock contract can search — with few regulations or oversight on how they use what they find.

“It doesn’t matter which company has its creepy cameras in your neighborhood; they all have the same problems: a lack of transparency, oversight, and regulation into how they collect, store, and use our data, and how to hold public and private actors accountable if they abuse it.”