A bad week for Flock (but a good week for privacy and local organizing) in Washington state!

Originally published on wa-privacy.net.

Wow!  As the pushback against Flock and other ALPRs grows all around the country, Washington state is doing its part!  Over the last two days:

• Issaquah City Council voted for a moratorium on ALPR usage -- not just Flock, but all ALPRs
• Redmond voted to cancel their contract with Flock.  They're the fourth city in Washington to cancel their Flock contract, joining Mountlake Terrace, Lynnwood, and Edmonds
• Renton City Council voted to continue their pause on Flock cameras -- and do a detailed review of their Flock contract.
• Auburn City Council narrowly voted not to review their ALPR policies or contracts yet ... but the vote was only 4-3, and activism is just starting to crank up, so it's far from over.

When the statewide law (SB 6002, also known as the Driver Privacy Act) passed this spring, there was a lot of concern that it would take the energy away from local organizing.  That clearly hasn't happened!  There's broad understanding that (as Representative Brianna Thomas said in the House floor debate) "the safeguards in this bill do not go far enough to match the power of the technology."  Similarly, SB 6002 sponsor Senator Yasmin Trudeau has describes its guardrails as "a floor, not a ceiling" -- and emphasized that it's not an endorsement of the technology.

And it's local organizing that's made the difference in all these cities. On Monday night in Renton, 29 people gave public comment against ALPRs -- and nobody spoke in favor, even though the police chief had encouraged supporters to show up. The comments were impressively insightful, passionate, powerful, and well-researched ... people really care about this issue!  Redmond councilmembers cited the outpouring of concern from the community, including a lot of people who weren't usually engaged.  So thanks and congratulations to everybody who contributed, and to organizers like Deflock Redmond, No Flock in Issaquah, For a Better Redmond, and Southend Indivisible for all their work.

Of course, there's still a lot more to do.  There's still clearly a lot of convincing needed in Auburn. The battle in Renton is likely to continue once councilmembers had a chance to review the contract. Flock isn't the only ALPR company out there; cities in other states have replaced Flock with Axon, which hasn't gotten as much bad press but isn't really any better ... so we'll have to be alert for that here.  And of course there are still lots of cities and counties that haven't turned off their ALPRs yet, and all the privately run ALPRs from companies like Home Depot and Lowe's.

Still, these were some major victories – and really build the momentum going into the National ALPR Week of Action (August 16-22).  Congratulations once again to everybody involved!

Image credit: originally from Pixabay, published under CC0, via picryl.