New Technology in Crime Solving: A Double-Edged Sword

New technology can solve crimes faster, safer, and less expensively than ever before. Yet, despite its potential benefits, it has sparked significant backlash. What’s at the heart of this controversy?

Personal Insights from a Crime Victim

Having been on the other side of a crime, I can relate to the urgent need for improved crime-solving tools. I was a young reporter in Spokane, covering local crime stories, when I became a victim myself. Coming home to find my apartment ransacked was a profoundly unsettling experience. Drawers were yanked open, closets emptied, and irreplaceable heirloom jewelry vanished, stolen in pillowcases by burglars.

The police responded promptly, but despite taking my report, weeks passed with little progress. Checking pawn shops and posting lost item flyers yielded no results. While I reassured myself that it was “just stuff,” the sense of violation lingered, leaving me feeling exposed and vulnerable. This personal experience fueled my interest in technology that could eliminate such crime and improve safety.

Flock Safety: A Game Changer

Meet Flock Safety, a company borne out of necessity, founded by Garrett Langley, an engineer from Georgia Tech. Langley’s frustration with ongoing burglaries in his Atlanta neighborhood led him to craft a basic version of a license plate reading camera on his dinner table, leading to a significant decrease in local crime.

While license plate readers were not new, Flock’s innovation made them affordable and accessible for smaller towns and police departments lacking expensive infrastructure. By leveraging solar power and cellular networks, Flock Safety democratized crime-fighting technology.

Now, valued at approximately $7.5 billion and operating in over 6,000 communities, Flock Safety is directly influencing law enforcement across the nation.

The Mechanics of Flock Cameras

Flock’s technology places license plate readers strategically in neighborhoods, at schools, and shopping centers. These cameras capture encrypted images of every passing vehicle. The system logs comprehensive information — license plate numbers, vehicle characteristics, and timestamps. Police can access a user-friendly dashboard to search not just by plate number but by vehicle make, model, and even bumper stickers.

Langley boasts that the network processes billions of scans monthly and assists in about 20% of arrests connected to crimes in areas using the technology.

Public Concerns: Misreads and Surveillance

For each success story like recovery and arrests, critics point to troubling instances associated with the technology. Misread rates for license plate recognition can soar as high as 35%, leading to errors in identification. For example, a misread in Toledo led to disastrous consequences when a Black man was mauled by a police K-9 during a wrongful traffic stop.

Moreover, civil liberties advocates raise alarm over the ethical implications of constant data collection. The ability to monitor location data—where someone worships, protests, or seeks medical care—can unravel deeply personal details about an individual’s life.

Navigating Controversy

Flock Safety has faced its share of scandals. Central to the criticism are allegations of misuse of surveillance technology, particularly against marginalized communities. A significant incident occurred when a Texas sheriff misused the Flock system to gather data on a woman who had self-administered an abortion, violating Illinois laws designed to protect patient data.

This misuse triggered investigations and heightened scrutiny, with critics emphasizing how surveillance tools can be weaponized. Although Flock denies wrongdoing, insisting the search for a missing person justified the actions, public outcry has led the company to impose restrictions on certain searches and halt programs that previously allowed federal access.

Ethical Dilemmas in Law Enforcement

As legal experts analyze the implications of such technology, there are concerns over placing so much power in local hands. UC Davis law professor Elizabeth Joh suggests that relying on local decisions to oversee a national surveillance framework undermines constitutional protections designed to address broader civil liberties.

Reconciling Safety and Privacy

The innate desire for safety makes the proposal of crime-fighting tools, like those offered by Flock Safety, appealing. The potential to shift the odds in favor of recovering lost items or solving crimes provides hope in a world where vulnerabilities abound.

Simultaneously, as a society, there’s an unsettling notion of surveillance extending across state borders. The complexity of reconciling security with privacy raises critical questions about our willingness to engage in meaningful dialogues about legal frameworks and oversight that could prevent abuse of technology.

In the end, the challenge lies in crafting protections that secure lives without infringing upon freedoms. Our collective journey towards technological accountability requires vigilance and civic engagement as we navigate the evolving landscape of crime-fighting tools.