Bastrop

And you always so full of fun things to talk about.

And so today I want to keep us focused if we can, because it's not easy for us, on luminous freedom and the future of freedom and You've been involved in a very specific, successful movement recently in Bastrop, Texas, which is a beautiful little town about 30 minutes outside of Austin that's getting bigger and bigger all the time now.

But you've been in a Bastrop for a while.

You are the queen of Bastrop, in my opinion.

You've got a cute little store downtown.

Let's tell the audience what you've recently done in Bastrop and

you and your friends

and

But last week, the PUC started moving forward anyway.

A week after voting to cover up the license plate reading cameras in their city limits, Bastrop Council members opted this week to just end the city's contract with Flock Safety.

Flock has come under increased scrutiny on a variety of fronts.

Notably, the company doesn't require law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant for otherwise private data that it collects on individuals.

Its system has also been shown to be subject to abuse by police officers stalking romantic partners and others.

Bastrop's mayor is Ishmael Harris.

He has raised concerns about the lack of transparency by the company regarding its uses of data collected under the auspices of the city contract.

A poll commissioned last month by the Texas Public Policy Foundation found that more than 63% of Texans oppose flock cameras, with 51% stating that they strongly oppose the technology.

I said, "Soy la América Profunda de Oklahoma." And I look it up, Main Street in Wikipedia, and presto, there is a photograph of Tulsa, where I lived, Main Street.

And then there's another photograph of Bastrop, Texas.

Bastrop, B-A-S-T-R-O-P.

And I've been in-- I've passed through Bastrop probably, probably 50, 40 times or something, because one of the main routes between Houston, Texas, and Austin, Texas, you have to pass through Bastrop.

And so ever since I was a little boy, three years old, four years old, we passed through Bastrop to visit my grandparents, driving to Austin and then continuing on to Bertram, Texas, where my grandparents lived all their lives.

[clears throat] Bastrop.

So it's interesting that in this, um, this article of Wikipedia titled Main Street, in the two pictures, the only two photographs are places that are very close to me.

Yes.

Jump in at 512-836-0590.

The city of Bastrop is joined, uh, a growing number of Central Texas cities, uh, in a pushback against the automatic, uh, license plate readers.

Bastrop City Council has unanimously voted to do away with the Flock Safety cameras.

The vote comes, uh, a week after the city covered all 12 of those Flock Safety cameras within Bastrop city limits.

Bastrop Mayor Pro Tem John Kirkland says the votes isn't just about Flock cameras.

He says this resolution is also about any future company who may want to use similar technology monitoring citizens in Bastrop.

So that it just simply says, "Following decommission, decommissioning, the city shall not enter into a new agreement for ALPR services or reactivate the city's Flock Safety LPR system without fur- further authorization from the City Council."

Yeah, there you go.

Well, we told you yesterday that police departments across Central Texas have been reconsidering their use of flock safety's license plate reading cameras.

Well, the city of Bastrop terminated its contract with Flock Safety last night.

That move adds to the growing number of cities like Austin, Pflugerville, Manor, and Leander that are severing ties with the surveillance technology.

Bastrop Mayor Ishmael Harris says it boiled down to data security.

It was going through the process, listening to the people, and really learning and weighing in on the benefits and what was not beneficial.

And the biggest thing was the invasion of the privacy, the collection of the citizens' data, and not knowing where it was going to go.

Bastrop had 12 cameras in total, six of which had been recently vandalized.

The council voted unanimously to remove those cameras.