The Dystopian Rise of Flock Cameras - Prof. Steven Keener - #65

Steven Keener is an assistant professor of criminology at Christopher Newport University in Virginia and one of the few researchers who has studied Flock license plate reader cameras in depth. He directs CNU's Center for Crime, Equity, and Justice Research and Policy, which he co-founded in 2021, and serves on the board of Justice Forward Virginia, a nonpartisan criminal justice reform organization. He earned his Ph.D. in Public Policy and Administration from Virginia Commonwealth University, specializing in criminology and criminal justice policy. When a federal judge forced the release of every publicly funded license plate camera location in Hampton Roads, Keener and his colleagues ran the first full geospatial analysis of how these cameras are deployed. They found that race and poverty, not violent crime, best predict where the cameras go. That research is published as "Surveillance Inequality: Race, Poverty and the Geography of Automated License Plate Reader Cameras." Expect to learn what Flock cameras capture beyond your license plate, how pandemic stimulus money helped Flock dominate the market, why the "nothing to hide" argument falls short, how a Dutch court stopped the tax authorities from using highway cameras, whether Flock cameras violate the Fourth Amendment, why state guardrail laws keep failing, how federal agencies get side door access to local camera data, how police officers have used the cameras to stalk people, why the cameras cluster in Black and low income neighborhoods, whether the cameras reduce crime, and how one Virginia town got rid of them. Steven Keener online: Email: [steven.keener@cnu.edu](mailto:steven.keener@cnu.edu) CNU profile: https://cnu.edu/faculty/stevenkeener.html Research: Surveillance Inequality: Race, Poverty and the Geography of Automated License Plate Reader Cameras 0:00 Introduction 0:41 What Flock cameras are 1:53 License plate readers before Flock 4:03 How Flock won over police 5:25 How the cameras work 7:35 What the cameras capture 9:17 Tracking pedestrians and drones 10:02 The nothing to hide argument 11:53 Wrongly accused by cameras 15:06 A Dutch highway camera case 19:25 Are Flock cameras legal 22:10 The Schmidt v Norfolk lawsuit 25:02 A rare bipartisan issue 26:29 Virginia's guardrails law 30:08 Police hot lists 32:45 Penalties for misuse 33:36 Searches logged as 123 36:49 Stalking and audit logs 38:57 Mapping where the cameras are 40:09 Judge forces locations public 43:33 Race and poverty findings 45:02 The legacy of redlining 47:00 Testing the crime explanation 49:27 Predictive policing and tech washing 51:59 How placement was decided 53:38 Do the cameras reduce crime 57:43 Is a safe version possible 1:02:29 Where surveillance is heading 1:06:01 How Harrisonburg removed Flock 1:07:42 Data centers and surveillance 1:09:32 Bluetooth scanners and tsunami cameras 1:11:55 Steven's next research 1:12:58 Where to follow Steven