And welcome back to Speak Up Las Cruces with Nancy Baker and Peter Goodman and we have with us Police Chief Jeremy Story, Las Cruces PD and Derek Pacheco, Las Cruces citizen who has been one of the number of people who've been complaining about the flock cameras and their possible abuses. And we may get a call, we're not sure yet technical problems today, but we may get a call from a gentleman from flock, from the company. Paris Lebel, is that his name? Yeah, Paris Lebel. So first let's talk about what flock cameras are, what the goal is of having flock cameras. Sure, I'll take that, it's Jeremy Story. Thank you for having me, Peter. You know flock is just one company that makes different technology products. The main one that people talk about when they say flock is license plate readers. License plate readers are a camera that essentially detects vehicles and then takes a still image of a vehicle that passes to include reading its license plate. And what speed it's going I guess also. Yeah, generally you know that's not, that's not the technology we're talking about, that's more like automated enforcement but, and they're used for all kinds of things. So I can get into that, but I could talk for the full 30 minutes about use cases even here in Las Cruces. So, Derek, I'll let you start. What's wrong with that? Oh, it sounds great on the surface as does a lot of public safety policy. And public safety has been a very large hot-button issue here in Las Cruces and really around the nation. So it's fitting, you know, it sounds great and a lot of things sound great. What doesn't sound great are reports of fentanyl hitting the streets even though we have these cameras in place. So my question is, who is this data really for? And why is it being marketed? Sure, like what public good, what public security does it serve? Let me interrupt for a moment and let's see if we have, is it Paris Lebel? Are you on? Hey, good morning, thanks for having me. I'm hearing you. I better turn up my earphone. We need our volume up. Can you hear us alright? Yeah, I can. Thanks for having me. Okay, yeah, now we're getting a little more. Okay, and you're from Flock? Yes, that's correct. Okay, Derek, we have with us Chief Story, whom you undoubtedly know, and Derek Pacheco, of whom you may have heard. He's a local citizen who's talked about the downside of these cameras. And there are a lot of civil libertarians who are concerned, probably, including myself. Let me try to sort of, I think there are a couple of things on either end of the spectrum that we maybe can all agree on. Would you agree, Derek, that they do help in some law enforcement situations immeasurably? Absolutely. Okay, so I think we can take that as a given and, you know, anybody who watches mystery TV shows from Europe sees them all the time. Can we also accept that there have been a lot of abuses, not, again, talking about any particular company or saying what happens here, but there have been a lot of abuses and potential abuses in terms of, you know, a cop using them to find out who's dating his ex-girlfriend or somebody giving it to law enforcement, immigration. General privacy, is that what you're thinking, Peter? Well, there's concern about privacy. There's concern about misuse of the information. And there's concern about sharing it with other agencies that one might not wish to. Would you, Jeremy, and Paris, would you agree that does happen? So I'll start. I would not agree that there's a lot of abuses. Now, any time there's human beings involved, there's going to be misuse of anything, just like with NCIC, which is the ability to get a lot more information. There's times where people abuse and there's lots of guardrails in place and procedures for when that happens. And that is key guardrails and mechanisms to deal with it, to prevent abuse, and then to deal with it if it does happen or misuse is very important. Derek, what's your view? Yeah, and I'll add to that. We have a very small number of misuse cases in flocks, eight years of being a platform. But in every case of misuse, it's been the immutable audit trails within the flock system that have been able to hold that officer accountable. Again, we build our technology from day one with these audit trails that record every search within the system, the user, and then if there is any misuse cases, again, they're extremely rare, but if there are any misuse cases, it's been those audit trails that have specifically been able to hold that officer accountable. Let's clear up terminology too. Does giving information to ICE in a community like this one, and I'm not saying you guys have done that, but does that count as a misuse? Well, there's several things. One, the way the platform is built now, it does not allow federal sharing unless it's automatically defaulted off unless the agency chooses to share information with the federal government, with any agency, agency specific. The other thing is now with Senate Bill 40 that is now in effect starting today. You cannot do that. It's against the law in New Mexico. So it would be a misuse. Okay. Yes. Derek, what's your view on the extent of abuse? Yeah, what are your concerns? I think. Oh yeah, thanks. I'll go up there. We wouldn't want to hear from Derek for a moment. Sorry. So to block does not have any contracts with ICE or any sub-agency of the Department of Homeland Security. We work very closely with local law enforcement to make sure that the platform works for those agencies. And again, all the sharing decisions are made by the agency itself. And then we as a company support regulation. We are very supportive of Senate Bill 40. Good. And you'll be having to create these, you know, guardrails at a state level for how this license plate reader technology is used. It's a very effective piece of technology for law enforcement, but we believe in the regulations and making sure that we use this technology and create this technology that is reflective of community value. Let me know if you can't hear them, but we're gonna hear from Derek now who is a critic of the system. Thanks, Peter. So I want to start by quoting my friend Jackie McGuire who's running for Marana Town Council out in Arizona. She says, with great power comes great liability. These cameras and let's call them mass surveillance cameras, not flock. When I say flock, I think of a flock of birds which is nice and cute. But these mass surveillance cameras are unconstitutional. They're a dragnet that you cannot opt out of. And just looking through recent newsreels, we bring up Lenexa, Kansas, which used flock, I mean mass surveillance cameras installed all over their town, to pursue a man who wrote a critical op-ed about the police department. It was critical of local ICE operations and the role of the local PD. Paris, are you aware of that case? I am not aware of that. If I could, could I respond to that, Peter? Yes, please. So it seems that the concern is that this is a mass surveillance network. And we've had flocks since the beginning in 2018, so almost eight years or about eight years. And what I would ask is, can you point, can anybody point to one case where it has been misused or where there's been a major issue in Las Cruces? Because I can give, you know, dozens and dozens and dozens of examples of how this technology has been used to make Las Cruces safer and to protect victims and get accountability. The other thing is we have 43 license plate readers and there are over 500 miles of roads in Las Cruces. If you think I'm going to reconstruct somebody's movement patterns with 43 cameras over 500 miles, that is not mass surveillance. Now, I see everybody here, including Derek, has a cell phone, a smartphone. If you're worried about mass surveillance and you should not have a smartphone, because I get detailed accounts of people's movement patterns when I do a warner subpoena deuces tech them for people's phones and their records in the cell tower data. That is a way I can reconstruct people's movements. But with FLOT cameras, that is not the goal and it's not really possible. So what is the goal with a FLOT camera? So let me just jump in there on how the technology actually works. So first of all, FLOT license plate readers do not and cannot track vehicles, much less individual people. The cameras themselves take a point-in-time image of a vehicle on a public roadway. They're incapable of tracking a whole of anyone's movements and that determination has been made consistently by more than 30 courts across this country. Once that vehicle passes by a camera, again, it takes a point-in-time image. You don't know if that vehicle turned left, if it turned right, if it stopped somewhere in between. And really, this technology is used as an investigative tool for public safety purposes. It's not a live tracking system. It's incapable, again, of determining a whole of individuals' movements. So Chief Story, what is your goal in using it here for the last eight years? What's it been used for? So yeah, it's not even the goal. Let me tell you some of the examples of how it's been used. Yeah. So I'll start with something simple, stolen vehicles. When a vehicle is stolen, your vehicle is stolen, the plate is entered into NCIC. So when that plate or that vehicle passes the license plate reader, it sends an alert. We know that your vehicle just passed this point in time at this intersection and we can try to intercept it and actually recover your stolen vehicle. That's been done probably hundreds of times at this point in eight years. Same thing for missing persons. After the fact for investigations can be used. And I can give you multiple case examples of a homicide, etc. But I know we are limited on time. I want to give you one case example that that really pulls on my heartstrings. And I think is a good example of how this technology is used with just traditional police work. Because by itself, no one's ever going to be charged because of a license plate reader hit. It is a bread crumb that gets you to the next one. It's a clue that hopefully solves the case. In 2021, we had a woman who was homeless staying at a camp near the Telshire and Lohmann area. Towards the middle of the night, she was abducted by a man completely unknown to her, took her, drove her across town, sexually assaulted her. She begged and pleaded said she wouldn't call the police and he drove her all the way back to her campsite and dropped her off. She remembered a few things. You remembered a partial plate, so she was able to give a couple of the characters of the plate. She said that on the dashboard, he had he had bumper stickers on the inside of car in the dashboard, which is kind of unique. He said she said that as she was passing the bank at Lohmann and Walnut, she looked up at the digital sign and it said midnight. She remembers seeing the time. We had a license plate reader hit for a maroon mustang with that partial plate that passed just down the street about 40 seconds before midnight, headed the direction of the bank. We looked back in our records. We actually cited that vehicle about four days before this incident. We looked at the body cam and as the officers were dealing with them on that traffic stop, we saw bumper stickers on his dashboard. We ended up doing search warrants for DNA in the vehicle. He ends up confessing to the entire thing. It says that he was driving by, saw her and got the urge and abducted her. Now, hopefully we would have solved that case without flock. But that made us it made it easier to solve. It was faster. We were able to get this guy in custody before he was able to victimize anyone else. I think I think the fact that it's a great tool for law enforcement is a given. Um Derek agrees. I sure agree from just watching, you know, things on the Shetland Islands on TV. Um it's a great tool. Of course it's a great tool and I think the question is more, you know, how do we control that tool? How do we keep it from being misused? Is that is that fair Derek? That's definitely fair Peter and uh I did mention a keyword earlier. I said opt out. Us as humans can leave the cell phone home or have a landline instead or have no apps installed or do all sorts of things uh under their free will. They can opt out of all sorts of things. What they can't do is opt out of these flock cameras and this is a nationwide network and if you go to uh the major website deflock me online, you can see actual maps of uh agencies around the country that have transparency portals and you can see outbound, inbound, and shared uh data streams and so these are linked nationwide. So let me ask you what would you do? Would you get rid of them all? Listen, the bottom line is the American public has not consented to this mass surveillance. I travel back and forth to Phoenix, Arizona frequently and the map tool online that has routed these cameras shows that my route, my simple route to visit my parents from my house here in Las Cruces hits sixteen separate times that are disclosed. Now, a lot of agencies are not disclosing or being transparent about this. So, I don't even know how many cameras are actually out there and who owns that data and who it's being shared by. So, if I don't have that information, I'm gonna have to default to yes, let's shut it down and get rid of it. Alright. I I share your concern. Uh you know, I wanna add to it in a sense. Um you know, Jeremy, you you cooperate with the feds to some degree. Um well, local law enforcement cooperates with federal law enforcement on a criminal side across the country. Historically, that's always been the case regardless of administration. I just wanna put that up there. So, I look at our chief executive and I look at what he's done for what he's done to an FBI man trying to say photographs of of rocks on a beach arranged to 8646 uh is is it 8647 is a uh is a crime is a threat on the life of the president and I'm well aware and I'm I'd like both of you to agree or disagree if you if you have a reason disagreement. If he if I were enough, you know, if I write criticism about him which I do, if I were more important and he knew about me, um do you think he would try to misuse law enforcement uh to shut me up? So, I think in general, freedom of speech is a foundational uh right as being American and without that, I think our entire the rest of our system collapses. So, when it comes to that, I I stand by the freedom of speech. Obviously, there have been limits that are imposed but I think it's important to note in New Mexico, it is now illegal to share out of the state without an affidavit that it will not be used for these things including what you're talking about. That's one of the things that we cannot use this technology for is to go after people. We just don't agree with their discourse or the things that they've said or posted. So, that's now prohibited by state law and I know when we've talked before on other issues that the Las Cruces Police Department has certain protocols and other guardrails in place for. And so, just uh to be more on the you know, looking at what Derek's saying, I'm not disagreeing with the concept he's saying. The importance of privacy, it is very important. I have the luxury of being on the inside and knowing exactly what this technology and the data is used for. I understand that the rest of you do not have that. So, when I look at other programs where I don't get that same luxury, I have a lot more cynicism towards them than this one that I'm talking about. But the question I would ask to you Peter or to Derek is, let's say worst case scenario. This is not happening just to be clear but let's say we were sharing all the data with ICE or some other federal agency or anyone that we don't want that data shared with. With those 43 crammers that have point in time counts, what can that information be used for? And here's an example. If if I ran your license plate, I first of all, I have to have a reason. I will come back to what you said about what the guardrails are. I might see that on Tuesday, you're at this intersection, Maine and Boccaccio, Tuesday at 4 p.m. And then on Thursday, you're at these other other intersection at 6 p.m. I have these point in time what can I do with that information? And the reality is if you had a network that was so built out that basically everything was covered, you could start to reconstruct movements to some degree. That's not what we have. That's not what most cities have. When it comes to guardrails though, they are important. So the audit auditing and the audit log that cannot be changed is important that Paris mentioned. So those audits are important. Training and user access is important. Policy is important. Making sure that we have descriptions for every search as part of the auditing. So it requires a case number and a reason for every single search so that we can go back and verify that it was for a lawful purpose. Well, one concern, I mean, I'm not disagreeing with anything you just said. What if instead of Jeremy's story being the police chief, uh, we're somebody who didn't have any ethics, didn't really care much about free speech, et cetera. I mean, I hear your, your, your point about, well, what could he do even then just know where people are going? Well, you still wouldn't know much about where they're going. No, but you know where they were. And it's not live stream, right? It's after the fact that you look at there's a delay. I mean, it's relatively if you, if you did the search, you know, it's 20 seconds after they pass, you might already have it, but that's not the way. What's your response to, I like to go a little more higher level. Um, for anyone listening at home, this may be confused at this point, um, and might be saying, well, if I'm not doing anything wrong, then I have nothing to worry about, which is a point that's made often with, um, the pro side of the argument. Um, to quote, uh, a professor out of Indiana who's been, uh, speaking about this, what makes you think you have the right to know if you're doing something wrong? Everyone that leaves the house has broken the law about 30 times before they get to work. And most people don't know what those laws are. So let's, uh, bring it to world news to bring it even further out. Iran was a surveillance state. They got hacked by Israel. Israel used that data from that surveillance state of Iran to kill their supreme leader. We are in a war right now with a country that could easily use data, leaked, hacked, any of that to do nefarious things. Let me, let me try a more down-home example. Um, you know, I, I often write things that, uh, authorities don't like written. For example, there were a couple of sheriffs who were bad behavior and deputy sheriffs talked to me. Uh, if, if the sheriff had known, they'd be gone. Um, you, you could, if I were writing something about scandals in the LCPD, uh, you could use this stuff to see that Sergeant Jones, uh, passed by, uh, my house several times and it's not part of his beat. So you could do that, right? I couldn't because there are no cameras really in neighborhoods. Okay. They're on main arterials and not even all of them. Suppose I lived, you know, where, where Pep Boys is. Still wouldn't tell me that, that they went by your house. I mean, it'd be very difficult to make that assumption. That's, you, you couldn't find, you, um, if, if you knew the license plates of different officers at LCPD, um, you couldn't find out which ones passed or stopped at a particular area. If they pass Solano and Lohman, it's a major intersection. Then passing Solano and Lohman is not going to tell me that they went to your house, wherever that may be in that area and talk to you. And that's the thing. They're not very useful ahead of the time. They're useful after the fact, when we have a crime and we have either a partial plate, an actual license plate, or a really good description of a vehicle and we're trying to figure out some potential suspect plates. And I'll give you an example. We had a cyclist who was shot in a road rage incident. Fortunately, they lived. They had a good description of the vehicle, including decals, but did not have a license plate. We were able to find a vehicle that matched that description and end up getting a conviction on that. I, I know it's a wonderful tool. I'm trying to ask you and I think your answer about, well, it's in, it's only useful afterward. I mean, it is in a sense afterward. If I've been, if Derek has been talking to sources at the police department, secret sources, and maybe there's a camera, maybe he lives way to the north of town, and there's a camera that is at the north and most people don't have a reason to go there, and you find out a particular sergeant went there seven times this week, or seven times today, whatever. I still think the way that the cameras are built out with 43 for over 500 miles a road, it's very difficult to draw those conclusions. Now, two other things. One, it's illegal to do it for that now in New Mexico. It's obviously unethical, and if that was happening, there'd be an audit trail, and I believe the truth eventually comes out all the time. The truth, you know, eventually sees the light of day, and that person should be dealt with if that ever happened. I think, you know, there's always a potential for abuse. I think the potential for abuse with license plate readers is far more limited than the potential for abuse with other technologies. I think what you're saying... I do want to add in here from the flockside just on the technology itself. Again, this is taking point-in-time images of government-issued license plates in public view. You're incapable of being able to determine, again, when somebody passes by a camera, where did they go after that? There's no way within the system to tell that because, again, the only information you have is a point-in-time image. The other thing within the flock system is we're not connected to any personal identifying information databases. So we just know that that vehicle with that government-issued license plate passed by a camera. We don't know who was driving that vehicle. We don't know who that vehicle is registered to. We really have no information on that vehicle besides that license plate and to make the model the color, which are important investigative needs when law enforcement is investigating an incident. When there's a victim or a witness of a crime, for instance, they witness a shooting and they just know that it's a white SUV. As the Chief stated earlier, that information allows law enforcement to go into the system, search a very specific area, a specific time frame, and single in on the specific vehicle that was involved in the incident. It's really actually changed policing. In the past, before this technology existed, a witness would say a white SUV would all kind of concede that. But I want to follow up on a point, and you're good to talk with with a representing flock that Derek Pacheco made about hacking. Is there any guardrails there to ensure that these sorts of systems, wherever they're set up around the country, can't be hacked by nefarious actors? I mean is there are there like firewalls? Are there what what assurance does a citizen have that private information that because that anything that you might be tracked can't be used by actors with high technological skills for hacking? I mean is that an issue at all? The flock platform has never been hacked. We use some of the highest security standards, the same security standards that source sensitive government information, and the highest encryption standards that we use here at the flock platform make sure that information stays secure. Cyber security is very important to us and we have a robust team that is constantly making sure that all of our technology is up to date with software. Derek, I want to give you a chance to say one thing that I think you've been trying to say, and you're I think saying that the very system of taking everybody's picture is an invasion of privacy. Absolutely, we have constitutional amendments for this very activity and for many years we've all heard of China doing this and not wanting to be like China. Well hey guess what we're like China overnight and to something that Paris said of oh well we don't really trace this or that. What about signal trace Paris? You have a deal with signal trace. Can you tell us what that does? We actually don't have time. We do not have signal trace is not a flock product that's a product by another company and we are not integrated with them. Again, signal trace is not part of the flock platform at all. If you just real quick, I just want to reinforce that these cameras cannot see the driver. They don't take a picture of the person. It's only the license plate which there is no reasonable expectation of privacy of a license plate. At least so far he said over 30 courts have ruled that way. That's been ruled in other context before. So until that changes I think that is an appropriate response. I mean your license plate is going to be visible to people out on the streets. Well, we're down to our last few minutes. I want to thank, oh no, we're down to our last few seconds. Okay. I want to thank Jeremy Story, Derek Pacheco and Paris Lebel on the phone.