The Flagstaff City Council is set to discuss its controversial artificial intelligence license plate camera program on Tuesday.
Several other northern Arizona communities paused or canceled their own programs under public pressure.
Flock Safety operates 32 AI cameras in Flagstaff through a $112,000 contract.
Company spokesperson Holly Bailin says the program is an important tool for public safety.
“That it can find a kidnapped child, that it can find a missing senior citizen who is a grandpa that is suffering from Alzheimer's and escaped,” Bailin says. “That's what this technology can do in a way that is customizable to a community and that can protect their privacy rights.”
“The next step of that, though, is those citizens with those questions [should] work closely with their police department to ensure that the features, the guardrails, the use cases, the policies that they want to see, are implemented in their community,” Bailin adds.
Some Flagstaff residents have voiced concern over privacy, and that data could be accessed by federal immigration authorities.
They’ve petitioned the city to end the program.
A report by the Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington alleges U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol accessed Flock data collected by Washington state communities without explicit permission.
The report suggests U.S. Border Patrol had “back door” access to data captured in communities that had not given explicit permission to share information with the agency.
It also showed that in some cases, other law enforcement agencies had searched data on behalf of ICE or Border Patrol.
However, the company says the report mischaracterized what happened.
“Every Flock customer has complete control over their sharing relationships, and Flock never shares customer data without their knowledge or permission,” a statement from Flock reads. “Local public safety agencies collaborate with federal agencies on a wide variety of serious crimes, including human and narcotics trafficking and multi-jurisdictional cases. If agencies choose to collaborate with federal agencies, that is wholly up to them.”
But the report prompted some Washington cities to limit their programs.
Flock ended pilot programs with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in August.
The Flagstaff City Council will discuss the issue Tuesday.
