Mar 11 City Council Regular Meeting
Happy City Council week, everyone! Hope the daylight savings time shift hasn't been too rough on folks. The time change and a full weekend has me getting out some notes about Tuesday's City Council meeting later than hoped but still want to call out a few things regarding one of the agenda items.
March 11 City Council Agenda:
https://www.cityofcheney.org/AgendaCenter/ViewFile/Agenda/_03112025-596?html=true
This meeting can be attended live in-person by going to the Cheney City Council Chambers at 609 2nd Street in downtown Cheney or via the Zoom link listed in the agenda.
Primary Item of Note:
The Police Department has their FLOCK Camera system on the agenda for approval again. The vote for approval was kicked from the last meeting so questions raised by Council could be addressed.
25-023 - Resolution F-341 - Flock Camera Purchase
The Police Department is requesting to purchase FLOCK Cameras, which City Council approved as a discretionary request in the 2025 budget
Documents:
25-023 - Resolution F-341 - Flock Camera Purchase.pdf
Resolution F-341 - FLOCK Camera Purchase.pdf
FLOCK Safety Terms and Conditions and Video Storage Information.pdf
3.5.25 Memo RE Competitive Bidding Exception - Flock Cameras.pdf
Chief B - Sole Source Memo.pdf
I appreciate that Council raised some good questions last time around data security, retention, and access. I am disappointed that it doesn't seem like they have really been addressed in the new documents presented. Mostly these documents listed above are the FLOCK Camera general terms and conditions (which are good to know!) and justification for not getting additional bids from competitors.
Data Retention
There is one mention to data being retained for 30 days, which I believe is FLOCK's default retention window.
Data from Flock Safety devices is stored and then deleted after 30 days for privacy and security purposes.
This is not great. The ACLU recommends following a FLOCK data retention model from New Hampshire state law "which requires law enforcement to delete non-hit license plate capture data within three minutes" or at least the shortest retention we can get.
I support adopting the ACLU's recommended addendum to the FLOCK contract on data retention:
Data Storage
They mention hosting their data in Amazon Web Services GovCloud and using Amazon's KMS-based data encryption. I think both of these are fine. Amazon's GovCloud is compliant with FedRamp which has some pretty strict rules on data security.
All images and metadata is encrypted throughout its entire lifecycle, from on-device to storage in the cloud. Flock uses Amazon Web Services cloud storage and KMS-based encryption, limiting access to the encryption keys. All CJIS data is stored in the AWS GovCloud and is only available to Law Enforcement agencies. No CJIS data is shared with non-Law Enforcement Flock Safety Customers.
Data Access
Unfortunately, I didn't see any details or clarity on data access restrictions. Will our Cheney FLOCK data be available only to law enforcement or to third parties outside of law enforcement? The default contractual terms for access would be a serious problem for our community.
One of the most important privacy-protective steps you can take is to restrict your community’s ALPR system to local use, meaning local ALPR scans are only checked against locally developed watch lists. Allowing local ALPR data to be used by outside law enforcement creates significant risks. Your local ALPR data could be used to enforce anti-abortion or anti-immigrant laws from other jurisdictions, or even to assist foreign, authoritarian regimes in hunting down political opponents and refugees living in America (Flock’s default provisions give the company a “worldwide” license to use its customers’ APLR data).
I support adopting the ACLU's recommended addendum to the FLOCK contract on data use:
Data Use
By default there are no restrictions on the Cheney FLOCK data from being run against other databases for cross-reference. This could lead to residents and folks visiting being unjustly detained or arrested which is a concern for everyone but especially our more vulnerable members of the community who may already experience over policing.
The basic terms and services also allow for FLOCK to anonymize their data for use in training machine learning algorithms and to share this data how they feel fit to improve their services.
Customer hereby grants Flock a non-exclusive, worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free right to use and distribute such Anonymized Data to improve and enhance the Services and for other development, diagnostic and corrective purposes, and other Flock offerings.
I am not clear on how they would be going about to scrub their data collected from Cheney as that isn't explained. This feels like a blank check to help them benefit from our data with no details on where they are saving off our non-scrubbed data to send through whatever process they have to anonymize it. How do they plan to anonymize our video and audio recordings? What third-parties would they be sharing it with? None of those details are explained.
I support adopting the ACLU's recommended addendum to the FLOCK contract around data use:
Lots to consider on the FLOCK camera topic. I would love for you to read up on this topic and consider submitting a public comment tomorrow night on it with your thoughts. You can email your comment to be read on record or you can attend on Zoom or in person to state your comment yourself directly. The FLOCK Camera system contract is for 24 months, the next 2 years, and will have long impacts on our community.
Citizen Comments: Open to Public (two minute limit)
Council comments may be submitted via email to councilcomments@cityofcheney.org or by dropping off written comments in the drop box at Cheney City Hall, 609 2nd St. All comments must be received by 5:00 p.m. the day of the meeting. In-person and virtual participants will have the opportunity to comment during the meeting. If you want to provide verbal comments during the meeting, please email councilcomments@cityofcheney.org by 5:00 p.m. the day of the meeting and provide the topic you would like to speak about.
Remember our democracy only works when we participate and that especially includes at our local level here in Cheney.
~ Rebecca