By admin 
S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson is pushing Flock Safety for more information about its license-plate reading cameras, as the company’s law enforcement surveillance network continues to draw scrutiny across the country.
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Wilson’s office released a letter on Monday that the attorney general sent the Atlanta-based company asking for more information about how Flock uses and shares the data it collects, and whether artificial intelligence is involved.
“As South Carolina’s Attorney General, I write to request further information from Flock Safety on its privacy and security policies,” Wilson writes in to Flock CEO Garrett Langley. “Flock has made numerous public representations about these policies, and under South Carolina law, it has an obligation to ensure that those representations are truthful and not deceptive.”
Flock is one of several companies offering cameras that record and store the license plates of passing cars, but Flock has become the best known as its cameras have been adopted by law enforcement agencies across the country, collecting data that can be searched by other agencies within its network.
Wilson notes in his letter that many South Carolina police and sheriff’s departments use Flock to identify cars that have been tied to some crime or public safety incident, and that the attorney general’s office is supportive of new tools that help police solve crimes.
“But even the best tools have the potential for misuse,” Wilson writes. “And given Flock’s broad reach, covering more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states, the stakes are particularly high.”
The attorney general asks Langley about Flock’s use of facial recognition software, which the company has denied using in its camera network, and what restrictions the company has on accessing its data.
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“Does Flock employ any form of artificial intelligence in identifying vehicles or people?” Wilson asks. “Does Flock help facilitate sharing data across multiple customers, including government agencies, to a ‘broader network?’ Who can access this ‘broader network’ of data?” and “Does Flock impose any mandatory data retention policies, and if so, what are these policies?”
Flock representatives have told local governments in South Carolina that it automatically deletes any data collected from its cameras after 30 days. Information that one S.C. watchdog group gathered from a freedom of information request showed that data collected by one local police department had been accessed thousands of times in a one-month period by agencies across the country.
Several agencies in the Midlands and beyond make use of Flock cameras, even as other jurisdictions in the state move to restrict the technology or get rid of it all together.
In his letter, Wilson requests that Flock respond to his questions within 30 days.
“I trust you will agree that we must find the right balance between public safety and personal privacy,” Wilson wrote.
The request comes with less than a month to go in the South Carolina governor’s race, where Wilson is running as the Republican candidate against Democratic state Rep. Jermaine Johnson.
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