Throughout a Tuesday evening city corridor, Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar tried to quell public fears about his division’s use of the controversial Flock surveillance digicam system.
Salazar informed the gang of TK that deputies within the division’s Texas Anti-Gang (TAG) use Flock cameras to trace down individuals accountable for gang-related exercise. He added that the system can be used to trace down these accountable for burglaries and assaults.
“The factor about Flock cameras is they offer us restricted info,” Salazar stated. “What they’ll do is that they gained’t essentially give me a registration on a automotive that goes by. But when I run the license plate, it’ll give me a snapshot that may say, ‘That license plate that you just’re searching for was proper right here about two hours in the past.’ However, it gained’t inform me who that automotive is registered to.”
The city corridor, organized by District 9 Councilwoman Misty Spears, comes amid a string of burglaries within the Stone Oak space and the gated Estates at Champions neighborhood. The burglaries have resulted in additional than $5 million in stolen money, jewellery and watches, TV station FoxSA stories.
Regardless of Salazar’s effort to downplay the Flock system’s surveillance capabilities, some on-line critics stated they’re frightened concerning the cameras’ impact on the general public’s proper to privateness.
“Get Flock cameras out of Bexar County, we don’t need them right here,” Instagram consumer @mike.87tx commented on a clip of Salazar’s remarks. “It’s a violation of the 4th Modification.”
The Bexar County Sheriff’s Workplace started its contract with Flock Security, the non-public safety firm that manufactures the cameras, in Might 2025. Since then, greater than 500 Flock cameras have popped up throughout the county, based on the Flock watchdog dashboard, Deflock.
“What it’ll additionally do is, for instance, if I’m searching for a white Mustang with a purple racing stripe, I can put that in, and Flock will go ‘right here’s an inventory of 10 vehicles that look similar to that, and this one was right here at the moment.’ So, it’s bought some limitations, nevertheless it’s a really highly effective device,” Salazar stated throughout the city corridor.
That energy has civil rights teams involved.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Digital Frontier Basis and others have criticized the expertise for making a passive, mass-surveillance grid that tracks non-criminals with out authorities in search of warrants.
“Simply take into consideration how a lot somebody might study your life if cameras tracked the place you drove,” the ACLU wrote in a latest assertion on the digicam methods. “They may discover out which docs you go to , what home of religion you worship at, who you go to or drive round with — even which political conferences and protests you attend.”
Even so, Salazar didn’t explicitly handle these issues throughout the city corridor, the place he answered solely pre-approved questions from the viewers.
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