Dave Rahardja

Good news: my city council representative for #Sunnyvale #SantaClaraCounty #sfba #California has responded to my comments about my displeasure of using #Flock cameras in Sunnyvale. She acknowledges that many city residents were unhappy with the city’s unanimous vote to continue using Flock ALPR despite abuses, based on “staff recommendation”.

https://sanjosespotlight.com/sunnyvale-officials-say-license-plate-cameras-prevent-crime/

Anyway, now that I have my councilmember’s attention, I’ll try to have a discussion with her about why I’m unhappy about it. Apparently, the city council appars to have overruled some councilmembers’ request to have a public hearing, and took a vote without public comment, which sounds pretty fishy to me.

I encourage others in Sunnyvale (and #SantaClara and #Cupertino and #SanJose and other cities that still use Flock) to contact their city represntatives to voice their displeasure.

Sunnyvale officials say license plate cameras prevent crime - San José Spotlight

A heated debate over surveillance and public safety is unfolding in Sunnyvale, as residents fear license plate reader cameras could enable mass tracking — while city officials said the technology is critical to stopping crime.

San José Spotlight
May 31 at 8:37amWeb
Show threadDave Rahardja22h ago
PS: it took 3 months for my councilmember to respond to my emails. I hope our conversation from now on will be quicker.
Show threadstephen ryner jr. 🦉18h ago

@drahardja “Mountain View turned off its system earlier this year after an audit found unauthorized federal access to city data. Los Altos switched off the national and statewide ‘look up’ setting after discovering it had been turned on without the town’s knowledge”

Oof. Sunnyvale seems far too trusting.

Show threadstephen ryner jr. 🦉18h ago
@drahardja my reading is Flock may delete data from their servers (I do not trust them to actually do this) but they feed into other systems intentionally or unintentionally that have no restrictions. Once you’re scanned, it’s in someone’s database forever.