The Navajo Nation is turning to Flock Safety to help tackle crime despite privacy concerns by other governments.
America’s largest Native American reservation will deploy Flock Safety’s license plate reader cameras to help cover the 27,000-square-mile reservation that spans Arizona, New Mexico and Utah.
“The Navajo Nation faces some of the most difficult public safety challenges in the country, and [the cameras] will be a force multiplier for the Navajo Nation,” said Courtney Terlecki, a spokeswoman for Flock Safety, said in a written statement. We’re proud to stand with the [Navajo Department of Criminal Investigations] and [Navajo Police Department] to help close that gap.”
As the Navajo Nation is using Flock Safety cameras to assist with law enforcement, other parts of Arizona are pushing back against them.
Katelynn Contreras, a policy strategist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, told The Center Square this week that “people are worried about how their privacy is being violated.”
“People are becoming more aware around the pervasiveness of how this technology is being used and how data is being collected,” she said.
Navajo authorities face unique challenges.
According to the Navajo Police Department, the nation has “over 205 commissioned officers and over 100 civilian support staff, including police dispatchers,” serving a population of more than 178,000 people.
The Center Square reached out to the Navajo Police Department, but did not hear back before publication time.
Terlecki said that Flock Safety cameras “help law enforcement investigate and solve cases including stolen vehicles, burglaries, assaults, missing persons and other serious crimes.”
Terlecki said law enforcement agencies “can also receive real-time alerts on license plates tied to stolen vehicles, wanted suspects, or missing persons cases such as AMBER and Silver Alerts, which helps officers locate vehicles faster, close cases sooner, and recover victims and property.”
Terlecki said Flock Safety last year “supported more than 1 million criminal investigations and incidents, assisted an estimated 20% of solved cases in jurisdictions where its technology is deployed, and helped locate more than 10,000 missing persons.”
Canceling contracts
“Flock is building a nationwide mass surveillance system piece by piece with municipalities, grid companies, homeowner associations and other various government entities,” Contreras said.
She added that these cameras are a “flagrant violation of [people’s] right to privacy,” which is protected by the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and Article 2, Section 8 of the Arizona Constitution.
Contreras said this section of the Arizona Constitution gives residents “greater protection from unwanted government snooping.”
No state regulations
Arizona does not currently have any state law that regulates Flock or other automatic license plate reader technology, she noted.
Terlecki said over “40 courts across the country have determined that fixed license plate readers do not violate the Fourth Amendment and cannot track the whole of an individual’s movements.”
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