This Wisconsin City Ditched AI Surveillance Cameras. Now Activists Want to Keep Going. [View all]

https://boltsmag.org/verona-wisconsin-ends-contract-flock-ai-surveillance-cameras/

Last November, the city of Verona, Wisconsin, voted to pull out of the sprawling surveillance network run by tech company Flock Safety in hopes of protecting residents’ privacy and preventing the cameras installed around the city from being abused by police.

At the meeting where the Verona Common Council voted on the city’s contract with Flock Safety to operate the cameras, community members testified that the safety benefits of the cameras were not worth the risk.

But in the months after the city chose to end its agreement with Flock, Mayor Luke Diaz noticed that the cameras were still up.

City officials reached out to Flock to demand they take down the three cameras placed around the small town, a suburb of the state capital of Madison. But, Diaz told Bolts, the company effectively ignored their request, while at the same time a sales team contacted them to try and sell them a new contract. “They didn’t have enough time to send a technician out here for the cameras, but they did have sales people reaching back out to us,” Diaz said.

Flock has insisted the cameras were not operating for the months they remained up after Verona ended its contract, but Diaz says there is no way to be sure, especially given the company’s record of privacy breaches.

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