Surveillance tech company Flock Safety opens offices in Boston
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Flock's co-founder and chief people officer Paige Todd said that opening a new location in Seaport was an easy decision. The company recently hired senior sales officers from Boston, who advocated for an office in the city.
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Flock Safety co-founder and chief people officer Paige Todd
AMY JONATHAN EAKIN_
Boston, they said, offered its access to university graduates and technology partners, especially in artificial intelligence and engineering.
Flock's largest rival, the taser maker Axon, also opened an office in Boston last year.
'It's always a good sign to see a company is choosing to expand in Boston,' Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce spokesperson Casey Baines said in an interview. 'Our talent and workforce is going to benefit.'
Flock was founded in 2017 by Georgia Tech alums, Garrett Langley, and Matt Feury, and Todd, initially building surveillance cameras by hand. The company later created a platform that centralizes data collected from Flock's cameras and makes the data easy to share with other user
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Donald Maye, head of operations at the tech research company IPVM, said Flock has modeled its technology after social media platforms, which become more powerful as more users join. More than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use Flock's platform, according to the company.
'They aggressively invest in sales and marketing,' Maye said. 'They used the engine of developing relationships with police departments and using those relationships to sell other police departments.'
Flock's ALPR cameras are scattered across the state and country and are monitored by local law enforcement agencies. Those agencies can 'opt-in' to share or receive data from other agencies — including from other states — creating a 'network' of centralized license plate data.
Flock says the system automatically erases that data after 30 days, although it may keep it for further investigations.
Flock provides flexibility to how law enforcements choose to use the technology, Todd said. If an agency decides it wants data to be erased after seven days, it could change the settings to do so.
Agencies can also opt-in for a 'transparency portal,' a public webpage with general information on the agency's use of Flock devices, such as how many cameras they use and how many motor vehicles are logged in each month.
Some agencies also allow access to their audit logs, which show each time an officer looks up information in the Flock system.
Todd said Flock is aware of the controversial aspect of their products.
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'It is a daily conversation,' Todd said. 'How do we ensure privacy is protected while also giving law enforcement the tools they need to solve crime?'
The American Civil Liberties Union calls the technology's ability to track every person regardless of whether they committed
a crime unconstitutional.
Without clear state policies, law enforcement agencies can abuse the centralized system, said Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Program at ACLU Massachusetts. Officers with access to the system can search for any license plate they desire, even without a warrant.
Officers could use the system to track women who travel out-of-state to seek abortion care, look up undocumented individuals, or even — as in one reported case — track an ex-wife, said Crockford.
'Privacy is not controversial,' said Crockford. 'I have no problems with companies doing business in Boston. I just want to make sure that lawmaking and public policy is done in the interest of residents and the public.'
Flock has recently expanded its products beyond its cameras.
It also developed gunshot sound detection sensors and in April invested in a drone system to aid in car pursuits. Todd said the company is looking to collaborate with other tech companies in Boston as it continues to grow.
In New England, only Massachusetts and Rhode Island are without laws regulating the use of license plate recognition systems. Earlier this year, state Representative Steven Owens, Democrat of Watertown, filed the Drivers Privacy Act, which would limit how long data could be stored and prevent agencies from tracking activity protected by the First Amendment.
Yogev Toby can be reached at
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Yahoo
3 days ago
- Yahoo
How Nvidia's size is rewriting the market playbook
Listen and subscribe to Stocks In Translation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite (NVDA) explosive growth is doing more than lifting portfolios - it's changing the whole this episode of Stocks in Translation, Strategas Securities senior ETF and technical strategist Todd Sohn joins host Jared Blikre and Producer Sydnee Fried to discuss exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Sohn explains how ETFs serve both long-term investors and active traders while warning about overexposure to tech due to market dominance, with Nvidia as a prime example. The trio also talks through the underperformance of healthcare ETFs, outdated index regulations, and the importance of knowing what you own in an ETF-driven market. Twice a week, Stocks In Translation cuts through the market mayhem, noisy numbers and hyperbole to give you the information you need to make the right trade for your portfolio. You can find more episodes here, or watch on your favorite streaming service. This post was written by Lauren Pokedoff Welcome to Stocks and Translation, Yahoo Finance's video podcast that cuts through the market mayhem, the noisy numbers, and the hyperbole to give you the information you need to make the right trade for your portfolio. I'm Jared Blicker, your host, and back with me is the voice of the people, Sydney Fried, who is here to ask the people's questions and keep us honest. It has been a while since I've missed you. Thank you. I miss being here. I was back Monday, but it's great to have both of us back here. And today we're gonna be exchange traded funds or ETFs. Why they're underappreciated, according to our ETF loving guest today, we break down the different flavors, what to look out for and how to read their ingredients like an FDA label. In fact, ETF is our word of the day, and this episode is brought to you by the number $9.05 billion. That's how much money is poured into commodity ETFs since those April 8th lows, and you can double that if you include We're gonna dig into how truly diversified your portfolio is even as bonds continue to disappoint year after year. Is the 60/40 portfolio dead? And without further delay, let's get to our featured guest of the day, Todd Sohn. He is the senior ETF and technical strategist at Strategic uh Securities, and Todd lives and breathes ETFs. I know this for a fact. His enthusiasm for the asset class is palpable every week. He sends me aslide deck full of original analysis on ETFs, stuff I am truly seeing nowhere else, and we're gonna share a bunch of that with you, the viewer today. So Todd, I saw you last week at a CMT event that's charted market technicians for chart nerds like me and, well, some others, and, uh, you gave a great presentation on kind of the state of the market here and how you're seeing that through the lens of ETF. So just give us a brief run of all, that was very kindintroduction. Thank you so much guys. to be with you let's see, state of the market. We are back to all-time highs in stocks. Bonds are still, uh, struggling here, but you do get 4.2% in short duration income producing vehicles. That's great. Um, and I, I wouldn't be terribly surprised given the run we've just had, one of the best 3 month runs in history coming off of the April market low to see stocks maybe chop around for the summer. I don't think that's unreasonable. Think of a car going 0 to 60 and you kind of got to cool the engine off here. So still in very good shape, um, but be patient, I think over the next couple of months. All right, so let's get to our word of the day ETF and we're gonna break it down for the viewers. In exchange traded fund bundles many stocks, bonds, or other assets like commodities, cryptos into one ticker symbol that trades intraday like a single stock. And I say intraday because unlike mutual funds, they trade all day long. You can only get in and out of mutual funds at the close of the of the day. So ETFs come in many different flavors. A recent trend is the use of leverage, and we talked about that the last time you were here, Todd. So just tell ETFs in general. SoETFs do two things, uh, I would say for investors. One, they're a great low-cost long-term investing tool, depending on what you're, you're buying, right? The idea of saving for retirement or maybe that big purchase down the line, a house, a car, Xbox, who knows? Uh, but they're also great lens into the, the temperature of the market, right? I can see what ETFs are outperforming, where flows are going, what kind of products are coming to the market, because ultimately if something's hot, you're going to see many issuers launch similar types of products, copycats to the I can give you a pretty good sentiment check, and I think that's very helpful if you're someone who is more in the weeds on a day to day, week to week type of basis. So what's going on with these leveraged ETFs. Let's see, the bulk of ETF assets are in passive investing vehicles, very boring. S&P 500, whatever, keeping it simple for the long run. That's what most 98% of us should be doing for the long term, all three of us, but the 2% 2% like to use what are leveraged vehicles, and you're gonna basically going to get 2 times the return on a daily basis for an asset. And there is a very new trend, it's only about 3 years old where you're putting leverage on single stocks now. So if I'm very bullish on Nvidia.I can buy 2 X levered Nvidia ETF that if Nvidia is up 2% today, the fund should give me a 4% return. And you're seeing this explode to stocks all the way down the cap scale, so very volatile type of names, like a Rocket Labs or Archer Aviation or hymns in hers, really kind of esoteric stocks that maybe they're the future growth companies of but are also very much high conviction if, if you want to scratch that itch away from just pure passive investing. How do you even find leverage? Like, is it just when you're doing your buy order on whatever brokerage you use? Is it just like an option when you go to a certain ETF? It has to be an approved product to be issued, right? So now there's probably about 130 of them right now. So they're not available on such as you know, Defiance, very friendly with Sylvia Jablonsky, she's great. They come out with these, these ETFs. They get to the show. Yeah, she's excellent, wonderful person, um, and they'll they'll say, all right, we're gonna file for a leveraged Rocket Lab. They're tick. Oh yeah, oh yeah, like you can bet, OK, do I want to buy Tesla because I think it's gonna go to, uh, you know, up today, you can get a 2x of the normal stock return. But Todd, just refresh us because we talked about of leverage before. And if you get, and I've seen this in real time, if you get a stock that's going like this and then it kind of chops its way north, you can actually lose money even though the stock has gone up on these leverage products just because of the volatility. You have to, this is where reading the label matters. They reset the leverage every single day. So today you are supposed to get 2x the return or inverse the return depending on the resets and then tomorrow you get 2 X from that point. It's not a cumulative effect.K involved even if it's up after a week or net on the month, you might not experience that in the daily. You really want these products. I mean, technically not supposed to open them for more than a day, but if there's a very fast up trending when a real profits are made. If you chop around, then you're you're gonna end up with losing more than what the actual underlying stock has done. So which sectors or stocks are big right now and leverage ETF? Yeah, I know I was just gonna ask about tech tech is huge and then tell us about that and some of the uh the dogs, tech communications and some of these more type of plays, uh, I keep saying Rocket Lab or quantum computing is also getting big. Stocks that are really less traffic, less traffic in passive indices, they don't have a lot of but they come, they're very trader friendly, you'll find them on message boards and whatnot, people liking a product, maybe they're drone makers, right, those are popular too, but you're not gonna see them for something like Verizon, that's just too boring. Nobody wants that. Uh, Verizon is a dividend type of stock, so you won't get it in on in say consumer staples, telecom, but you're gonna find it in very high beta type of names that come usually come from the technology sector. One of the things you flagged that I thought was fascinating here is Nvidia. So Nvidia makes up about 7.5% of the S&P 500, and you compare Nvidia to entire sectors. So utilities is about 2.5%, so Nvidia is 3 times the size of all together, all the utilities in the S&P 500. Energy, it's 2X. Staples is 5%, 5.5%, so it's uh just kind of 1 X that. But then healthcare, which is a huge sector, you think about Pfizer, Merck, and then all the, you know, some of the smaller companies like uh is 9.25% and Nvidia, the biggest stock in the solar system is closing in on that. This is a really fascinating aspect right now. The S&P is this ever of changing index. 30 years ago, financials were big. 20 years ago, energy was big. Now it's if you think, you know, if you're an investor, you think, OK, I'm buying the S&P 500, I'm buying big US stocks. I'm, I'm diversified. That diversification is shrinking by the day because tech is overwhelming the index and Nvidia is bigger than staples, it's bigger than energy, it's bigger than utilities, real estate materials. It's closing in on the industrials and healthcare, so one stock is bigger than these massive, massive so, OK, that's great, it's benefitted investors, but if you're looking at a portfolio, and you own the S&P and you own large cap growth by chance, and maybe you own a thematic AI fund because you're bullish on a lot of exposure to a small cohort of names that are usually found in those indices like Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, right?So I just worry that investors need to understand what they own now. It's becoming more and more important just given how these companies are really taking over the world. I want to ask you too, I, I noticed this a few months ago, did, um, a chart segment on this. There is a disconnect between the XLK, for instance, and XLK is large cap tech. It's one of the spider funds. Uh, it tracks the S&P 500 tech universe and the actual, if you were to compute all of weights, uh, market cap of all of the tech funds in the S&P 500. XLK is actually underweight on a lot of names. So, and that has to do with laws that go back to the 1930s and 1940s. So highlight, you know, some of the risks to investors, you know, you think you're getting large cap tech, but you're actually underweight some of the things that you might think you're buying. The rule, these rules were created for 40A funds, right? 1940, almost, we're getting close to 100 years when this was made. And it appears to me that the now challenging these rules that were made and they're challenging index providers to say, hey, these rules were not built. This methodology was not created for trilliondollar type stocks, ETF vigilantes. That's what I'm that's that's I've never heard that before. That's. Uh, you said leverage isn't for everyone. How do you decide whether you want to wade into that because it's so, it sounds risky, but it also sounds like all, alluring, but if you're just choosing something like how big of a it's my gosh, we have a semiconductor or we miss earnings and the stock goes down 10%, you'll be 20%. OK, 100%. But if it goes up 10%, then it comes 10%, 20%. So this is you have to pay attention. It's the best thing you could say is what your risk tolerance is. If you, if you're 21 years and older and you walk into a casino, do you get uncomfortable or do you love the lights and the chips and the cards? That's a good analogy. Um, but just know, OK, I have $100 to spend after that I'm leaving the room, so you really need to understand much of an allocation you'd want to use for these leverage products. I wouldn't it. OK, I have always wanted to try that. I do. I mean, maybe that's because if you use an know what your, your risk is. You're you're buying it, you have defined. You put up the money up front and you just let it sit and you hit a home run. That's, let'sbe real here. Talk to me real quick. We got a minute before the break about healthcare because this has been, this is one of the dogs.I was thinking about when I said that word. Yeah,so, gosh, healthcare not loved, unloved massive outflows from healthcare sector, ETFs so it's very cold temperature. Investors don't like healthcare. Healthcare's performance of the last 5 years is in its bottom decile to the S&P using 50 years of data. So that's performance, not even flows, yeah, reallybad. So big outflows, horrendous this thing ever work again? I, I, I mean, I've, I've wanted to, and it's just been wrong. But healthcare is interesting because you get value characteristics from farm own equipment and growth characteristics from biotech. So there's a lot of interesting stuff going on in that sector. I agree. And there are biotech ETFs which are, leave out the big boys. We need to take a short break, but coming up we're gonna be talking portfolio diversification with commodities ETFs and a culinary runway showdown that might just get you reading those ETF ingredients after episode is brought to you by the number $9.05 billion which is how much money investors have poured into commodity ETFs since those scary post-liberation Day lows on April 8th. Now I got this from one of your slides, Tom, Todd, and I note that precious metals are actually also in the $9 billion range there. So you add those two together and 18 $18 billion I keep want to say $1 trillion but that's actually challenging crypto for the number spot in what has been working the best in terms of investor expectations since those April 8th lows. And so Spot crypto has taken in 19.9%, basically $20 billion and commodities including precious metals is two. So talk to us about that. I think investors are realizing that, OK, 10 stocks are almost 40% of the S&P. Defensive sectors like we were talking about before, only 20%, that's a 35 year low. So this diversification benefits disappearing. They need to find other routes toWhether it's protect or just alter our portfolio, crypto is clearly becoming an important allocation. Um, there's also probably a fear of missing out aspect to then commodities can at least offer uncorrelated returns to stocks, ideally. So I think that's where the gold comes in, or you can buy a broadly diversified commodity ETF. So you'll have energy, agriculture, some other metals like palladium and platinum. This is all very much a diversification play rather than chasing returns like you'll see from some othergroups. Gold has been a thought for me because when we did see the markets kind of turned down in April, I believe, and they've recovered since then, a part of me was like, well, you know, I don't.I don't think I have enough diversification, even, even within my ETFs, by the way, which we can talk about. But I looked at commodities, people talking about silver prices, gold prices. So what do you think about commodities for a passive investor? Like, does everyone need X%? I think it helps. Now there's different, there's some differences, right? They can be taxed differently, but I think that 101 type, but I wouldn't worry about that too much, um, depending on what type of investor you they're at least different. They're not in Nvidia, they're not AI, they're not technology. So gold, right, there's a movement towards gold because of the geopolitical side that's going on. We can figure out any catalyst, right? Maybe it's a weaker dollar that benefits gold too. Um, so I think having these assets that can rise during equity volatility is just a benefit to, to protect your portfolio. It may not make up the whole difference, but at least provide a padding. You fall down, you fall on a mat, you'll be OK, as opposed to on a hard floor. I, I posed a question at the top of the show. Is the 60/40 portfolio dead? And, and traditionally this is the 60/40 portfolio is 60% equities, 40% bonds, and that's something that has worked on and off through large spans of time and it specifically it really works in the 80s, 90s, and the first maybe 1520 years, but after the pandemic, it is done very poorly. When we had the 2022 bear market, bonds lost money and so they exacerbated the downside and investor li o s So what do you think of bonds right now? I like staying down the curve. We don't want duration risk, which is how much your bonds will be affected by moves in interest rates. So on the, I can buy a 3 month treasury bill, I can buy a 1 year Treasury bill, and I will still get around 4%. That's pretty good. If I buy a 10 year treasury or a Treasury ETF, I will get maybe closer to 4.5, but it comes with a lot of volatility because of duration risk. We're about 10 months since the first rate cut, uh, from the Federal Reserve in this cycle last duration treasuries and long duration corporate bonds are down since then as an index. So that's really rare. Usually bonds rise. That was a slide in the you sent me. So this is a very rare situation. And let me throw in this because the news of the day is, uh, Donald Trump, President Trump, was threatening to fire Jay Powell, and he's talked about this before, but apparently there was a letter that got circulated. The New York Times got a hold of it. Uh, we saw to the lows of the day. It was a fairly dramatic sell-off in a short amount of time. And then Trump recanted, stocks popped up again, but how do you see this risk affecting some of these shorter duration assets and because this has to do with where the Fed is going with its short term rates. So if you start to see rate cuts, which we'll see if the administration has its way, I, I have no edge in that, right? It's a lot of noise, which is why we want to invest for the long rate cuts will start to impact those short duration bonds, you will get less income. That's the risk if you have most of your money in short term bond now, on the long end, OK, maybe if rates do decline, that could actually give you a little bit of a boost in terms of price return for a longer duration bonded, uh, ETF, but just remember the volatility involved. I think that's, you know, can you stomach the ETF labeled treasury bond being higher volatility sometimes than stocks. That's really tricky. I don't think a lot of investors realize that. Another potential diversifier international stocks. A few people have said to me recently to own 1% of international in your portfolio, and a couple of the answers were higher than I expected. So what do you think of international ETFs? I'm a fan because they are they're less growth oriented than the US. Now the US is the best market. I think there's no doubt about we're at a point where again diversifying, I think really matters. So I can buy Europe, I'll get more industrial and financial stocks. If I buy Japan, I get a lot of industrial stocks and really interesting consumer technology. It's called video games, right? They're great at making their their games there. So, Europe and Japan, I don't know if you want to be overweight to the US but have some percentage of your portfolio, maybe it's 5 to 10%.Uh, in there as well. Emerging markets, I'm not sold on. I think that's easier to play using maybe an active manager who really knows the space as opposed to going passive. Um, but you absolutely, I think, want to have international exposure at this point just for the diversification benefits and to water down how much growth and AI exposure you might have. I wouldn't know how to pick one, I think for there's dartboards or listen, there's ETFs that developed international ETFs from Vanguard, iShares, all sorts of providers that give you the whole, uh, world exposure. It's the easiest route to go. All right, we're gonna stick with ETFs here, but we gotta cue the runway lights because it is time for who wore it better. Our markets-based take on a Hollywood Gab show favorite. Now, on the left catwalks, struts our ETF food label reader, clipboard in hand, squinting at a holdings list like a nutrition panel, highlighting every And on the right saunters the blind buffet buyer, a plate piled high with whatever looks shiny, no idea whether it's mega cap carbs, junk bond fat, or a sprinkle of leverage spice. Uh, what management fee, you might ask? Now, Todd, I know you're a reader of the food label, AKA the prospectus, but my question for you is, which contestantIs wearing the current rally off of the April 8th lows better. The disciplined label reader who knows every calorie of risk, or the thrill seeker who grabs and gulps. It's got to be the discipline reader to me. I mean, the thrill seeker just because we've got a really sharp rally, maybe they, maybe they've actually done better in the short term, but I, I have to imagine the discipline wins out in the long run. I don't think so you know that. I'll give the, I'll give the grab and go very, maybe a slight edge in the 3 months, but by the end of the year, uh, you know, those habits don't stay very well. But how does an investor, or I know readspectus. Well, there is now because of AI, right? I can go on a chat GBT or any of those and say, what does the the prospectus for the XYZTF mean? Give me a summary of that. We didn't, we didn't have it though. Would you, would you believe it? I always have a little, I don't know, reluctance. Now the other route is if theETF issuer is good at what they're doing, they will lay everything out for you on their website. So you go to the issuer's website, you find the ETF you're interested in, and they should have a bullet point summary of what this ETF is meant to do and where it might fit within your portfolio. So you don't have to go in and read the perspectives because those are very dense documents. I used to write them and I, I seriously, and they're, I wouldn't say they're they're on purpose obfuscating, but it's just the length itself makes things daunting and you got to repeat things at different places and it's a lot of legalese, even though they're supposed to be written in plain English. Tell me about the fees though. How do you look for a low fee ETF and not get smacked with something you're not expecting? They'll have the fees on the website, right? This is required to have the fees, the big a spreads in there, uh, that's gonna be on top of what you I think the more you look at ETFs, the more you realize Vanguard and iShares and State Street will have the lowest fee products for what that's worth. Those are the plain vanilla core type of passive holdings, maybe Invesco but you could also just do a Google or AI search. What are the lowest cost ETFs available for US stocks, for international stocks? Like, do you have all these tools that weren't available 20 years ago? 100%. I get, I get curious, like, if you're just picking a big tech ETF, do you just like look at total assets and pick the one with the biggest one? So it gets tricky. You could, but you also want to know what it's tracking because the indices have these little nuances tracking error. We didn't. Oh yeah, I mean, that's a whole other topic we'll have you back. I love to. I'd love to come back. Um, what type of index is it tracking? Uh, market cap weighted, fundamentally is it actively managed by someone? So there's these nuances to the indices and how big certain stocks might for most people, yes, market cap is the way to go, but maybe you need to change it up. All right. And on that note, we got kind of wind things down here and it's been a fascinating conversation with you, Todd. We learned about exchange traded funds, how they're different from mutual funds, and especially how to dig into some of these details that are easy to miss. And one of the standouts to me in this conversation is uh diversification because I think in this market environment, it's especially I like your idea of managed futures, not only because I used to be in the industry and that's how I got my start, but, uh, very important to think about these things. Time for a wrap here at Stocks and Translation, but make sure you check out other episodes of our video podcast on the Yahoo Finance site and mobile app. We're also on all your favorite podcast platforms, so be sure to like, leave a comment, and subscribe wherever you get your podcast. We will see you next time on Stocks and Translation.
Boston Globe
4 days ago
- Boston Globe
Surveillance tech company Flock Safety opens offices in Boston
The Boston office, opened Tuesday, is Flock's first expansion outside of its home in Atlanta. The new office will focus on sales and engineering. Advertisement Flock's co-founder and chief people officer Paige Todd said that opening a new location in Seaport was an easy decision. The company recently hired senior sales officers from Boston, who advocated for an office in the city. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Flock Safety co-founder and chief people officer Paige Todd AMY JONATHAN EAKIN_ Boston, they said, offered its access to university graduates and technology partners, especially in artificial intelligence and engineering. Flock's largest rival, the taser maker Axon, also opened an office in Boston last year. 'It's always a good sign to see a company is choosing to expand in Boston,' Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce spokesperson Casey Baines said in an interview. 'Our talent and workforce is going to benefit.' Flock was founded in 2017 by Georgia Tech alums, Garrett Langley, and Matt Feury, and Todd, initially building surveillance cameras by hand. The company later created a platform that centralizes data collected from Flock's cameras and makes the data easy to share with other user Advertisement Donald Maye, head of operations at the tech research company IPVM, said Flock has modeled its technology after social media platforms, which become more powerful as more users join. More than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use Flock's platform, according to the company. 'They aggressively invest in sales and marketing,' Maye said. 'They used the engine of developing relationships with police departments and using those relationships to sell other police departments.' Flock's ALPR cameras are scattered across the state and country and are monitored by local law enforcement agencies. Those agencies can 'opt-in' to share or receive data from other agencies — including from other states — creating a 'network' of centralized license plate data. Flock says the system automatically erases that data after 30 days, although it may keep it for further investigations. Flock provides flexibility to how law enforcements choose to use the technology, Todd said. If an agency decides it wants data to be erased after seven days, it could change the settings to do so. Agencies can also opt-in for a 'transparency portal,' a public webpage with general information on the agency's use of Flock devices, such as how many cameras they use and how many motor vehicles are logged in each month. Some agencies also allow access to their audit logs, which show each time an officer looks up information in the Flock system. Todd said Flock is aware of the controversial aspect of their products. Advertisement 'It is a daily conversation,' Todd said. 'How do we ensure privacy is protected while also giving law enforcement the tools they need to solve crime?' The American Civil Liberties Union calls the technology's ability to track every person regardless of whether they committed a crime unconstitutional. Without clear state policies, law enforcement agencies can abuse the centralized system, said Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty Program at ACLU Massachusetts. Officers with access to the system can search for any license plate they desire, even without a warrant. Officers could use the system to track women who travel out-of-state to seek abortion care, look up undocumented individuals, or even — as in one reported case — track an ex-wife, said Crockford. 'Privacy is not controversial,' said Crockford. 'I have no problems with companies doing business in Boston. I just want to make sure that lawmaking and public policy is done in the interest of residents and the public.' Flock has recently expanded its products beyond its cameras. It also developed gunshot sound detection sensors and in April invested in a drone system to aid in car pursuits. Todd said the company is looking to collaborate with other tech companies in Boston as it continues to grow. In New England, only Massachusetts and Rhode Island are without laws regulating the use of license plate recognition systems. Earlier this year, state Representative Steven Owens, Democrat of Watertown, filed the Drivers Privacy Act, which would limit how long data could be stored and prevent agencies from tracking activity protected by the First Amendment. Yogev Toby can be reached at
The Verge
5 days ago
- The Verge
Citizen will share crime videos with the NYPD
Mayor Eric Adams announced over the weekend that New York City will send users real-time public safety alerts based on their specific location through the crime-tracking app Citizen. The city also announced that public safety agencies, like the New York City Police Department, Fire Department, and Emergency Management, will have access to a portal to review footage shared by users on Citizen. Citizen's verified partner program for cities like New York is tied to a partnership with Axon's (formerly known as Taser) Fusus platform, the 'real-time crime center' it acquired last year. Axon announced a partnership with Ring in April that allows law enforcement to request access to video footage from owners' security cameras in a certain area during a certain time. At the same time, it also announced an integration with Citizen to support sending alerts and pulling in public videos from Citizen's users. According to Citizen, users who don't want their videos shared directly can opt out in the app's settings, but all videos posted are still 'viewable and downloadable by the public.' Adams said the new NYC Public Safety account on Citizen will send notifications about public safety, weather emergencies, and major incidents based on a user's neighborhood, ZIP code, or borough. Citizen lets users report potential safety incidents, share videos, and broadcast live footage from within its app. It also says it can send alerts to nearby mobile devices 'within seconds' of a 911 call or a user report, and also offers a premium safety line. Citizen already allows law enforcement to obtain information from its app as long as they have a warrant, but it also offers the ability for police to get data 'without delay' in case of emergencies. It originally launched under the name 'Vigilante' in 2016, but the app was booted from the App Store for promoting vigilantism, TechCrunch reported at the time. The app later relaunched as Citizen and has faced heavy criticism in the years since, with some arguing it fuels fear in communities. In 2021, Citizen CEO Andrew Frame came under fire for encouraging users to hunt down the wrong person suspected of starting a California wildfire.
