A federal judge in Norfolk released the locations of more than 600 Flock Safety surveillance cameras in Hampton Roads the first time such a compilation has been made public. Local cities and counties have rejected requests from the media and privacy activists for lists of Flock camera locations often citing a provision under Virginia open records law for “critical infrastructure information.” But U. S. Magistrate Judge Lawrence R. Leonard ordered a regional camera location list unsealed as part of a federal lawsuit against Norfolk about the systems that read license plates and log other information about passing vehicles. Two city residents are suing the Norfolk police, contending that officers are violating citizens’ rights by searching the Flock database without a warrant. Their attorneys attached the camera list to a recent court filing and Leonard ruled the list cannot be filed under seal. “The public has a legitimate interest in knowing where Flock’s cameras are located when those cameras are operated by public entity customers,” Leonard wrote in an Oct. 31 ruling. The list was unsealed Thursday. The list included the locations complete with street addresses and geographical coordinates of 614 Flock cameras in Hampton Roads. The includes 216 cameras in Norfolk 175 placed by Norfolk police, 24 by the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority and 17 by Norfolk State University. The list also includes the locations of 87 cameras It also lists 17 cameras in Isle of Wight County and 10 in Franklin. Police agencies widely share the amassed data with each other. The list does not include Flock cameras in York County, Williamsburg, James City County, Gloucester, Poquoson or Mathews, even as those jurisdictions have about 90 cameras among them. The lawyers who requested the camera location information did not include those jurisdictions. The list unsealed Thursday is also separate from a crowdsourcing database in which privacy activists log the camera locations through various methods including by spotting cameras on the street. The website deflock. me, for example, has mapped hundreds of cameras in Hampton Roads and some 56, 000 cameras worldwide. The list the judge ordered unsealed was compiled by Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based company whose cameras have spiked sharply in recent years. The cameras typically mounted on 12-foot poles take pictures of all cars that pass. The system logs not only license plates, but a vehicle’s make, body type and color and even such features as bike racks, dents and bumper stickers. Detectives can query the system for which cars passed by the cameras at certain times and places. The data is stored for 21 days and is widely shared among police agencies. Police rave about the Flock Safety cameras in helping solve a wide range of crimes, from stolen cars to homicides. But privacy advocates are growing alarmed with the increased surveillance, contending that Flock cameras allow police to track law-abiding citizens and not just criminals. In their federal lawsuit, Norfolk residents Lee Schmidt and Crystal Arrington contend the Norfolk police routinely violate their constitutional rights with the city’s 175 Flock cameras and its amassed database. Not getting a warrant to search the system, they maintain, is a violation of their Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches. Flock Safety provided the camera locations in May as part of the lawsuit, following a subpoena from the plaintiffs’ attorneys. But Flock asserted that the information is confidential and asked that it remain sealed. Police departments and sheriff’s offices in Hampton Roads have largely asserted over the years that releasing the camera locations could jeopardize law enforcement efforts by allowing people to avoid detection. But Leonard denied the request. The public’s right to access court records, Leonard wrote, arises from both the First Amendment and the common law. Judges can restrict access to court records only when there’s a “compelling governmental interest” to do so, Leonard said. And even then, the restrictions must be as “narrowly tailored” as possible. “The Court will not simply ‘rubber-stamp’ a party’s request to seal,” Leonard wrote. Though proprietary information can indeed be sealed, Leonard said, it’s not enough for a party to unilaterally declare something confidential. Instead, he said, the party must prove that such sealing is necessary. And in his Oct. 31 ruling, Leonard said Flock Safety failed to prove that. The locations of Flock cameras owned by private companies can remain sealed, the judge said. Such cameras are purchased by retail stores, private apartment complexes and homeowners’ associations, then tied into the police systems. Given that those cameras are privately owned, Leonard said, they “do not raise the same concerns about governmental transparency.” But that’s not the case, he said, for the 614 cameras owned by cities, counties and other government agencies in the region. Flock has not demonstrated that its interest in keeping the files sealed outweighs the presumption of public access to court files. Michael Soyfer, an attorney for The Institute for Justice who is suing Norfolk on behalf of Schmidt and Arrington, was glad to see the list unsealed. The assertion that the camera locations must be “super secret,” he said, is incompatible with the idea that the cameras are nothing to worry about and that “it’s fine for the government to track people for weeks at a time.” Leonard “realized that those positions are irreconcilable,” Soyfer said. The government, the attorney said, “shouldn’t be spending public money to install these dragnet region-wide surveillance systems in secret.” He said that there are 24 Flock cameras operated by the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority which runs the city’s public housing complexes is noteworthy in itself: It shows close monitoring of those residents. “Publication of this list furthers public discourse on these issues,” he said. “It’s something the public should have known long before now.” On Sept. 15, each side filed separate “motions for summary judgement” asking a judge to decide the case in their favor before trial. The city of Norfolk wants U. S. District Judge Mark Davis to toss the case. The Institute for Justice, on the other hand, wants Davis to declare outright that Norfolk violated the right of Schmidt and Arrington. Norfolk says the lawsuit has failed to prove that the police are tracking anyone. Though the lawsuit had asserted the city is “cataloguing the whole of tens of thousands of individuals’ movements,” the city says it’s doing nothing of the kind. “Plaintiffs have no evidence to support these allegations because they are wrong,” the city said. Instead, Norfolk claimed police can draw only “some limited inferences” about citizens’ movements from the data collection. Flock cameras help police “respond to emergencies in real time and solve and prevent crime,” the city said. But the Norfolk Police Department “does not need a warrant to use information about vehicles on public streets to protect people in Norfolk.” The Institute for Justice’s motion says Schmidt and Arrington were tracked on Norfolk’s camera systems hundreds of times in less than five months. “The Flock Cameras yield a massive trove of data anyone with access can mine for insights about people’s movements, habits, and routines,” the motion said. The Norfolk police have conducted more than 200, 000 searches, with no oversight on the justification for the searches, and cursory “audits” only beginning in May. “Even now, each “audit” is nothing more than a box-checking exercise, given the massive number of searches,” the motion says. “None of these hundreds of thousands of searches required probable cause, let alone a warrant.” Davis is expected to rule on the summary judgement motions in the coming weeks. If he allows the case to proceed, the trial is expected to begin Feb. 3. Peter Dujardin, 757-897-2062, pdujardin@dailypress. com.
https://www.dailypress.com/2025/11/22/flock-camera-locations/