Long Island pol wants tony town to rip up Flock camera deal

A Long Island pol is demanding her tony town rip up its contract with Flock Safety over privacy concerns and the tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars spent on fixing its vandalized surveillance cameras.Southold Democratic Councilwoman Alexa Suess says she wants to shred the wealthy North Fork town’s $37,000 deal over concerns about the controversial surveillance company’s murky data-sharing policies, issues regarding privacy and stopping potential misuse, and the public funds blown repairing and replacing cameras that vigilante vandals repeatedly destroy.“[Flock Safety’s] a data aggregation platform that’s marketed as a law-enforcement tool,” Suess said during last week’s town-board meeting.“This technology does provide quite a few benefits, but I don’t think the benefits outweigh the costs — I really do believe we should reconsider our relationship with Flock or at least commit to not renewing our contract,” she said.Flock Safety’s controversial cameras scan and store information on every car that drives past, including license plates and distinct features such has dents and bumper stickers. That data is then searchable to cops around the country — who currently do not need a warrant to access it — and is able to be used to help track and reconstruct a vehicle’s movements.In Southold, the tech has drawn more backlash from fed-up residents than almost anywhere else on Long Island, culminating in a [ast summer full of anti-Flock vandalism in the town, costing taxpayers tens of thousands in extra costs, Suess said, though she didn’t provide an exact dollar amount.“This data can [help] determine where you work, live, worship, if you go to a doctors office, what support groups you might be attending, what your interests are, what your political or ideological affiliations are,” she said Flock Safety reps recently conceded to Suffolk law makers. In June, Long Island cops ran more than 3,000 warrantless searches through the Flock Saf...