MADISON – The ACLU of Wisconsin Thursday night praised the Dane County Board for passing a resolution which amends the 2026 operating budget for the Dane County Sheriff's Office to remove funding for the use of the Flock automatic license plate reader system.
Jon McCray Jones, policy analyst for the ACLU of Wisconsin, said the following:
“This resolution serves as a protective measure against the dangers of mass surveillance. Dane County is doing the right thing by divesting from Flock technology, which scans and stores license plate data to track countless drivers every day without their knowledge or a warrant. The surveillance system allows the government to indiscriminately track a vehicle's location, including vehicles that have no association with a crime.
Flock is part of an ever-growing array of invasive tools law enforcement uses to collect and centralize sensitive information that can then be analyzed and shared across agencies. That means data collected in Dane County does not stay in Dane County. Once captured in the system, local governments lose meaningful control over how that data is used, as it can become accessible to agencies across the country.
Side-door access to Flock has been used by ICE and the Trump Administration to track down and deport immigrants, weaponized against protesters expressing dissent, and routinely misused by law enforcement, eroding civil liberties protections and privacy rights for everyone. Amid the routine abuses of power occurring at the federal level, it has never been more important for state and local leaders to defend the rights of the communities they serve. We commend the Dane County Board for doing just that by refusing to invest in a system that undermines our rights and puts vulnerable communities in harm's way.
People across Wisconsin and throughout the country are making their voices heard, and the message is clear: Flock cannot be trusted, and it does not belong in our communities.”
Read the comments we submitted to the County Board urging them to stop funding Flock here.
Read the ACLU of Wisconsin’s piece Surveillance Technology is Ripe for Abuse here: https://www.aclu-wi.org/news/what-the-flock-police-surveillance-is-ripe-for-abuse/.
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