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One sleepy Virginia town. Nearly 7 million hits on its surveillance network.


Thousands of Flock Safety surveillance cameras captured Virginia travelers in a small Shenandoah Valley town with an unblinking eye. Their data was shared and searched around the country millions of times.

By contrast, cities and counties with far larger Flock networks—such as Suffolk, Norfolk, and Richmond—either declined to release their network audits or did not respond to VCIJ’s records requests filed before Virginia’s new ALPR law took effect on July 1. “They have been an important and reliable tool to expedite investigations in time-sensitive situations, such as missing persons and abductions,” Dana Schrad, executive director of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police and Foundation, told VCIJ at WHRO. A privacy advocate, Clayton Tye, said communities would be worried if they knew that the Flock cameras have the potential to map their workplace, shopping habits, kids' school, place of worship, and other information within days.

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