| Hi Friend,
Because of growing community opposition to mass surveillance, Santa Barbara has decided to terminate its contract with Flock, and Flock’s cameras are scheduled to be shut off citywide today, August 24. We’re grateful to the coalition of multi-issue groups across Santa Barbara who have been leading this effort, and to the City administration for moving swiftly and decisively to end the Flock contract.
This moment was also made possible by a Santa Barbara City Council that is listening to the community and pushing for policies that protect, uplift, and invest in our communities. That’s not simply “progressive” – it’s what we deserve.
We deserve to live, work, and raise our families without fear of criminalization, deportation, or eviction. We deserve to breathe freely. We deserve to feel safe. And we deserve a city that invests in our communities, not in surveillance.
But we need to keep pushing. Our message to the City Council is simple: Don’t replace Flock with Verkada.
Join us tomorrow in Santa Barbara at City Council at 2 PM (735 Anacapa Street).
The City is now moving toward a contract with Verkada Inc. to provide replacement automated license plate reader (ALPR) technology. We learned about this over the weekend, and the City has announced that it “will be switching to [Verkada] technology.”
Verkada has its own troubling record involving privacy, workplace misconduct, and cybersecurity. But this is about more than one company.
We shouldn’t be choosing which surveillance company gets to monitor our community. We should be asking whether this technology belongs here at all.
ALPR systems collect sensitive information about where people drive and can be misused, abused, or compromised. There are documented cases of ALPR errors leading to innocent people being stopped at gunpoint, as well as improper searches of ALPR databases.
We said NO to Flock. Now we need to say NO to rushing into another surveillance contract with Verkada.
Join us tomorrow and let’s make sure our voices are heard.
Hazel Davalos and Lucas Zucker
Co-Executive Directors, CAUSE |
