Public comment: Turn off Flock cameras, replace wrong-way council

Presenter: The Eugene City Council is asked to immediately turn off its Flock surveillance cameras. Two public comments suggest replacing the councilors who let Flock into the city on their watch. On Sept. 22, Annie Perkins:

Annie Perkins: Hi, my name is Annie. I’m standing here tonight because I am afraid of the path that our country is going down, and I don’t think y’all quite see it. I don’t know. I don’t think Police Chief Skinner sees it.

[00:00:27] I want to paint the image of Eugene, Oregon within the broader strokes America is making in 2025: Police raid unhoused encampments, seize their belongings down to their clothes and their legal paperwork, while major television networks call for their murder. We have defunded CAHOOTS, a program that represented compassion and humanity.

[00:00:47] Our president just labeled transgender individuals as terrorists and called for the removal of free speech for those that speak ill of him; 1,800 human beings detained in a Florida facility we call ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ have simply vanished; the Supreme Court is considering a case to potentially roll back same-sex marriage rights; and right here in Eugene, the Department of Homeland Security agents patrol our streets, intimidate our elders, and make a spectacle of those they detain whenever they can at the federal building.

[00:01:17] We are not measuring the damage of this administration in years, we are measuring it in months. And if this is what can happen in a matter of months, the aggressive push for Flock Safety in our city is not a coincidence, it’s the next logical step in a fascistic regime.

[00:01:33] The crackdown on speech, the rewriting of immigration rules, the nostalgia for a mythical, pure past are pages straight out of the Nazi playbook, and Flock Safety works with ICE. It has not shied away from that fact. And by signing a contract with Flock, you have not only let Nazis into the city of Eugene, you have given them AI-powered mass surveillance of a magnitude we’ve never seen before.

[00:01:58] This isn’t just theory. This isn’t just speculation. This is a Google search. I urge you to remember your history, and I beg you to connect the dots yourselves so that people like us don’t have to do it for you.

[00:02:12] Presenter:  Ky Fireside:

[00:02:13] Ky Fireside: Hi, my name is Ky. Tonight I want to preface that I am not accusing anyone of anything, I am just asking some questions. Maybe some of these questions are things you can ask during your work session on Flock.

[00:02:25] What is EPD doing with so many searches each month? Some agencies publish how many searches they do each month. Reno, Nevada has done 118; Olympia, Washington 117. When I checked EPD a couple weeks ago, it was 1,300. Today it’s down to 900. Why is the per capita search volume so high?

[00:02:47] And then there are questions about the individuals doing searches. We have the audit logs. We have one user who has searched Flock’s database 11 days in a row. Is it normal for an officer to work 11 days in a row?

[00:02:59] We have multiple people searching for more than six days in a row. We have a user that has made 186 searches since July 1. How is one person making as many searches as an entire county? Are officers working a ton of overtime? Don’t we have a budget issue? If it’s not overtime, are people sharing their login info?

[00:03:19] Are they being asked to work off the clock? Are they searching on their personal time? EPD has a contract for 57 cameras, but the so-called ‘Transparency Portal’ lists 67. Why the discrepancy?

[00:03:34] I did a ride along with another jurisdiction. They had Flock cameras running on their dash cams. Every single car that the deputy drove past, the plate was recorded, even if it was in a driveway, even if it was someone in their own home. If there was true transparency here, we would know answers to many of these questions.

[00:03:53] My last question though is this. Why are we the ones doing all of this research? Some oversight body should be doing this. As we have repeated to you over and over, this system is designed to evade oversight.

[00:04:08] There are places I would rather be right now and things that I would rather be doing, but this is so important because we are on the edge of giving up a huge liberty here by allowing this. You do not have to be surveilled everywhere you go. That is not a quality of living in a free and just society.

[00:04:27] Presenter: Rick Osgood:

[00:04:29] Rick Osgood: Hi, my name is Rick Osgood. And I’d like to express my opposition to the Flock mass surveillance system. As a privacy advocate and security professional, I wanted to learn about the security of these cameras. So I acquired a Flock camera myself to perform my own research, and I can tell you from first-hand experience that these devices contain numerous basic security vulnerabilities.

[00:04:48] For example, the camera models I’ve tested all include a single large button on the back, and pressing this button three times will allow you to connect to the camera over Wi-Fi using a very insecure password.

[00:04:59] Once connected to the camera, you can view the camera feed, shut down the camera, install applications, and essentially just take control of the device. These findings have convinced me that Flock does not prioritize security.

[00:05:11] The city of Eugene is trusting the same company with sensitive information of the comings and goings of every adult, teenager, and child in Eugene.

[00:05:17] And even if Flock fixes these problems, the idea that this treasure trove of sensitive personal information will not be targeted by threat actors and could never leak is naive. How many people in this room are victims of a data breach?

[00:05:31] Councilors, do any of these email addresses sound familiar to you? They’ve all been found in public data breaches, R. Groves at eugene, four breaches; Alan at EPUD, eight breaches; OregonMattKeating at gmail, 12 breaches; EvansG at Lane CC, 20 breaches.

[00:05:49] You trusted private companies with your data, and they failed to protect it. Your personal information—including passwords, date of birth, physical address, and more—are now all exposed forever. Imagine if any random person could type your license plate number and get a list of everywhere you’ve been for the last 30 days because Flock was breached. What might that reveal about you?

[00:06:09] I spent nine years as a security consultant legally hacking into companies for a living. And I can tell you that, unfortunately, there’s no amount of security that can prevent a well-resourced and motivated attacker from hacking any given company. The only way to protect this information is to not collect it in the first place. The only way to protect all of our information is for the city to not collect it in the first place.

[00:06:33] We can’t opt out. The responsibility is on you. So please cancel the Flock contract and take steps to protect all of us from this unconstitutional mass surveillance and tracking by Flock or any similar entity.

[00:06:44] Presenter: Ken Willis:

[00:06:45] Ken Willis: My name is Ken Willis and I’ve got a story to tell you. I’m the parent of an autistic child. She has an IQ of 53. She is catastrophically autistic. Very small life enjoyment that she has.

[00:06:57] One of the things we have as a family are evening walks. We get to go in an evening walk, she gets out of the house, she gets to spend some time outside which is a big deal for her. So, lo and behold, how excited we were when we walked out of our neighborhood and there’s a Flock camera looking at us.

[00:07:12] So here’s a fun little fact about Flock. They have a gait software so that anybody that’s drunk in public—has a strange walk—is noted in the system and the police are called out. So I have a kid who walks with an asymmetrical atypical gait.

[00:07:27] So we already deal with a lot of emotional issues with her, a lot of truncated sociability environments and now you’ve made it even worse because my wife doesn’t want to take her out on a walk anymore because we’re afraid that the police are going to tag us because she’s walking in a strange way that might be perceived as public intoxication.

[00:07:46] You’ve taken an impossible situation as a family and you’ve made it even worse. So we don’t feel safe. We feel marginalized. We feel shoved into our neighborhood.

[00:07:56] Here’s the fun part: I live in a court. So I cannot come or go without Flock, a private security company in Atlanta, Georgia, knowing what I’m doing. I’m thrilled. You have to imagine how thrilled I am at this.

[00:08:11] So we can’t go anywhere with an autistic kid other than a walk in the evening and you’ve taken that from us. So to the city manager and Skinner, thanks a lot.

[00:08:20] Presenter: Kamryn Stringfield:

[00:08:22] Kamryn Stringfield: My name is Kamryn Stringfield. I’ve heard from dozens of people speaking here and hundreds of people I’ve talked to in Eugene: We will not accept attempts to make Flock safer.

[00:08:31] It is an inherently dangerous and intrusive system that is peddled by a shady corporation that sells our data to whoever pays good money for it. We are demanding that the contract with Flock be terminated, the camera is uninstalled, and this situation to not happen again.

[00:08:47] And should they continue to stay up and rolling, we will continue to show up to these meetings, to protest, to combat the propaganda, and to educate the people of Eugene and Springfield about the danger of this system till it’s gone. We’re a proud activist town that will not back down.

[00:09:02] In the city survey that wrapped up recently, it was revealed that only 36% of respondents have some confidence in City Council. It’s a bad approval rating. Only 30% rated the value that they receive for their city tax dollars and fees as ‘good.’

After the loss of CAHOOTS, the budget nightmare in May, the silence on ICE kidnappings, and DHS violence towards Eugene residents, intensified homeless sweeps, and the fecklessness regarding the behavior in the Police Commission, the installation of Flock has been a slap to the face of Eugene.

[00:09:35] You’ve destroyed trust, which builds a wedge between the government and the community that will only result in more resistance. You have the chance to reverse course on your mistakes this year, and that can begin with terminating the contract with Flock.

[00:09:48] Presenter: Pete Goldlust:

[00:09:50] Pete Goldlust: Hi there. My name is Pete Goldlust. I want to express my appreciation that the city council seems to now possibly be engaged with rethinking the unconstitutional and lawsuit-ready agreement that our current city manager signed with the Flock corporation.

[00:10:05] It should be painfully obvious to all of us at this point that it would have saved us all a lot of grief if we had a city manager who gave this kind of thoughtful consideration before we entered into this agreement with a predatory and unscrupulous data profiteer like the Flock company.

[00:10:21] So now that we’re hiring for that job, I hope the City Council will seek out a candidate that has the clarity of mind to think twice when the EPD comes to them next time, over and over and over, seeking out ever more advanced, ever more intrusive, ever more high-caliber military-grade tools to help them surveil and track and impose control on your constituents as they go about their business on the mean streets of Eugene.

[00:10:48] I hope the Council find and interview for a candidate with the judgment to know who they’re ultimately serving in this position. It’s not supposed to be the police department. It’s supposed to be the people of this community.

[00:11:02] I hope the Council will search for someone with enough moral bearing and sound judgment the next time when presented with a piece of paper that is grotesque and stupid as the current horrible, no-good, very bad contract with Flock, that this new city manager will hold up for just a minute and give that decision the consideration it deserves.

[00:11:22] I hope the City Council will look for a candidate that will have the humility to seek input from many thoughtful and informed and reasonable people in this community that will be affected by the next agreement. They’ve been showing up for these meetings. Clearly, they’re willing to make themselves available and share their time and expertise and experience. And none of them are seeking to profit from sharing what they know with you.

[00:11:44] Wouldn’t it be less embarrassing and time-consuming and expensive and stupid if we hired a city manager that gave the people in this community enough consideration to run these things by us first? I urge you to look for that person and I urge you to impress on them that this is what you expect from them. Wouldn’t it be nice if we did this the easy way next time? Thank you.

[00:12:04] Presenter: Danny Patch:

[00:12:05] Danny Patch: I think we are hitting ourselves against the wall here. We’re dealing with the city council that has already approved the surveillance. They’re the ones that helped put it up. So, why are we begging them to change their mind? I think it’s time to change them. It’s time to get rid of these people that are traitors and stabbing us in the back.

[00:12:28] In a very short time, you have spent tens upon millions of dollars for yourselves, and let’s make this really clear, you bought this broken toilet here for yourselves, not us.

[00:12:38] And then you steal our vote, be able to vote on operating levies. So we no longer even have a voice that deals with our vote, our fundamental right as an American.

[00:12:51] You talk about democracy, what a hypocrite you are. A blatant hypocrite, Madam Mayor. And now you’re watching us, you’re not just watching us, you’re recording us. You’re recording us. You’re just—and then you take our city streets. You steal our lanes and you create these chaos of traffic nightmares and it destroys our business. It destroys our way of conducting ourselves. And it holds up our emergency services that you’ve just heard.

[00:13:24] These people are broken. We need to replace them. They’re not serving us. They’re a bunch of self-serving, self-dealing enrichment fiends, and all they’re doing is stealing our money and our vote, and now they’re recording our movements.

[00:13:41] It’s time to get rid of these fools. It’s time to replace them. Stop begging them for something they’ve already decided to do. They put the cameras up. These are the people that did it.

[00:13:55] Well, they okayed it, rubber stamp, we like watching you. Otherwise, you would have fought like hell and not done it.

[00:14:05] You know, start telling the truth for once, Madam Mayor. I asked you point-blank and you lied this summer. You lied to a whole group of neighborhood associations and it was so pathetically disappointing—

[00:14:16] Presenter: Chris Case:

[00:14:17] Chris Case: My name is Chris Case. I’m here before the City Council to demand that the Flock contract be cancelled and to furthermore point out the hypocrisy of a body of people that will come up here and talk about our most marginalized members of our community and yet directly install things that would make their lives worse.

[00:14:34] It’s almost as hypocritical as reading a land acknowledgement in the same city, state, and country that is making money off of the genocide in Gaza right now.

[00:14:46] These things can all be changed. City councilors serve at the pleasure and discretion of your constituents. And I see that, you know, that may seem like a smug thing to laugh about to some members of the City Council, but it’s true. And we have the power to change who’s on the City Council and we can make sure that it represents the values of the people in this community.

[00:15:06] And I think we’re going to start doing that as soon as we get some new people that actually give a damn about what goes on in the city.

[00:15:14] To reiterate, Flock needs to go, and from the way some of these resources have been squandered and the way some people have done things in the dead of night by making deals with Skinner, some other people need to go too.

[00:15:26] Presenter: Public comments Sept. 22 include calls to replace the mayor and city council, as after losing the hospital, CAHOOTS, the Emeralds, and the sense that it’s safe to go downtown, city leadership continues to support a corporate-owned national surveillance network.