The following is a statement posted by Dartmouth Select Board member Nathan Silva. “At Monday night’s Select Board meeting Dartmouth has an opportunity to have a productive conversation about Flock cameras and the underlying ALPR technology, and I hope we take advantage of it constructively.”
“Dartmouth’s Flock camera contract is not being renewed. Item G of the August 31 Select Board agenda includes an update from Chief Levesque regarding Dartmouth’s Flock camera contract and its non-renewal.”
“Flock is the brand of focus today, but I think an important discussion is about the automated license plate reader technology itself and the policies that should govern its use in Dartmouth, both now and in the future.”
“There are real public safety benefits to this technology. ALPRs can help police locate stolen vehicles, missing persons, develop leads, and potentially solve cases that would otherwise be harder to investigate. There is no doubt they can be a valuable public safety tool.”
“At the same time, there are legitimate questions and concerns about privacy, how much information is collected, how long it is retained, who can access it, when it can be shared with other agencies, whether searches are logged or audited, and what uses should or should not be permitted. those are the tradeoffs I think we need to examine carefully.”
“One of the challenges with technology like this is that the technology often advances faster than the policies designed to govern it. That makes it particularly important for communities to understand both the benefits and the risks and decide what safeguards and limits make sense.”
“Those decisions shouldn’t be made in a vacuum, they should be made with input from the very community these systems are intended to protect.”
“We’ve seen this issue generate a lot of attention locally and nationally, including some public meetings that became less productive than I think anyone would have hoped. I’m all for advocacy, but I believe advocacy is most useful when it helps us better understand an issue, examine tradeoffs, identify solutions, and ultimately make better decisions together.”
“That is what I hope we can accomplish in Dartmouth.” You can see the original post here:https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61586566555991
