Texas city demands $2.3M for public records on Flock usage
North Richland Hills, Texas, demanded $2.3 million for public records on Flock’s AI license-plate cameras, the Texas Tribune reported Monday.
The request was filed by Phil Mynona, who used a pseudonym on behalf of his group, the Texas Privacy Coalition. Mynona told the Tribune that the fee seemed 'ludicrous' and was designed to stifle his public records searches.
To justify the $2.3 million charge, North Richland Hills officials claimed that searching 'about a terabyte worth of communications about errors, misuse, and effectiveness of the Flock system' would take approximately 14 years of labor at a rate of $15 per hour. The Tribune reported the figure Monday.
The records request concerned Flock, whose AI-enabled camera systems are used by police departments and track every vehicle that passes them. The systems have drawn scrutiny over how police use and potentially abuse them. As bipartisan backlash against Flock grows, some cities have asked anti-surveillance advocates and media outlets to pay eye-popping fees for records about the technology, Ars Technica reported.