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Since we were off on Memorial Day, we didn’t have our typical “One Big Story” question on Monday.
Instead, I’ll share some comments from our coverage of AI license plate readers in Chandler. From our reporter Sahara Sajjadi:
“After a four-hour long meeting, the Chandler City Council voted 5-1 to table the discussions relating to renewing a $153,000 contract with Flock Safety for license plate reader cameras. City officials will raise the issue again on July 16.The crowd wasn’t happy about it and chanted to remove the cameras at the May 21 meeting.”
Here’s what our readers and Instagram followers said:
💬 “We don’t need to live in a crime thriller where law enforcement grabs everyone’s license plate as they drive down the street. This is going too far under the guise of ‘safety’ because it isn’t protecting anyone, it is simply enabling abuse. IF they required a warrant for each use, had legislation that forbid accessing any stored images without warrant, and strictly banned the vendor from any access to that data whatsoever; Then Maybe with community oversight something like this could be beneficial to the community. But NOT BEFORE all of that is IN PLACE.” — Tony R.
💬 “Flock should get out of Arizona! No one needs mass surveillance!” — @sshaverr
💬 “It’s literally their job to do what the PEOPLE want, they are our representatives!!!! I don’t understand why so many people get elected into these public servant positions to then do the exact opposite of what their constituents want.” —@moody_persimmon
💬 “Goodyear AZ residents, we need to be doing the same.” — @larby_starby
💬 “Setting my calendar for July 16. say no to police surveillance.” — @makitaandmatt
💬 “If you see them around the valley, check deflock.me to see if they’re mapped. If not, add them. We need a good map of all of these devices.” — @5t34k54uc3
