This petition calls for the removal of Flock Safety cameras from our community. This is not an anti-law enforcement petition; it is a pro-American rights, privacy, and liberty petition.

Our concerns include data breaches, insecure storage, abuse of collected information, potential access by foreign intelligence or malicious actors, violations of individual rights, and the creation of a nationwide mass-surveillance network. A private company should not be allowed to collect the movements and information of private citizens and make that data available to government agencies, businesses, or other paying entities without serious public oversight.

While officials may not have been legally required to ask citizens before installing these cameras, asking the people who would actually be tracked would have been the more transparent and ethical approach.

The information surrounding these systems is publicly available, and in today’s world, gatekeeping information is no longer an effective way to control what citizens know. People can research the technology and decide for themselves.

This is bigger than catching criminals. If we do not get a handle on mass surveillance now, we risk building an infrastructure that can be abused later. We can support law enforcement while still protecting the constitutional rights and liberties that define America.