{"id":305274,"date":"2026-05-08T02:14:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T02:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/305274\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T02:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T02:14:11","slug":"berkeley-voting-on-renewal-of-flock-license-plate-reader-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/305274\/","title":{"rendered":"Berkeley voting on renewal of Flock license plate reader deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Some Berkeley City Council members recently defended their support for renewing a contract for Flock Safety\u2019s surveillance technology despite <a href=\"https:\/\/www.berkeleyside.org\/2026\/03\/25\/berkeley-flock-safety-vote-delayed-alprs-cameras-drones-nova\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">widespread opposition<\/a> from Berkeley residents.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Council members argued that Flock has reporting \u201csafeguards\u201d that will protect against abuses despite evidence that this has failed elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>Across the country, police officers have reportedly <a href=\"https:\/\/ij.org\/police-have-reportedly-used-license-plate-readers-to-stalk-romantic-interests-at-least-14-times-in-recent-years\/\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">misused Flock<\/a> and other automated license plate reader systems to stalk women, ex-partners, and other people for personal reasons. In Milwaukee, prosecutors said one officer used Flock <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ibtimes.co.uk\/police-misuse-license-plate-readers-legal-challenges-1794019\" data-link=\"native\" class=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">179 times<\/a> over two months to track a woman he was dating and her ex-partner.<\/p>\n<p>These searches were sometimes logged simply as \u201cinvestigation,\u201d which shows that audit logs do not prevent abuse.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Over the past year, municipalities across the U.S. have terminated contracts with Flock over reports that federal immigration agencies accessed its data.<\/p>\n<p class=\"cci_tagline_name\" title=\"CCI Tagline Name\">Wilhemina Condon, Berkeley<\/p>\n<p>My 1915 house will require major modification to support an electric heat pump, so the timeline looks like this: find an electrician, apply for an electrical permit, find a plumber, apply for a plumbing permit, get on the schedule of the electrician and the plumber, wait for them to do the work and wait for final inspection from the Building Department.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Even an optimist can see that this process will take a significant amount of time \u2014 and my home will not have hot water for some of it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Electric water heaters should be mandated in new construction or remodeling, but can we please have some common sense when it comes to requiring them for older homes?<\/p>\n<p class=\"cci_tagline_name\" title=\"CCI Tagline Name\">Laurel Winzler, San Francisco<\/p>\n<p>This is contradicted by the elections code and, more importantly, common sense. The disclaimer that appeared above Grundmann\u2019s statement just shows Weber knew the statement should not be published. This appalling lack of judgment should not be rewarded with another four years in office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some Berkeley City Council members recently defended their support for renewing a contract for Flock Safety\u2019s surveillance technology&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305275,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1564,143,145,144,975],"class_list":["post-305274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-letters-to-the-editor","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305274\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}