This week, people in 460 cities across the country, including some in New York state, are saying “no” to surveillance technology. DeFlock is holding a National Week of Action against automated license plate readers (ALPRs), the cameras that you see on roadways that scan license plates and track vehicle movements.

ALPRs use AI-powered cameras to automatically turn every passing car’s license plate number and identifying features into searchable data.

Law enforcement agencies claim the technology is helpful in tracking down criminals and locating missing people, but civil liberties experts say they’re a cause for concern.

“Such warrantless surveillance undermines our constitutional protections, in particular, our rights to freedom of association, speech, religion and privacy under the First and Fourth Amendments,” Daniel Schwarz said. He’s the senior privacy and technology strategist for the New York Civil Liberties Union.

One company is at the core of the debate: Flock Safety. According to DeFlock, the company has more than 131,000 cameras operating in the United States today.

“As soon as you step outside your front door, you are immediately, I mean immediately, being surveilled,” said Matt Brockbank, a coordinator with DeFlock New York.

Flock has gotten flack in the past for its mass surveillance capabilities and data sharing and retention policies. But recent reports of officers exploiting the tech for personal searches have sparked a slew of new concerns around misuse.

That has led some people to act out, reportedly taking it on themselves to remove, vandalize or even destroy the cameras.

“The people clearly don’t want this,” Brockbank said.

Flock has since announced several policy changes to address the concerns.

“This is an evolution; it’s another chapter in a long book for a company that’s trying to build a safer America,” Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley said.

Those changes include reducing the data retention period from 30 days to seven days and adding tools to restrict data sharing between agencies and detect misuse.

“We’ve always believed that officers should have a reason, you know, to conduct a search, they should have a legitimate law enforcement investigative use case, however, as many have seen in audit logs, not every officer has followed either a policy or a standard that we think is good enough,” Langley said. “And so by requiring a case code, it makes it easier and more effective for agencies to make sure that their system is being used within policy and for criminal investigations exclusively.”

However, Brockbank argues those changes aren’t enough.

“If you dig deep into what these changes are actually doing, you know, what is the impact on law enforcement and how Flock operates, there’s no difference,” Brockbank said.

The NYCLU agrees.

“We’re lacking the transparency and still meaningful oversight and teeth in this meaningful enforcement,” Schwarz said. “And so this is not a substitute for local laws, local legislation, state legislation that puts in the place the use restriction, the retention limits and the sharing restrictions that we so desperately need.”

DeFlock says the goal of this National Week of Action is to push for an end to surveillance contracts.

“At the end of the day, this is very much a constitutional crisis, and I want people to take this seriously, beyond just Flock,” Brockbank explained.

According to DeFlock, 100 cities have already moved to reject ALPR technology.

DeFlock’s Week of Action runs through Aug. 22.