BETHLEHEM, Pa. – Across the street from Bethlehem City Hall is a Flock camera.<\/p>\n
“We currently have around 24. They’re static and they are positioned throughout the city in places where we think they would be most beneficial,\u201d said Cpt. William Audelo of the Bethlehem Police Department.<\/p>\n
Cpt. William Audelo says Bethlehem Police are aware of privacy concerns regarding the use of the license plate reading technology.<\/p>\n
Evidence of that concern can be seen in signs posted near the cameras literally saying, “Your government is spying on you.”<\/p>\n
According to the Institute of Justice, a non-partisan, non-profit public interest law firm, there have been more than 100 cases nationwide of license plate reading cameras abuse.<\/p>\n
“Including romantic stalking, wrongful stops and detentions, non-law enforcement use, and other types of misconduct,” said Audelo. “It’s just an investigative tool. It’s not used to monitor organizations or people or follow movements.\u201d<\/p>\n
Audelo says BPD can’t control what’s being done in other jurisdictions but has released a report outlining exactly how Flock cameras are being used in Bethlehem.<\/p>\n
Audelo credits the cameras with solving crimes quickly and locating missing people like a 12-year-old girl earlier this month.<\/p>\n
He says the cameras are used after a crime is reported, footage is erased after 7 days and protocols are in place to prevent abuse.<\/p>\n
“All of our activity is logged. Every search has to have a reason. It has to have a police report number attached to it. It is audited. It’s audited by our police administration, by supervisors. This is not something that is just left unchecked,” said Audelo.<\/p>\n
Bethlehem says it also does not share images with other agencies like ICE.<\/p>\n
You can see the report on the Bethlehem Government page and on Facebook.<\/p>\n
Also, the ACLU has started a campaign called “Get the Flock Out” to educate people about what they can do if they object to Flock cameras in their community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BETHLEHEM, Pa. – Across the street from Bethlehem City Hall is a Flock camera. “We currently have around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[6635,153,155,154,1488,111167,114580,114582,114581,79590,33943,294,98475],"class_list":["post-272147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-bethlehem","tag-aclu","tag-bethlehem","tag-bethlehem-headlines","tag-bethlehem-news","tag-bethlehem-police","tag-civil-liberties","tag-flock-camera","tag-get-the-flock-out","tag-institute-of-justice","tag-license-plate-reader","tag-privacy-concerns","tag-public-safety","tag-surveillance-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}