State of Surveillance: Everyone’s watching

Going to church. Eating at a restaurant. Getting to work and back home each day. Visiting a friend across town, or family in another city. Buying groceries. Getting on or off the highway at a small town or at one of the area’s largest cities. 

If you’ve done any of these things on a regular basis in the past few years you’ve likely been driving; and if you live in Southwest or Southside Virginia, chances are you’ve been recorded on video thousands of times by dozens if not hundreds of law enforcement surveillance cameras. 

What information do they capture? Who can see it? What can it be used for?

Big-time tech meets small town law enforcement

The entirety of the Boones Mill Police Department could be photographed leaning against a single utility pole. But the town’s part-time officer is not working today, so it’s just Police Chief Kelvin Pruett and the town’s K9 dog, Rex, on this Monday morning. 

One full-time officer. One dog. And three Flock Safety surveillance cameras, procured through a recent state grant, which will connect the small town between Martinsville and Roanoke to a network of cameras that stretches across the region, the state, and the country. 

Flock cameras gather data on all cars that flow by an intersection or road, and feed it to a centralized database. They collect more than just plate numbers. They create “vehicle fingerprints” which, according to Flock’s contract, can include the make and model of the vehicle and other unique identifying information such as color, roof racks and even bumper stickers.

The lone Flock camera posted in Boones Mill so far perches near a road off winding U.S. 220, the most trafficked entrance and exit for those coming to Boones Mill. If it spots a plate associated with a stolen vehicle or an arrest warrant, says town manager B.T. Fitzpatrick, it will forward that information to local police.

The process takes about 10 seconds, said Fitzpatrick.

These “hotlist” hits come from outside an agency’s locality. Many success stories police shared with Cardinal News were of the hotlist variety — a stolen car, or a car driven by a person listed as missing, drives through an intersection, data on that vehicle is compared to the current hotlist posted by participating agencies, and the result is a “hit.” The local agency is notified and can decide to pull over the vehicle.

Officers can also conduct searches across a network of Flock cameras, depending on their access. They could enter a license plate number, but even entering the make and model of a car and its color can start a search that may identify and track a vehicle that was first glimpsed at a crime scene by a person or private video system.

In agencies of one officer and in departments of hundreds, public-facing surveillance has swept across rural Virginia. And the technology itself, from automated license plate readers to gunshot detectors and fixed and mobile video cameras aimed at public streets and neighborhoods, has swept hundreds of thousands of Virginians into its vast data collection, whether or not they are suspected of breaking the law. 

“It begins with the collection of the data itself,” said ACLU of Virginia Senior Supervising Attorney Matthew Callahan. “We don’t think the government should be in the business of collecting data about private citizens when they have no suspicion or valid reason to target that person. It’s picking up all the people driving down a public highway or walking down a public street.” 

Who’s watching you as you drive through Southwest and Southside Virginia? Cardinal found out.

The big blue map: Everyone’s watching.

Cardinal News identified 100 law enforcement agencies in and around Southwest and Southside Virginia, starting with the county sheriff’s offices and larger city police departments.

We pored over tech vendor contracts and other documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, dug into the most recent statewide report available to double-check agency responses. More detail about our reporting can be found near the bottom of this story.

We found that 81 of 100 agencies use some form of public-facing surveillance tech.

By public-facing surveillance tech, we mean tech that specifically is placed to record and gather data in a public area with no specific investigative outcome. That includes automated license plate readers (LPRs).

The map below shows where public-facing surveillance is being used. Specific towns, cities and counties can be found on the searchable list below it.

Exactly how that public surveillance data is being used is a little more opaque.

Flock Safety offers to build its customers (at no additional cost to their contract) a Transparency Portal page that provides information to the public on that agency's policies regarding accepted and restricted use of data, number of LPR cameras in use, and the number of searches conducted on the data in the past 30 days, among other things. It may also list all Flock customer agencies with access to those cameras' data.

Cardinal News has been able to identify only four agencies in and around Southside and Southwest with a Flock-created Transparency Portal as of Feb. 10: Roanoke Police Department, Staunton police and Augusta County and Rockbridge County sheriff’s offices.

None of the agencies responding to the Cardinal News survey mentioned a transparency portal, even if they had one.

Only one agency — Staunton — has created and chosen to share with Cardinal News an official policy regarding its public surveillance using LPRs.

It's a state of surveillance.

The map below combines Cardinal News research with the results of an October 2024 survey by the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services. Law enforcement agencies using public-facing surveillance tech including LPRs and gunshot listening devices paint a very blue picture.

So if the question is, "Who's watching me?" The answer is: practically everyone.

The list below includes all Virginia local law enforcement found by Cardinal News, the VDCJS survey, and select Flock transparency pages to have public-facing surveillance tech.

But that's not the only question — and maybe not nearly the most important one — we should be asking, experts say.

One question is, how did all these agencies, from a one-person police department to county sheriff's offices often strapped for funds to hire new deputies at competitive salaries, afford it?

Combination of federal and state funds make surveillance tech free. For now.

A funny thing happened on the way to defunding the police.

The American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021 was used to fund body armor and cameras, vehicle video tech including LPRs, and a whole array of hardware and software for police departments and sheriff's offices. Virginia provided funds for agencies through multiple programs, including the governor's Bold Blue Line program and grants from the Virginia Department of Criminal Justice.

The news of that funding trickled down to a new generation of companies, including Flock Safety, out of Atlanta, Georgia. Flock had been appealing to private businesses and home owners associations, said American University Washington College of Law professor Andrew Ferguson.

Ferguson said he thinks Flock saw the gap in tech offerings for smaller towns and smaller rural areas and made the step up to where funding was. "Within that recognition that there's a pool of money, you've seen newer companies arise to compete in these spaces, and Flock is one of them."

In Virginia, one state program dating back to the 1990s has contributed to funding smaller agencies, though their participation doing so began just a few years ago. Cardinal News found over a dozen agencies from Southwest or Southside Virginia received a grant for LPR cameras through Virginia State Police's Help Eliminate Auto Theft (HEAT) program. Most received $12,500 to subscribe to an annual subscription for 3 Flock cameras and access to the Flock Safety network. The number of cameras funded varied from 2 to 10.

Those $12,500 grants are first-come-first-served, and not guaranteed from year to year.

HEAT's program coordinator 1st Sgt. Peter Lazear told Cardinal News that he counsels small police departments that they may eventually have to take on the annual subscription cost.

HEAT's budget is not likely to shrink. It's funded by annual payments from licensed insurance agencies in Virginia at a rate of 0.25% of their premium revenues.

Body armor, cameras for vehicles, video and audio tech for interview rooms were often funded through grants from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) of 2021. Axon was the vendor of choice for these types of tech. ARPA helped finance tech for at least seven Southwest or Southside agencies.

Hundreds of Flock Falcon and Raven cameras have been posted facing public intersections, sidewalks and streets since 2022. The cameras are part of a subscription package and are owned by Flock.

Two other questions besides cost, Ferguson suggests, should be considered by the communities in which these cameras are being placed.

Public-facing surveillance 'reversing the default' when we think of privacy and transparency

At one level, it's simple and self-evident.

“People should have the right to go down the street without the chilling effect of the government knowing where they are and what they are doing,” said ACLU’s Callahan.

At another level, demanding privacy requires practical action by communities, said Ferguson, who's the author of the book "The Rise of Big Data Policing."

Once you have a sense of how surveillance tech is being used, "you want to come up with a rule set about how you can protect privacy," he said. "Maybe you don't want to have an automated license plate reader outside a mental health clinic or a hospital or even, you know, a gun range."

Feguson mentioned how in general, gun owners are against the government keeping tabs on everyone who has a gun. "Well, guess what an automated license plate reader can do outside a gun shop?

"You know, the sheriff or police chief can put an LPR pretty much anywhere, because there aren't rules about where to do it. And there might be some thoughtful considerations they might want to take before putting it outside the mosque or the synagogue," Ferguson said.

"There should be discussions about that, as it sort of invades the default that we should be able to live our lives outside of government's ground. So that's what this is doing, right? It's reversing the default," he said. "Before these kinds of technologies, we lived in a world where the government didn't watch us unless they had good reason, and they invested the time to watch the people they thought were up to no good."

"Then the default shifts, and everyone's car is recorded, not just our license plate, but also, you know, the stickers on the back of their truck, the bumper stickers and the decals and schools you go to, and, you know, clubs you're a part of, all of those things are somewhat revealing who you are."

Transparency is also an issue.

A bill being considered by the Virginia legislature, HB 2724, would establish annual audits of all agencies using such tech and require the Department of State Police to develop a "model policy" for the use of automatic license plate recognition systems that local agencies could follow.

It would also make the system data and audit trail data exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act. So the transparency apparently would not extend beyond state law enforcement to identify rogue and illegal use of data searches.

The bill, by House Majority Leader Charniele Herring, D-Alexandria, would also have allowed such cameras on state highway rights-of-way.

Herring argued that the bill would serve to put "guard rails" on the use of surveillance cameras but opponents argued the bill would expand their use. State Sen. Jennifer Carroll Foy, D-Prince William County, said the bill would allow states that ban abortion to track the movements of women who come to Virginia to terminate their pregnancies.

"We're authorizing mass surveillance on a massive scale," Foy said. "This is big government, big brother, in a big way."

Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax County, said that without the bill, Virginia will have "more unregulated surveillance."

The vote tally — 9-6 against the bill — split both Democrats and Republicans, with some on each side. After initially being killed by the Senate Courts of Justice Committee, the bill was later called back up and postponed until a later meeting.

The reach of shared data among police agencies, even across state lines, produces other questions of transparency and privacy.

When asked about the danger of third parties including federal agencies gaining access to an agency’s data, Flock Safety’s Holly Beilin said in an email, “Agencies own and control who has access to their data, and access can only be granted by the agency who owns the data.” 

But a standard clause in versions of Flock’s contract obtained by Cardinal News reads otherwise. In a clause entitled "Disclosure of Footage," Flock claims the right to "access, use, preserve and/or disclose the footage" to government officials and third parties under a variety of circumstances.

Ferguson stressed communities should ask questions now. "If you are giving a company the data to collect something, and you're not asking the questions of, 'Well, what's being done with this information? What other things are you mining?' You might, you know, come up with a world you don't want to live in."

***

Boones Mill's second Flock camera will go up Feb. 17 at a location facing southbound traffic.

The town is paying for the cameras with an annual $12,500 HEAT grant that will cover the service subscription in the years to come, said town manager Fitzpatrick.

“We just have to reapply and will get that money every year,” Fitzpatrick said. “There’s no cost to town taxpayers.”

So far, the one camera hasn’t contributed to a pursuit or arrest, he said.

“Literally, myself and our officers are still going through the training,” he said. “In the future, we can ask for access to surrounding localities’ cameras and … we’ll know somebody is coming this way.”

Fitzpatrick said the system is not meant to store data on people.  “It just alerts officers on duty, so police can do our part.”

[Elizabeth Beyer, Matt Busse, Susan Cameron, Grace Mamon, Emily Schabacker and Samantha Verrelli contributed reporting to this story.]