Surveillance in U.S. National Parks: NPS Installs Flock Cameras, Rangers Outraged

The U.S. National Park Service (NPS), which manages nature preserves and monuments, has purchased and installed cameras made by the company Flock — including in Yosemite National Park. This was reported by the outlet 404 Media, which also cites data from DeFlock, an open map of the locations of automatic license plate readers (ALPRs). Another Flock camera, according to that data, stands on the road to the Golden Gate recreation area.

What Flock Cameras Do

Flock cameras continuously record the plate number, color, make and model of every passing vehicle, creating a time-stamped record of where and when a car — and therefore its owner — was located. This data is available to the company's law-enforcement clients and is typically requested by police without a warrant. Many of the cameras are part of a nationwide network: a police officer in, say, Texas can search for a specific vehicle across cameras throughout the country. Against a backdrop of reports of abuses — from tracking people with no investigation whatsoever to running lookups on behalf of the immigration agency ICE — a public debate has unfolded around Flock in the U.S.

The Rangers' Reaction

Current and former NPS employees, whom the outlet kept anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the press, reacted sharply. “Flock protects property, not people and not parks. Surveillance is a disrespectful invasion of privacy,” said one of the rangers. Another added that every American should have the right to visit the national parks without fear that the federal government is tracking their movements: “Wilderness lies at the heart of American freedom.”

A third source recalled last year's story, when Yosemite retroactively changed the rules on flying flags on the El Capitan rock face in order to portray visitors' actions as a crime. “What happens when schemes like that combine with the ability to track any park guest anywhere in the country?” he asks. And he concludes with the phrase featured in the original's headline: “I fear the day when a visitor's outing is interrupted by being pulled over and held at gunpoint — because a reader misread a plate.”

Expansion Plans and the NPS Position

Beyond Flock, the NPS plans to install cameras made by Verkada — a company with a scandal-ridden reputation whose devices sometimes have facial-recognition capabilities. As an acting deputy superintendent's letter indicates, in places where there are no U.S. Park Police (USPP) cameras, plate recognition will be provided precisely by Verkada.

The service itself insists this is merely traffic monitoring: the system in Yosemite supposedly counts vehicles, measures travel times and entrance queues, helping visitors plan their trips. According to the NPS, the cameras are not connected to law-enforcement databases or to motor vehicle records.

Source: 404 Media