Fairfax County School Board bans all Flock-style cameras on school property

The useful part

ALPR cameras are a variety of camera that collect data on anyone who drives past, creating a database of Americans' real-time movements that spans much of the country as the cameras proliferate nationwide. The most well-known variant of ALPR camera system is made and sold by Flock Safety, an AI camera company that has come under fire in recent weeks over privacy and surveillance concerns. Fairfax County Public Schools do have standard security cameras, but the cameras are not AI-powered and the video is only stored on school-board-maintained servers for a maximum of 30 days.

How it works

• There are not currently any ALPR camera systems on Fairfax County Public School grounds, and the motion was introduced proactively to keep it that way.
• "I wanted to take a proactive measure here to ensure we do not install these systems." The motion still allows the "installation, operation, or continued us...

Details worth keeping

Flock-style license plate cameras on school property. During the board's regular meeting, Vice Chairman and at-large board member Kyle McDaniel introduced a motion to "prohibit the installation, procurement, or leasing of Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) systems on property owned by Fairfax County Public Schools," the board said in a statement. "FCPS's mission does not include community policing, but interestingly, some police departments across the nation are even sounding the alarm about issues with these systems and cancelling their contracts," McDaniel said in the statement.