DistantNews
Support us
🇪🇸 Spain /Crime & Justice

The Police Force Watching Women

From El País · () Spanish

Translated from Spanish and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Analysis Named sources Under investigation
  • Flock says its policing network includes more than 120,000 cameras that can read license plates and track vehicles or people without a judicial warrant.
  • The article describes reported cases in which US officers used the system to harass or monitor women, including former partners and a woman who had undergone an abortion.
  • The technology can create watchlists, reconstruct movements over weeks or months and establish continuous surveillance zones, raising concerns about unchecked police power.

Flock says its surveillance system has more than 120,000 cameras across the United States. The cameras can read license plates at any speed, including at night and in heavy rain. This year, the company began adding camera-equipped drones and audio-detection devices.

Police do not need a court order to use the system. An officer can enter a license plate and see the target appear on a real-time map. A search can also begin with a vehicle’s make, colour, stickers or damage, or with a description of a person or group. Users can create watchlists that send alerts whenever a target appears, reconstruct movements over weeks or months and establish permanent search zones.

The article cites an investigation published by The Washington Post in August. It reported that Michael Steffman, a police chief in Georgia, used the system at least 600 times to harass and terrorise his former partner and her teenage daughter. In California, Alexander Vanny allegedly used it to harass and humiliate his former fiancée.

as transformative for fighting crime as DNA

· Flock founderThe company founder’s description of the technology is contrasted with the article’s warning about its use by police.

Other cases involved reproductive healthcare. A Texas officer placed an 83,000-camera search zone around a woman who had had an abortion. In Wisconsin, Cristian Morales used the system to check whether his girlfriend was visiting an abortion clinic, then sought her medical records and harassed her at home and by phone. He labelled the searches as welfare checks.

The article says most of the 50 officially recorded unauthorised uses involved wives, girlfriends, former partners, new partners of former partners, or women officers wanted to meet. It argues that the cases may represent only a small fraction of actual misuse. The company’s founder has compared the technology’s crime-fighting impact with DNA, but the article frames its uncontrolled use as the reversal of a basic democratic principle: citizens should watch those who govern them, not the other way around.

The police are already here.

· Jarmarus BrownThe article says Brown allegedly told a woman this after sending her videos of herself driving and reminding her that he had a gun.
About this summary

Originally published by El País in Spanish. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

More Stories

From Our Blog