After months of discussion and outrage from residents, the city council of the tiny town of Bandera, Texas voted 3-2 to immediately end its contract with the surveillance company Flock. In the aftermath of the vote, one of the dissenting council members crashed out and said he would be introducing measures to ban cell phones, the internet, cameras, and nearly all technology in the town of roughly 900 people.Bandera had a state grant to install eight Flock Safety AI license plate reader cameras in the tiny town. The technology proved to be incredibly controversial, with residents repeatedly turning out to city council meetings to say that they did not want government surveillance in the town; the poles that the cameras were installed on were repeatedly destroyed by vandals in protest, leading the town to have to replace them at their own expense. Last week, the town formally decided to abandon its contract with Flock entirely.\u00a0After the vote, Councilmember Jeff Flowers, a staunch Flock supporter, said that if people in the town wanted privacy then the city council should basically ban all technology, essentially calling people who did not want government surveillance hypocrites. Flowers said he would propose a series of new regulations at an upcoming city council meeting, which he is calling the \u201cBandera Declaration of Digital Independence.\u201d In a letter posted by the local newspaper, the Bandera Bulletin, Flowers said that in the name of preserving privacy he would suggest the city go back to the days of 1880 .\u00a0\u201cFor months, I have listened to the outcry regarding License Plate Recognition (LPR) technology. I have seen the eyerolls, and I\u2019ve even been met with \u2018Nazi rhetoric,\u2019 the dangerous claim that believing in accountability and community safety is somehow equivalent to totalitarianism,\u201d Flowers wrote. \u201cComparing a neighbor\u2019s desire for a safe street to a dark chapter of history is a classic case of comparing apples to oranges; it is a distraction used to avoid the reality of the threats our town faces today.\u201dFlowers said that at the next city council meeting he will propose \u201ca total ban on all cellular and GPS-capable devices for all operations within city limits. If we are to be truly \u2018private,\u2019 we must leave our smartphones at the city line.\u201d He will also propose \u201ca total ban on outward facing cameras,\u201d and \u201ca total termination of all internet services and electronic record-keeping. We are going back to 1880, paper ledgers and cash only.\u201dLike in many other communities around the country, the use of Flock\u2019s AI cameras has become a major topic of discussion in Bandera. In February, Bandera held a town hall meeting exclusively about Flock that Flowers moderated. Kerry McCormack, a former Cleveland city council member who is now on the public affairs team for Flock, came to that meeting to discuss the technology, demonstrating that the company is sending representatives even to tiny towns in order to promote its use. Bandera paid for its Flock cameras using a public safety grant from the state of Texas; in his letter, Flowers said that the city \u201cdidn\u2019t just throw away a state grant (free money), they spent $15,000 of your local tax dollars out of pocket to back out of the deal.\u201dIn an earlier February city council meeting, Flowers said, \u201cI believe personally that guilty people act defensively. If you don\u2019t have anything to hide, then it shouldn\u2019t be a problem. I also believe when you are in a public space, your privacy kind of goes out the window because you are in essence in a public place.\u201dBandera had eight Flock cameras installed. At the meeting last week where the town voted to end the Flock contract, residents noted that Bandera has one of the lowest crime rates in the state. Other residents noted that people in the town kept cutting down the poles the Flock cameras are installed on, leading the town to continually spend money and time to replace them. Residents said they felt like they made it clear that they do not want the cameras in the town, but that the town had dragged its feet on actually ending the contract.\u00a0\u201cThis is the fifth meeting [about Flock]. How many more meetings are we going to have to have before we get to the idea that we don\u2019t need the Flock system?\u201d one resident said in the meeting last week. \u201cHow many more meetings is it going to take before we understand the community didn\u2019t vote for this? They don\u2019t want it. How many more times are the cameras going to have to get cut down before somebody realizes it\u2019s not worth the money? It\u2019s coming to a point where we\u2019re going to have to have meetings until we\u2019re all dead [\u2026] By putting the cameras back up [after they\u2019ve been cut down], you\u2019re basically baiting someone else to come cut them down or shoot them down, you\u2019re basically causing an issue because we didn\u2019t vote for it.\u201dAnother resident said Flock \u201cdoesn\u2019t pass the vibe check. Bandera is the cowboy capital of the world. We don\u2019t need to implement mass government surveillance in our town.\u201dAt the meeting last week, city council members discussed how it was clear residents didn\u2019t want Flock cameras, and that the town had stopped installing new ones, but that it never formally ended the contract. \u201cCall for a vote please,\u201d one council member eventually said. \u201cIt\u2019s a waste of time,\u201d to keep discussing a technology that residents didn\u2019t want, they added. At that point, the council proposed to \u201cdeactivate and remove any Flock cameras that are city owned,\u201d and voted to end the contract.The discussion that happened in Bandera is essentially the same one that has played out throughout the country in small towns and large cities across the political spectrum. Time and time again, local politicians advocate for more surveillance even when it is clear their constituents don\u2019t want it. In Troy, New York, the city council voted to end its Flock contract, for example, but the mayor declared a state of emergency to continue using the cameras, The Washington Post reported. In Dunwoody, Georgia, residents have been fighting against Flock after they learned the company was using cameras in the city in sales demos. The city council there elected to slightly tweak its contract with Flock but not end it entirely. Later this week, Flock is throwing a training for police officers about \u201chow to speak with city councils: meeting the moment with confidence.\u201dIn his letter to residents, Flowers said that they should stop being hypocrites by using technology.\u00a0\u201cLet\u2019s take Bandera back to 1880 properly. No double standards, no hypocrisy,\u201d Flowers wrote. \u201cIf LPRs are \u2018unconstitutional\u2019 and invade our right to \u2018public\u2019 privacy, we need to be courageous enough to go all the way. I look forward to the \u2018Privacy First\u2019 crowd showing up to support these bans […] just remember to leave your phones at home.\u201d\u00a0Earlier this year, after the February town hall meeting, Flowers told the Bandera Bulletin that he believed town residents\u2019 privacy concerns \u201cdeserve to be addressed directly and respectfully.\u201d Flowers did not respond to multiple requests for comment from 404 Media. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"