$50 billion retail behemoth Simon Property has granted police access to its AI car surveillance feeds via startup Flock Safety, monitoring vehicles visiting its malls, public records requests reveal.Car surveillance startup Flock Safety creates"fingerprints" of cars and feeds the information to police, as do its customers, including Simon Property Group.alls are heavily surveilled places, with visitors watched by CCTV cameras and security guards on the look out for shoplifters.
Flock’s AI software allows its customers to search for vehicles by license plate, model, color or any other defining feature, making it an effective way to track people’s movement across the country. But while Flock is very public about its police contracts, touting its software’s helpfulness in solving crimes, it has kept its relationships with private companies under wraps.
Flock says its customers can choose to keep their camera feeds fully private or provide some data to police. But by directly handing over camera feeds to law enforcement, Simon appears to have expanded cops’ surveillance powers without citizens’ knowledge or approval. “When the powers of law enforcement commingle with the enormous powers of some of our biggest companies, there's a lot of reason for concern,” said Jay Stanley, senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union.