Weekly Member Update - April 20, 2026
Greetings, and Happy 4/20 to those who celebrate.
We begin with a familiar refrain, the scourge of mass surveillance known as Flock. Our favorite spy-cam company continues to be in the news all across the Country, and usually for a bad reason. For instance, a former police officer pleaded guilty to multiple crimes in California arising from his use of Flock surveillance systems to track his wife, his mistress, and his romantic rivals. In the Denver suburb of Thornton, Colorado, activists have alleged that one local officer has routinely circumvented the City’s Flock-use protocols and local law, accessing Flock data more than 19,000 times, often while off-duty, with only 29 of those queries associated with a specific case number. In Fulton County, Georgia, corrections officials are using Flock drones to fight contraband deliveries at the local jail. The local Sheriff ultimately hopes to deploy 19 such drones across the County to monitor the behavior of registered sex offenders, among other surveillance, but — don’t worry — he assures us that this is "not a Big Brother situation." Sure, Jan.
Not all the Flock news has been bad, however. The national movement against Flock is having a decided moment, and DeFlock.me is organizing a forthcoming National Week of Action Against ALPRs. We can also add Dane County, Wisconsin to the list of local governments that have said get the Flock out, with the Dane County Board formally discontinuing all funding for Flock surveillance. Bloomington, Indiana is also on the list of deFlocked communities, as that City announced the cancellation of its $50,000 annual contract with Flock this past week. As we’ve pointed out previously, however, cutting off Flock’s taxpayer funding does not always make the cameras go away, so we’re happy to see other tactics being employed in the fight against Flock. To that end, this week saw the first-of-its-kind (as far as we know) class-action lawsuit, with a trio of drivers alleging that the use of Flock surveillance by police in San Jose, California constitutes an unreasonable law enforcement search in violation of the 4th Amendment to the Constitution. In Minnesota, pending legislation would, among other things, prohibit Flock data from being shared with out-of-state entities and would tightly restrict the use of Flock surveillance by private parties. Last week, we also talked about Flock’s ability to provide “transparency portals” for its law enforcement customers; as we’ve seen from the Flock transparency portal for Saratoga Springs, these tools can provide revelatory insight into the uses, and the users, of supposedly local-controlled Flock surveillance data. If you’re curious about what these transparency portals can show you, Have I Been Flocked? has compiled a list of more than 800 such portals from across the Country.
Sadly, Saratoga Springs is the only local community which maintains a transparency portal in connection with its Flock contract, and that circumstance needs to change. The establishment of a transparency portal for each local community that uses Flock is literally the bare minimum that our local officials should be doing to give their constituents the information that they deserve about how these cameras are being used, and by whom. Accordingly, demanding the establishment of transparency portals for every municipality that contracts with Flock is going to be a standard piece of our ongoing local advocacy. Speaking of those efforts, we held the latest episode of our ongoing What the Flock? forums this past week in Troy, and the Collar City continues to be the point of the proverbial spear in local efforts against Flock surveillance. We have it on good authority that there may be some developments this week in the ongoing impasse over Flocks in Troy and Mayor Carmella Mantello’s invocation of “emergency powers” to keep Trojan tax money flowing to Flock; we’re keeping a close eye on the Troy City Council’s agendas to see what pops up in advance of meetings scheduled for later this week. We should have much to discuss at the DeFlock Social Hour at Bard & Baker in Troy that is coming up tomorrow night.
But, our work has not been limited to assisting our friends in Troy and, to that end, we’d like to give you an update about what’s been going on in other communities in the 518. We still have outstanding and unsatisfied FOIL requests pending in several local communities — including the City of Albany, the Town of Colonie, the City of Watervliet, Rensselaer County and the Town of Guilderland — and we’ll be nudging in those places as deadlines come to pass. But, we are getting some FOIL responses rolling in. In the Town/Village of Green Island, for example, we’ve learned that Green Island PD purchased three Flock cameras in June 2024 and permanently hard-wired them into existing electrical infrastructure. We know where two of these cameras are — on Lower Hudson Avenue near Metabolic Fitness and across the street from (2nd Amendment enthusiasts take note) American Firearms Training Academy, and on George Street outside Cornerstone Senior Apartments — but we’re still hunting for the third. Green Island has also disclaimed responsibility for the two Genetec cameras at the traffic light on the Troy-Green Island Bridge in front of the Starbuck Island and River’s Edge apartment complexes, so that’s a mystery that still needs solving. In any event, since it appears that the situation in Green Island is not the subscription renewal agreement that we’ve seen in Troy and elsewhere, and is instead an outright purchase agreement that does not require renewal, our next step in Green Island will be demanding the establishment of a transparency portal. We already know from the Saratoga portal that Saratoga Springs PD has accessed Green Island data, and we think Green Islanders should know who else has been watching them too.
We’ve also heard back from the Town of New Scotland and the entirety of that disclosure reveals that New Scotland has no Flocks of its own. But, in May 2023, New Scotland Supervisor Doug LaGrange signed off on correspondence drafted by the Albany County Sheriff’s Office (ACSO) in support of ACSO’s application to the state Department of Transportation (NYS DOT) for a permit to install Flock surveillance cameras on state, county and local roads throughout Albany County. This probably explains the three Flocks identified on Delaware Turnpike/NY 443 in New Scotland, but we’re going to need to see the NYS DOT permit application to be confident about that supposition. Interestingly, the New Scotland FOIL response also reveals that the ACSO solicited letters from a host of other local communities hoping that they would support the ASCO’s installation of Flock cameras in those communities. You can be sure that that correspondence will inform our dealings with the Towns of Colonie, Bethlehem, Westerlo, Guilderland, Knox, Berne and the Villages of Altamont and Ravena.
Which brings us to the County of Albany. We submitted two FOIL requests to the County of Albany — one to the County Attorney and one to the ACSO — and we have received identical responses to each. In our view, these responses were categorically deficient. Each of these responses is comprised of a mere five documents and doesn’t include anything about the ACSO’s application for permits from NYS DOT, even though we know that permit application exists thanks to what New Scotland gave to us. Albany County’s FOIL responses did include two documents entitled as “Amendments” to something called “Contract 1709.” The trouble is that Albany County has not provided any record entitled Contract 1709 and, moreover, each of the so-called Amendments internally references “prior agreements” of completely different dates and neither of those “prior agreements” have been provided in response to our FOIL request. Interestingly, one of these mystery “prior agreements” appears to predate ACSO’s efforts to obtain a NYS DOT permit and we also received an agreement between ACSO and Flock from August of 2022, again well in advance of ASCO’s efforts to obtain a NYS DOT permit. We’d love to tell you how many Flock cameras that August 2022 agreement supplied to ACSO, but we can’t. The August 2022 agreement we received from ACSO internally references the “Order Forms,” “Deployment Plans” and other attached addenda that would tell us that information, as well as the length of the term of the agreement between ACSO and Flock, but of course Albany County did not provide us with those documents, even though they obviously exist. All told, the County of Albany’s response to our FOIL request raises more questions than answers, and tells us nothing about how many Flock cameras have been deployed by the ACSO, where they are, how much we’re paying for them, or even the duration of the ASCO’s agreement(s) with Flock surveillance and when those contract(s) come up for renewal.
If you attended our presentation on the Freedom of Information Law at our Monthly Member Meeting last week, you heard us talk about how you can only request “records” that actually exist and, if you want to challenge a municipality for its failure to provide records pursuant to your FOIL request, you have to have a “demonstrable basis” to believe that the undisclosed records actually DO exist. Thanks to the County of Albany, we now have a perfect example of these principles; when you disclose documents that explicitly reference other documents but don’t disclose those other documents, the FOIL requestor necessarily has a demonstrable basis to demand the disclosure of those undisclosed other documents. We know that the County of Albany is VERY busy fighting with the City of Albany over school-zone speeding tickets that County employees have incurred, but the County’s failure to meaningfully and fully respond to our FOIL request is inexcusable. We’ll give the County every opportunity to remedy their failures, of course, but at the end of the day, full transparency for the people of Albany County will need to happen and, if we need to go to Judge to get it, so be it.
Enough about Flock, for now. We’re proud to partner with our friends in the Greater Capital Region Coalition and our comrades in the De-ICE Citizens Bank movement in the communities over cages campaign against Citizens Bank and the bank’s efforts to underwrite the private ICE prison network being constructed by CoreCivic and the GEO Group. On Thursday, April 23, there will be a major protest action outside of the Citizens Bank shareholder meeting in Providence, Rhode Island and, this coming Saturday, April 25, there will be series of protest actions outside of Citizens Bank branches across the Capital Region. Indivisible Albany will be at the branch outside of Latham Farms at 882 Loudon Road beginning at 10:00, but you can join any of the nine separate protests taking place all across the 518.
International Workers Day, otherwise known as May Day, is fast approaching, and there are a number of ways for you to celebrate the achievements of the working class here in the Capital Region. First and foremost, Indivisible Albany is a coalition partner with the May Day Strong movement and we encourage everyone to participate in the nationwide day of collective action and stand together against the billionaires who are waging war on the working people who built this nation. If you are able, commit to No Work, No School and No Shopping on May 1st, and help slow the economy to a crawl and send a message of solidarity against the oligarchs and their allies in the Trump Regime. If you are looking for community, a collective of local organizations will be gathering in Washington Park for an afternoon celebration with music, food and solidarity. And then, at 5:30, our friends with the Capital District Area Labor Federation will be rallying at West Capitol Park to celebrate the bravery of workers throughout history who have sacrificed for safety, dignity and justice on the job. It’s a full day dedicated to the working class, the affordability agenda and resistance to Trump’s authoritarian regime. However you choose to mark the day, we hope to see you there!
Odds & Ends:
We’re big proponents of Ranked Choice Voting, the electoral reform most famously employed in last fall’s NYC Mayoral race. Ranked Choice Voting encourages voter participation in the electoral process, lessens the entrenchment of incumbents, increases campaign civility and eliminates the need for costly primaries and runoff elections. To that end, Ranked Choice Voting Albany is currently circulating a petition to get ranked choice voting on the ballot this November in order to institute it for future elections in the City of Albany. If you are a City of Albany resident, please contact RCV Albany to get your name on the petition.
In case you were curious about the philosophical beliefs of a software company, Palantir and its maniacal CEO Alex Karp have published their manifesto for a Technological Republic. Among the highlights, a diatrabe against the “religious intolerance” of “elites” — we think it’s hilarious when billionaires complain about elites — and the “shallow temptation of a vacant and hollow pluralism.” There’s also a call for reinstitution of the military draft. And, of course, there is musing about Silicon Valley’s duty and responsibility to participate in the elimination of violent crime; see Flock, above.
Speaking of deranged billionaires, Wired published some stunning reporting about New York Knicks owner James Dolan and the vengeful surveillance machine he has established at the World’s Most Famous Arena — Madison Square Garden — and other venues like The Sphere in Las Vegas.
We previously discussed how Thomson Reuters — the company behind the legal research tool Westlaw — has been colluding with ICE. Now, the shareholders of Thomson Reuters are demanding answers.
In one of the most odious stories we can ever recall reading, CNN exposed an online “rape academy” frequented by more than 62 million men in one recent month.
Politico reports that New York Democrats are increasingly optimistic that they can flip some deep-red Congressional Districts, including NY-21 currently occupied by Elusive Elise Stefanik.
Amid the Netanyahu government’s expansionist campaign against the People of Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, Bernie Sanders led a failed effort to block further arms sales to Israel. Although this vote was unsuccessful, every time such a vote comes before the US Senate, it garners more and more support; last April, 15 Democrats supported Bernie’s efforts, this time it was 40 (and did not include either Kirstin Gillibrand or Chuck Schumer, in case you were wondering). Increasing Senate opposition to the actions of the extreme right-wing Israeli government reflects the will of the American people, the majority of whom, regardless of party affiliation, now view Netanyahu and Israel negatively. The American people — including the majority of American Jews — also oppose the oversized influence that Israel’s lobbying arm, AIPAC, wields over American elections, and there is growing movement within Democratic circles to reject AIPAC funding altogether. Track AIPAC will tell you if your Member of Congress — we see you, Pat Ryan, Josh Riley and Paul Tonko — or Congressional candidate accepts AIPAC funding; check it out, it’s an eye-opener.
An Alabama woman who was arrested for wearing an inflatable penis costume at a No Kings event has been acquitted of all charges.
MAGA is becoming increasingly convinced that the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania in the summer of 2024 was a hoax. Same, MAGA, same. May we interest you in LeavingMAGA.org?