I have been able to get them deactivated in two cities. They have not yet been physically removed but that is looking like a likely near-term outcome.

Flock has been a "side project" that's been eating about as many hours as a part-time job since late June. I have spoken at city council meetings in two cities, met individually with city councilors, met with a chief of police, presented to city councilors in Portland, am in almost daily conversations with ACLU Oregon, have received legal advice from EFF, done numerous media interviews, and I have an upcoming presentation to the state Senate Judiciary Committee. I may also be one of the reasons that Ron Wyden's office investigated Flock more carefully over the Summer and recently released a letter suggesting that cities terminate their relationship with the company.

All of which is to say I've been in it for a while now and have had some wins.

Good and bad news: it's a lot easier to fight it now than it was in June, but it's still going to take more effort than you probably imagine.

You'll need a team. I'm one member of a community working group. We have a core group of about a half-dozen active organizers. We have filed (and paid thousands in fees for) tons of public records requests, done a lot of community organizing and outreach, built partnerships with adjacent activist organizations, and done original technical research.

There are a couple of different strategies to pursue that can kick these things out of a community. My recommendation is to find the one that you like best, and find other people that like other ones, and pursue them in parallel.

Depending on your local police department, you may find them to be surprisingly cooperative, or you may find that they dig in and start putting in an equal amount of effort to block yours. I've had both. Odds are that your city councilors are not aware at all of what Flock is or how it works, so your first step is to raise awareness. I strongly recommend starting with an approach that makes you seem like a reasonable, honest, and reliable member of your community.

I realize this comment isn't super helpful by itself. I'm a bit distracted at the moment and I don't think I could figure out how to write a helpful, comprehensive, and yet concise comment here on this. I need to put together an info packet for people that want to get efforts like this one started in their own community. In the meanwhile, you should be able to email contact@eyesoffeugene.org and I'm happy to provide advice and assistance to anyone that wants to take this up in their city.

▲

JumpCrisscross 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Would you be open to consulting for a group that's trying to do the same in west Wyoming?

> There are a couple of different strategies to pursue that can kick these things out of a community

Would love to hear more about these, even if it's just a wall of links or brief thoughts.

	▲	thaumaturgy 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> Would you be open to consulting for a group that's trying to do the same in west Wyoming? Absolutely! Re: Strategies - Public records requests (aka FOIAs, though FOIA is technically for federal stuff): this has been a big one for us. File a request for the contract, a request for the locations, a request for communications, requests for the network audit, and more. PRRs take practice, but I can put you in touch with someone that's become an expert at them. Some requests may come with price tags attached and in some cases they can be expensive. Usually that means either the agency is fighting you or something in the request needs to be reworded. - Comms: set up a site (go with something quick and easy for multiple people to use), we've had good luck setting up a community chat on Signal (now with almost 100 participants). I've spent a pile of hours just assembling different slide decks that digest lots of Flock info into smaller bits for people learning about it for the first time. - Show up: things got rolling here when a couple of people used the public comment period at local city council meetings. Local media often monitor city council meetings, and if you're a new face and you're saying something interesting, there may be a brief interview afterward. - Gather intelligence: we've gotten to know our local politicians pretty well. You'll want to keep some notes on where everyone stands on it, who can be moved, who prefers individual meetings, talking points they may be responsive to. - Engage with other local activist groups. Flock s a problem that affects people with lots of different political opinions. - Try meeting with your local police department chief and just initiate a conversation about it. They may not be as pro-Flock as you'd expect. You at least want to figure out where they stand on it and let them see you as not a direct opponent from the get-go. - Make contact with your local chapter of the ACLU. In our case, they've filed a lawsuit on our behalf over a public records request that the city refused to fulfill and the county DA denied on appeal. - Write lots of emails to local officials, offer to meet them for coffee. They can be hard to reach initially, but once you get that initial meeting, if it goes well, they know who you are and they'll answer your texts. We are now having frequent text chats with city councilors and police commissioners and even state legislators. This is all just off the top of my head real quick, I am probably forgetting at least one important strategy. But each of these can take a lot of time and each benefits from different skill sets, so that's where having a small group of people is really helpful. Rather than trying to set up a hierarchical, official organization, we decided early on to just run as an ad-hoc informal "working group", and each of us would just pick up whatever tasks we were most interested in. That has worked out really well.