With five times as many break ins as the rest of the city, residents in one of Canada’s ritziest neighbourhoods are taking matters into their own hands.
Driving the news: Homeowners in Toronto’s Rosedale neighbourhood are considering implementing an AI-powered surveillance system called Flock that is being billed as Canada’s first-ever “virtual gated community.”
Flock’s camera network captures the licence plates of any vehicle driving in the neighbourhood, labelling them either as known or suspicious. It already has 80,000 cameras set up across the U.S.
Why it’s happening: Rosedale is seeing an outsized number of break-ins and robberies. Over the past decade, home invasions and break-and-enters have fallen 27% across the city, while in the Rosedale neighbourhood, they’re up 145%.
At least 60 residents are already paying for a shared private security service, but some want more to be done to stop the string of crimes.
Why it matters: On paper, the Flock system promises to reduce break-ins, but it also has a history of being used in controversial ways. The system has proven to be hackable in under 30 seconds, it’s helped ICE detain and deport kids at schools, and has even been used by law enforcement to track a woman in Texas who had an abortion (which was, in that state, unlawful).
An investigation also found Flock made more than a dozen errors reading vehicle licence plates in the U.S., leading to innocent people being stopped at gunpoint, attacked by a police dog, and thrown in jail.
Zoom out: Amazon-owned Ring — which actually ended a partnership with Flock in February after its creepy Super Bowl ad — has faced similar backlash over its partnerships with police and concerns that its cameras are already being used to spy on the public.—LA
