Texas city demands over two million dollars for police camera records

City officials in North Richland Hills, Texas, have asked an anti-surveillance group to pay millions of dollars to fulfill a public records request regarding police use of artificial intelligence camera systems. Ars Technica and the Texas Tribune reported that officials demanded $2.3 million to provide data on how local police use cameras made by the surveillance company Flock. KVUE and Yahoo also reported the $2.3 million figure, while KWTX reported that the city charged $2 million. [1][2][3][4][5]

The camera systems built by Flock use artificial intelligence to track vehicles that pass by them. Ars Technica reported that cities are asking for high fees, ranging from tens of thousands to millions of dollars, as bipartisan backlash against the technology grows. Advocates and media outlets seek the data to evaluate how police departments use and potentially abuse these vehicle-tracking systems. [1]

City officials justified the multi-million dollar cost by claiming that searching the requested data would involve processing about one terabyte of information, according to Ars Technica. The demand comes as government agencies across Texas make public records related to Flock cameras harder to access and significantly more expensive, as reported by KWTX and the Texas Tribune. [1][4][5]