Thursday, April 16, The Flat Hat found that a section on the College of William and Mary’s website related to campus policy on automatic license plates was inactive.
This policy included internal William and Mary Police Department regulations on the College’s Flock surveillance cameras around campus. Flock surveillance cameras are automatic license plate readers that use artificial intelligence to record license plates and other identifiable vehicle information.
The College has a $31,490 annual contract with Flock to pay for 10 cameras around campus.
When contacted for comment about why the Flock policy is no longer on the College’s website, Assistant Director of Media Relations Nathan Warters explained that it was a technology problem. He said that the College made changes to the website to comply with new federal Digital Accessibility Compliance requirements.
“This is an IT issue that we’re working to resolve quickly,” he wrote in an email. “We’ll have the page back up as soon as the issue is fixed.”
The Flat Hat obtained the internal College policy regulating Flock that no longer exists on the College’s website.
The College has responded to student privacy concerns by opening a Flock transparency portal, detailing the amount of scans these license plate readers do per month. The webpage also labels restrictions on the use of campus Flock data.
