Towns are cutting Flock loose

From Florida to Washington state, local governments are canceling contracts with Flock, the company behind AI license plate readers, after public outcry.

The cameras do not vanish

Ending a contract does not mean the hardware comes down right away, or that the footage and plate records already collected get deleted.

Nobody knows where the data goes

Contracts differ by town, and many let Flock keep data long after collection. Lawyers who have read dozens of them still cannot answer the basic question.

“What happens to the data, and how long is it able to be searched? That question appears to be unresolved.”

The backlash went bipartisan

Flock launched in 2017 selling quiet public safety to cities, businesses, and homeowners. Some cities even funded HOA installs. Now it is shorthand for privacy invasion.

120,000 cameras and counting

Flock's network spread fast across the US. That scale, plus reports of officers misusing it, turned scattered complaints into an organized campaign.

Sheboygan found the sales pitch

Wisconsin lawmakers voted unanimously to cancel after Flock reportedly tried to sell the city's own anonymized data back to its public works department.

Stevens Point bagged the lenses

The mayor ended the contract and covered all ten cameras, saying the city had no way to audit where its data traveled after collection.

“We really have no way of auditing where the Flock data goes once it's collected.”

7,000 people, 7 million searches

Bridgewater, Virginia put bags over its cameras after learning that its data-sharing agreement let police run 7 million searches on the town in twelve months.

A Fourth Amendment fight

The EFF sued San Jose, arguing these sharing agreements amount to unreasonable search. Plate trails reveal where people worship, work, and seek reproductive care.

“This is a mass surveillance technology that is by design intended to identify where people are going and track people's movements.”

Flock adds guardrails

After reports of officers tracking exes, Flock made case codes mandatory, added a tool that flags abnormal queries, and cut default retention from 30 days to seven.

“I think that's right, and we got this one wrong. We should make it a requirement.”

Case codes can lie

Nothing stops a false tag. Texas deputies who used Flock to track a woman suspected of violating the abortion ban logged it as a missing person search.

ICE gets in sideways

Flock says ICE has no access, but local officers deputized under 287(g) use it for immigration arrests. Florida wildlife officers reportedly used it on ICE arrests and on their own critics.

Axon is the next vendor

South Pasadena and Durango are shopping for replacements, and the backlash has enriched Axon, whose plate readers stack on top of body camera feeds and other data streams.

“You're not going to be able to stop this mass surveillance technology by moving to another vendor.”