Flock Safety doesn’t seem to care about anyone. Not its customers, not those captured by its cameras, not even the legislators trying to find a balance between safety and privacy.
Flock started out by pitching its cameras — with built-in license plate readers — to the kind of people with money to blow on unproven tech and the willingness to use it to keep unwanted people (read: not white) out of their neighborhoods. It soon expanded past the gated community market, courting cops who wanted to use the tech to track unwanted people (read: not white) who might be driving around in cars and existing.
As always, both parties (Flock/cops) claimed the tech was essential to capturing the “worst of the worst” — auto thieves, wanted felons, sex offenders, etc. And, as always, real-world use cases were more along the lines of oh, you know, tracking down women seeking abortion options or letting cops keep tabs on their ex-wives.
The problem with Flock isn’t necessarily unique to Flock. It’s a problem almost every third-party contractor creates. When thing go poorly (and they have gone very poorly for Flock recently), no one seems to know who’s responsible for removing the unwanted tech, much less who actually has the authority to shut a surveillance system down.
This has created a problem that has no immediate solution. When Dayton, Ohio shut down its Flock cameras, it had no idea whether contract termination meant the cameras were actually shut off. Worse, law enforcement officials didn’t seem to know either. A fix was needed, and Dayton found a cost-effective way of keeping Flock from operating the unwanted cameras until when (or if!) it decided to roll into town to remove them.
The city of Dayton, Ohio has covered its Flock automated license plate reader cameras with black trash bags in part because police there are unsure whether the cameras are still active and the city also doesn’t seem to know whether it is allowed to take the cameras down. The move comes after months of resident outrage, a scandal in which the city was sharing Flock camera data for immigration enforcement apparently on accident, and a $30,000 audit into how the cameras are being used.
You can see the problem. While the city may have terminated the contract and the PD stating it won’t use the cameras, there’s no real “OFF” switch on the end user side. Because the cameras aren’t truly owned by the city, it has to wait around for Flock to come get its boys. And even though the Dayton PD’s access portal may be dead because it’s parted ways with Flock, that doesn’t mean hundreds of law enforcement agencies around the US don’t have access to the cameras the city has determined can’t be used.
This isn’t speculation. This is something that has already been observed by other municipalities.
Cities are not sure what their contracts state how to extricate themselves from those contracts, or whether the cameras are recording (and where that data is going). This uncertainty highlights the problems associated with using private, third-party surveillance infrastructure. Last week, for example, the mayor of Menominee, Wisconsin said that Flock cameras in the city “have been activated without city council approval.”
That’s some shady shit right there. But it’s not even the shadiest thing Flock has done in terms of (1) supposedly deactivated cameras and (2) garbage bag-covered cameras. Late last year, the city of Evanston, Illinois covered Flock cameras in garbage bags until Flock came to remove them. Then this happened:
The city previously ordered Flock to shut down 19 cameras (18 stationary and one flex camera that can be attached to a squad car) provided by the company and put its contract with Flock on a 30-day termination notice on Aug. 26. The company took down 15 of the 18 stationary cameras by Sept. 8, only to reinstall all of them by Tuesday. This was apparently without authorization from city officials, who sent Flock a cease-and-desist order to take them back down.
What the actual fuck? And yeah, one might be inclined to chalk this up to a simple misunderstanding, but only if one isn’t familiar with Flock’s general disregard for municipal laws:
Company communications with state transportation agencies obtained via public records requests, and interviews with more than half a dozen former employees, suggest that in its rush to install surveillance cameras in the absence of clear regulatory frameworks, Flock repeatedly broke the law in at least five states.
In South Carolina, State Transportation Secretary Christy Hall told Forbes that since spring 2022, her staff has found more than 200 unpermitted Flock cameras during routine monitoring of public roads.
Hence the garbage bags. It appears Flock is willing to activate cameras it’s been instructed to deactivate. And that’s when it’s not installing cameras illegally or thumbing its nose at removal orders by reinstalling cameras it has just removed.
Private companies who pull this sort of shit would be shut down, if not banned, by cities if it involved anything other than cop tech. Somehow, Flock manages to ride this out by claiming to be a cop’s best friend, even as its pretending local laws and regulations don’t apply to it.
I would encourage cities looking to rid themselves of Flock cameras to go one step further: just pry them off the poles and toss them in the nearest dumpster. If Flock wants to retrieve its equipment, it can be directed to the nearest landfill. Or, if cities don’t feel comfortable doing this themselves, they can always host a few foreign exchange students to help ensure Flock cameras remain inoperable until removal.
Then it went to where the real bias has always existed: US law enforcement agencies. It promised to tie their systems in with those deployed by private citizens. It attempted to talk Ring (another company with too-close ties to cops) into bed, before shitting the shared bed in front of hundreds of millions of TV viewers during the most recent Super Bowl.
Flock’s reputation had already been in steep decline prior to the Super Bowl debacle, but that aborted arranged marriage saw its shady doings exposed to millions who previously weren’t aware there was a surveillance camera company even less concerned about rights and privacy than Ring.
Flock was doing things even Ring wouldn’t do. It was telling citizens one thing and giving cops something else entirely: a nationwide surveillance network with built-in ALPR (automatic license plate reader) capability with zero oversight. Flock said it would prevent federal abuse of local law enforcement camera networks and then did absolutely nothing to prevent this. Meanwhile, cop shops were using Flock’s cameras to track people across the country — you know, dangerous criminals like the woman (at the request of her abusive ex) who left Texas to seek an abortion in another state.
All of these concerns have resulted in Flock losing plenty of public market share. Sure, it may still be doing brisk business in the private market, but government contracts are where the real money is. Flock can’t seem to stop the bleeding. Multiple local governments have terminated contracts with Flock and plenty more are considering doing the same, especially now that it’s shady dealings have been called out by federal lawmakers like Senator Ron Wyden.
Still, the company has its supporters. And they’re exactly the sort of people you’d expect them to be. A public meltdown by a public servant is the subject of this excellent reporting by Joseph Cox of 404 Media. Here’s a bit of background, which also contains some super-useful background on Flock’s PR team.
Like in many other communities around the country, the use of Flock’s AI cameras has become a major topic of discussion in Bandera (Texas). In February, Bandera held a town hall meeting exclusively about Flock that Flowers moderated. Kerry McCormack, a former Cleveland city council member who is now on the public affairs team for Flock, came to that meeting to discuss the technology, demonstrating that the company is sending representatives even to tiny towns in order to promote its use.
Dial in on a couple of things. First, there’s the fact that former public servants are now running flack for Flock. Second, there’s the mention of Bandera, Texas city council member Jeff Flowers, who’s apparently so smitten of Flock that he’s willing to go full batshit when confronted by public criticism. Bandera’s city council voted 3-2 to end its contract with Flock in response to public resistance, which included repeated vandalizing of the town’s eight cameras.
Flowers apparently couldn’t handle this vote or the resistance that generated it. He went right off the rails, almost immediately:
After the vote, Councilmember Jeff Flowers, a staunch Flock supporter, said that if people in the town wanted privacy then the city council should basically ban all technology, essentially calling people who did not want government surveillance hypocrites.
Nice. This deep disconnection from reality wasn’t limited to comments made during the vote. He also posted an op-ed (subtitled “Bandera Declaration of Independence”) in the local newspaper, in which he ignorantly continued to claim that rejection of government surveillance was a hypocritical stance taken by people who voluntarily own smartphones and access the internet.
Flowers said that at the next city council meeting he will propose “a total ban on all cellular and GPS-capable devices for all operations within city limits. If we are to be truly ‘private,’ we must leave our smartphones at the city line.” He will also propose “a total ban on outward facing cameras,” and “a total termination of all internet services and electronic record-keeping. We are going back to 1880, paper ledgers and cash only.”
Flowers is the kind of idiot that’s almost smart enough to be dangerous. But he’s not quite there yet. It’s one thing to “share” information with service providers, apps, and online services. It’s quite another to be forced to share information with the government. While the government may actually demand less information in exchange for services than most internet service providers, people are far more willing to sacrifice privacy for convenience when the recipient is another private party.
Pretending these two things are equivalent is lazy at best, and totalitarian at worst. They’re not the same thing. And even if the collection of data by third parties might result in warrantless access of this data by the government, very few citizens are going to affirmatively choose to surrender data to the government, even if it’s nothing more than an always-on collection of their movements via automatic license plate readers.
To be sure, there are people working for Flock who think Flowers is worthy of a high five or two, if not a permanent position in the PR department. They’re no smarter than Flowers is. This is not a win for Flock. This is another unforced error by surveillance state enthusiasts who are voluntarily creating more negative press for Flock. Flock loses. Flowers rants. Flock loses again. If either party was truly smart, they’d be distancing themselves from each other.
The proliferation of police surveillance has led to repeated abuse. One shockingly common form: police officers using ALPR camera networks to keep tabs on their romantic interests, including current partners, exes, and even strangers who unwittingly caught their eye in public.
An Institute for Justice review of media reports has identified at least 14 cases nationwide of officers allegedly abusing ALPR data this way, with the bulk of those incidents happening since 2024.
This is the same stuff that cops have been doing for years. Access to criminal databases, drivers license info, and anything else swept up by government entities has resulted in numerous cases of abuse.
A common thread that runs through most of these cases are the targets of this abusive surveillance, which are almost exclusively women. In some cases, officers are targeting random women to pursue as sexual conquests or, just as disturbingly, utilize a wealth of personal info to gain access to their online accounts for the sole purpose of obtaining sexually explicit content.
If there’s an upside, it’s this:
Nearly all of these officers were criminally charged and lost their jobs, either by resigning or getting fired.
Now, if you’re the sort of person who sees a quarter-full glass and assumes it’s on its way to being half-full, you might come away with the impression that this is not only rare, but routinely punished when it’s discovered.
If you’ve read anything linked in the above paragraphs, the glass is still a quarter-full but is likely to continue evaporating as time goes on. There’s a reason most of these cases have surfaced during the last two years and it has everything to do with private surveillance tech companies like Ring and Flock aggressively courting cops and giving them easy access to recordings and live feeds generated by privately-owned cameras.
Even if the truth is somewhere in the middle of these two views, it’s not good news by any stretch of the imagination. As the Margaret Atwood quote goes: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.” Now, take that and add the massive power imbalance that increases as cops move past cops v. everyone to cops v. women.
And that’s all it is. Its law enforcement officers targeting women. They’re tracking their mistresses. They’re spying on their exes and their current partners. They’re using this tech to stalk women they’re interested in for reasons that have nothing to do with their law enforcement jobs.
Sedgwick, Kansas, 2023: Police Chief Lee Nygaard resigned after using Flock cameras to track his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend more than 200 times over several months.
Costa Mesa, California, 2023: Officer Robert Josett used a Flock camera system to track his mistress and her other romantic interests. Josett pleaded guilty to multiple criminal charges in April 2026.
Riverside County, California, 2024: After being arrested for kidnapping his ex-fiancée, Deputy Alexander Vanny allegedly used the department’s Flock system to track one of her friends. In December 2025 he was convicted of multiple charges in a jury trial.
Orange City, Florida, 2024: Officer Jarmarus Brown allegedly used ALPRs to stalk his girlfriend and her family members more than 100 times over seven months. Brown was arrested and charged in 2025.
Shelby County, Tennessee, 2024: Deputy Thadius Gordon was relieved of duty after allegedly using an ALPR database to track his ex-wife’s location more than 100 times.
Louisville, Kentucky, 2025: Officer Roberto Cedeno was charged with multiple felonies after allegedly using the city’s ALPR system to track an ex-partner and her friends hundreds of times over two months.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2025: Officer Josue Ayala allegedly used the department’s network of Flock ALPRs to track a woman he was dating and her ex-partner nearly 180 times over a two-month period. Ayala resigned in 2026 after being charged with misconduct in public office.
Jerome County, Idaho, 2025: Sheriff George Oppedyk used a Flock system to search for his wife’s vehicle hundreds of times. Idaho’s Attorney General concluded that no crime was committed, but Oppedyk retired in April 2026, two years before his term of office ended.
Kenosha County, Wisconsin, 2025: Sheriff’s Deputy Frank McGrath resigned with severance pay after internal investigators found he used the department’s Flock system to keep tabs on another deputy with whom he was romantically involved.
Monroe County, Florida, 2026: Sheriff’s Deputy Lamar Roman allegedly used an ALPR system to track and eventually pull over a woman he had met while providing security on a TV set. Roman was arrested and charged with accessing a computer or electronic device without authorization.
These are just the cases in which allegations were sustained or criminal charges were brought. In six of these 14 cases, officers resigned, retired or were simply taken off active duty, which means they’ve never faced justice for their actions. They’re probably not even the tip of the tip of the iceberg. As the IJ points out, most incidents like these come to light due to complaints filed by victims, rather than by internal reviews of database/recording access by officers given access to these systems.
Any system like this will be abused. But this report shows few, if any, law enforcement agencies are willing to engage in the kind of rigorous oversight needed to deter this sort of behavior. This abuse is far more pervasive than this short list of 14 officers would seemingly indicate. The only thing separating these cops from the hundreds or thousands of others on that side of the Thin Blue Line is that they got caught.
To be sure, this list will get longer as time goes on. But until cop shops and the companies providing this tech actually care enough about anyone else to do literally anything to deter this, the people with the most power will continue to abuse their access to hunt and haunt the people they’re pretty sure they can get away with abusing.
Flock Safety’s reputation is in tatters, thanks in large part to its own actions. First sold as a high-tech add-on for homeowners’ associations and gated communities, it soon spread to law enforcement agencies and the cities that employ them. Promising plenty of access to an existing network of privately-owned cameras, Flock insinuated — if not actually stated as much — that cities buying its systems would have access to recordings and ALPR records gathered elsewhere in the nation.
That has largely proven to be true. Law enforcement officers with access to Flock’s camera network have used it to do things like track the movements of a Texas woman who was seeking an abortion and allowing federal officers to hunt down migrants to detain and deport.
Flock has been so bad on the PR front that national surveillance powerhouse Ring pulled the plug on its fledgling partnership with Flock following backlash to its heartwarming-except-for-all-the-dystopia Super Bowl ad.
Even before the Big Game debacle, Flock had been shedding customers. The private sector still seems as interested as ever, but cities were either turning down Flock’s overtures or terminating their contracts with the surveillance camera company.
Residents of an Atlanta suburb have been rocked by the revelation that sales employees at Flock have been accessing sensitive cameras in the town to demonstrate the company’s surveillance technology to police departments around the country. The cameras accessed have included surveillance tech in a children’s gymnastics room, a playground, a school, a Jewish community center, and a pool.
While I can understand parents might appreciate cameras being used to protect their kids, they likely never expected that footage of their kids (sometimes clad in revealing clothing) would be used as a sales tool by Flock Safety.
The city’s own audit logs prove otherwise. From the data in this file, just since the start of 2025, 1,271 external agencies have been granted permission to view live streams. 358 external agencies have been granted access to record these streams.
We don’t know who else has been accessing this footage, but the data makes it clear certain Flock sales reps and officials are extremely interested in footage of people in pools, gymnastic classes, and fitness centers.
One Flock employee, Randy Gluck, who lives in Raleigh and is a business development manager for their 911 products, was granted live-view access to our cameras. He looked at 54 cameras, with very strange patterns such as clicking through 5 traffic cameras on July 21st last year before settling on the Dunwoody Library camera. The Flock data does not tell us when he stopped watching that footage, but he didn’t look at anything else for two hours.
Two days later, Randy clicked through 3 private cameras at the JCC before he settled on JCC camera ‘Main Pool Right’. It was over 3 hours later before his next view on traffic cameras.
[…]
This brings me to Bob Carter – Vice President of Strategic Relations and Business Development for Flock. Bob spends a lot of time looking through both our live footage and recorded footage. Just since the beginning of last year, he has done this 185 times.
Bob also has some interesting searches. On September 30th, 2025 – Bob looked at just one camera. This camera is in the gymnastics room of the JCC [Jewish Community Center].
A lengthy apology for all of this was given to the Jewish Community Center by none other than Flock CEO Garrett Langley. And while it’s nice to see an apology being offered, the apology doesn’t include any promises not to do this same sort of thing elsewhere, much less address the very real concerns that a number of Flock Safety employees have unfettered access to live cameras and recorded footage.
“You may have seen that questions have been raised about Flock employees’ access to security cameras near MJCCA property. While there is a lot of misinformation propagated by some of the voices making these allegations, I want to be direct and apologize for our poor judgement.”
[…]
“Because of our relationship with Dunwoody PD as a development partner–meaning we had explicit permission from Dunwoody to use their Flock system for both testing (for product improvement) and demonstration–Flock employees did occasionally access Dunwoody’s devices for those purposes,” Langley added. “I recognize that the choice to use MJCCA, rather than parts of the city, was a poor one on our part. I am cognizant of the additional, well-founded sensitivity of the Jewish community to security concerns at this time. Therefore, I would like to extend a formal apology to you and the entire MJCCA community for this poor decision. Candidly, it is because of the very real security concerns the MJCCA community is feeling that I am so proud of our partnership, and those with Jewish organizations across the country.”
While Flock management is apparently angry that some of its employees are now being called “child predators” following the publication of these access logs, it’s apparently uninterested in curbing access or installing guidelines that might deter questionable viewing habits in the future.
As for the city itself, it doesn’t seem to care that many residents are opposed to further Flock camera use based on what’s been uncovered here. The state’s attorney general took time from his busy running-for-governor schedule to praise Flock and the mayor of Dunwoody for their continued partnership.
When something like this can’t deter cities from continuing to do business with Flock, it makes the allegedly heartfelt apology issued by the company’s CEO look a lot less heartfelt. This isn’t someone offering contrition and promise to do better to a potential customer. This is someone saying the sort of stuff that sounds like contrition but is ultimately meaningless because neither Flock nor the city government actually care what the general public thinks of them.
All the people who have always brushed off concerns about surveillance tech, please come get your kids. And then let someone else raise them.
Lots of people are fine with mass surveillance because they believe the horseshit spewed by the immediate beneficiaries of this tech: law enforcement agencies that claim every encroachment on your rights might (MIGHT!) lead to the arrest of a dangerous criminal.
Running neck and neck with government surveillance state enthusiasts are extremely wealthy Americans. When they’re not adding new levels of surveillance to the businesses they own, they’re scattering cameras all around their gated communities and giving cops unfettered access to any images these cameras record.
Here’s how it plays out at the ground level: parents can’t get their kids enrolled in the nearest school because of surveillance tech. In one recent case, license plate reader data was used to deny enrollment because the data collected claimed the parent didn’t actually reside in the school district.
Just over a year ago, Thalía Sánchez became the proud owner of a home in Alsip. She decided to leave the bustle of the city for a quiet neighborhood setting and the best possible education for her daughter.
However, to this day, despite providing all required paperwork including her driver’s license, utility bills, vehicle registration, and mortgage statement, the Alsip Hazelgreen Oak Lawn School District 126 has repeatedly denied her daughter’s enrollment.
Why would the district do this? Well, it’s apparently because it has decided to trust the determinations made by its surveillance tech partner, rather than documents actually seen in person by the people making these determinations.
According to the school district, her daughter’s new student enrollment form was denied due to “license plate recognition software showing only Chicago addresses overnight” in July and August. In an email sent to Sánchez in August, the school district told her, “Although you are the owner on record of a house in our district boundaries, your license plate recognition shows that is not the place where you reside.”
But that’s obviously not true. Sanchez says the only reason plate reader data would have shown her car as “staying” in Chicago was because she lent it to a relative during that time period. The school insists this data is enough to overturn the documents she’s provided because… well, it doesn’t really say. It just claims it “relies” on this information gathering to determine residency for students.
All of this can be traced back to Thompson Reuters, which apparently has branched out into the AI-assisted, ALPR-enabled business of denying enrollment to students based on assumptions made by its software.
Here’s what little there is of additional information, as obtained by The Register while reporting on this case:
Thomson Reuters Clear, which more broadly is an AI-assisted records investigation tool, has a page dedicated to its application for school districts. It sells Clear as a tool for residency verification, claiming that it can “automate” such tasks with “enhanced reliability,” and can take care of them “in minutes, not months.”
One of the particular things the Clear page notes is its ability to access license plate data “and develop pattern of life information” that helps identify whether those who are claiming they’re residents for the sake of getting a kid enrolled in school are lying or not.
Thomson Reuters does not specify where it gets its license plate reader data and did not respond to questions.
We’ll get to the highlighted sentence in a moment, but let’s just take a beat and consider how creepy and weird this Thomson Reuters promotional pitch is:
The text reads:
Gain deeper insights into mismatched data to support meaningful conversations with families and ensure students are where they need to be. Identify where cars have been seen to establish pattern of life information.
No one expects a law enforcement agency to do this (at least without a warrant or reasonable suspicion), much less a school district. Government agencies shouldn’t have unfettered access to “pattern of life” information just because. It’s not like the people being surveilled here are engaged in criminal activity. They’re just trying to make sure their kids receive an education. And while there will always be people who game the system to get their kids into better schools, that’s hardly justification for subjecting every enrolling student’s family to expansive surveillance-enabled background checks.
And while Thomson Reuters (and the district itself) has refused to comment on the source of its plate reader data, it can safely be assumed that it’s Flock Safety. Flock Safety has never shown any concern about who accesses the data it compiles, much less why they choose to do it. Flock is swiftly becoming the leading provider of ALPR cameras and given its complete lack of internal or external oversight, it’s more than likely the case that its feeding this data to third parties like Thomson Reuters that are willing to pay a premium for data that simply can’t be had elsewhere.
We’re not catching criminals with this tech. Sure, it may happen now and then. But the real value is repeated resale of “pattern of life” data to whoever is willing to purchase it. That’s a massive problem that’s only going to get worse… full stop.
According to AdWeek, the price for a 30-second commercial during Super Bowl LX has soared to $8 million, after NBC opened in the summer by offering spots for $7 million. As AdWeek notes, “due to demand, the company has already reached its cap for the number of spots that were available for advertisers to buy during the upfront season.”
$8 million for 30 seconds sometimes means turning a niche product into a national phenomena. The 30 seconds purchased by Ring went the other way. If you want to see how $8 million can be used to promote mass surveillance enabled by consumer products, here you go:
Sure, it looks pretty innocuous. And what could be better than turning Ring and Flock Safety’s network of cameras into a digital proxy for posting “LOST DOG” signs all over the neighborhood? Well, as it turns out, pretty much everyone saw how problematic this offering was, especially considering what’s already known about Ring, Flock Safety, and both companies’ rather cavalier attitude towards privacy and other aspects of the Fourth Amendment.
To begin with, the “Search Party” feature that allows people to access recordings and images captured by other people’s cameras is already on, which likely comes as a surprise to owners of these devices. Here’s what The Verge’s Jennifer Tuohy discovered last October, shortly after Ring announced its partnership with Flock Safety — a company best known for allowing cops to hunt down people seeking abortions and/or allowing federal officers to perform nationwide searches for whoever they might be looking for (which, of course, would be anyone looking kinda like an immigrant).
[I]t turns out that Search Party is enabled by default. In an email to customers this week, Siminoff wrote that the feature is rolling out to Ring outdoor cameras in November and noted, “You can always turn off Search Party.”
I checked my cameras this morning, and they were all automatically set to enable Search Party. And I’m not alone; Ring users on Reddit have also reported that their cameras have been enabled for Search Party.
This under-reported “feature” was exposed by Ring’s Super Bowl ad, which resulted in enough backlash that Flock Safety no longer has a Ring to wear. Back to Jennifer Tuohy and The Verge:
In a statement published on Ring’s blog and provided to The Verge ahead of publication, the company said: “Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated. We therefore made the joint decision to cancel the integration and continue with our current partners … The integration never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety.”
While that last sentence may be true, it appears sharing was on by default when it came to Ring’s own cameras. That Flock Safety never got a chance to participate is good to know, but “Search Party” has apparently been active since its implementation last year, even if it was limited to Ring devices.
And while Ring claims the Search Party feature can’t be used to search for “human biometrics,” that’s hardly comforting when it appears Ring definitely wants to add more of this kind of thing to its existing cameras.
On top of this, the company recently launched a new facial recognition feature, Familiar Faces. Combined with Search Party, the technological leap to using neighborhood cameras to search for people through a mass-surveillance network suddenly seems very small.
Ring insists this is not another mass surveillance tool, but rather something that attempts to recognize who’s at any user’s door when sending alerts, in order to differentiate friends and family members from strangers who might be within camera range. Again, there’s some utility to this offering, but the tech lends itself to surveillance abuses, especially when law enforcement may only be a subpoena away from accessing images and recordings captured by privately-owned devices.
Finally, the statement given by Ring only states that this won’t be happening right now, which is a wise choice considering its unpopularity at the moment. But that doesn’t mean Ring and Flock won’t seek to consummate this marriage of surveillance tech, albeit in a more private fashion that doesn’t involve alarming hundreds of millions of sports viewers simultaneously.
Surveillance technology vendors, federal agencies, and wealthy private donors have long helped provide local law enforcement “free” access to surveillance equipment that bypasses local oversight. The result is predictable: serious accountability gaps and data pipelines to other entities, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), that expose millions of people to harm.
The collection and sharing of our data quietly generates detailed records of people’s movements and associations that can be exposed, hacked, or repurposed without their knowledge or consent. Those records weaken sanctuary and First Amendment protections while facilitating the targeting of vulnerable people.
Cities can and should use their power to reject federal grants, vendor trials, donations from wealthy individuals, or participation in partnerships that facilitate surveillance and experimentation with spy tech.
If these projects are greenlit, oversight is imperative. Mechanisms like public hearings, competitive bidding, public records transparency, and city council supervision aid to ensure these acquisitions include basic safeguards — like use policies, audits, and consequences for misuse — to protect the public from abuse and from creeping contracts that grow into whole suites of products.
Clear policies and oversight mechanisms must be in place before using any surveillance tools, free or not, and communities and their elected officials must be at the center of every decision about whether to bring these tools in at all.
Here are some of the most common methods “free” surveillance tech makes its way into communities.
Trials and Pilots
Police departments are regularly offered free access to surveillance tools and software through trials and pilot programs that often aren’t accompanied by appropriate use policies. In many jurisdictions, trials do not trigger the same requirements to go before decision-makers outside the police department. This means the public may have no idea that a pilot program for surveillance technology is happening in their city.
In Denver, Colorado, the police department is running trials of possible unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for a drone-as-first-responder (DFR) program from two competing drone vendors: Flock Safety Aerodome drones (through August 2026) and drones from the company Skydio, partnering with Axon, the multi-billion dollar police technology company behind tools like Tasers and AI-generated police reports. Drones create unique issues given their vantage for capturing private property and unsuspecting civilians, as well as their capacity to make other technologies, like ALPRs, airborne.
Functional, Even Without Funding
We’ve seen cities decide not to fund a tool, or run out of funding for it, only to have a company continue providing it in the hope that money will turn up. This happened in Fall River, Massachusetts, where the police department decided not to fund ShotSpotter’s $90,000 annual cost and its frequent false alarms, but continued using the system when the company provided free access.
Importantly, police technology companies are developing more features and subscription-based models, so what’s “free” today frequently results in taxpayers footing the bill later.
Gifts from Police Foundations and Wealthy Donors
Police foundations and the wealthy have pushed surveillance-driven agendas in their local communities by donating equipment and making large monetary gifts, another means of acquiring these tools without public oversight or buy-in.
In Atlanta, the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) attempted to use its position as a private entity to circumvent transparency. Following a court challenge from the Atlanta Community Press Collective and Lucy Parsons Labs, a Georgia court determined that the APF must comply with public records laws related to some of its actions and purchases on behalf of law enforcement. In San Francisco, billionaire Chris Larsen has financially supported a supercharging of the city’s surveillance infrastructure, donating $9.4 million to fund the San Francisco Police Department’s (SFPD) Real-Time Investigation Center, where a menu of surveillance technologies and data come together to surveil the city’s residents. This move comes after the billionaire backed a ballot measure, which passed in March 2025, eroding the city’s surveillance technology law and allowing the SFPD free rein to use new surveillance technologies for a full year without oversight.
Free Tech for Federal Data Pipelines
Federal grants and Department of Homeland Security funding are another way surveillance technology appears free to, only to lock municipalities into long‑term data‑sharing and recurring costs.
Through the Homeland Security Grant Program, which includes the State Homeland Security Program (SHSP) and the Urban Areas Security (UASI) Initiative, and Department of Justice programs like Byrne JAG, the federal government reimburses states and cities for “homeland security” equipment and software, including including law‑enforcement surveillance tools, analytics platforms, and real‑time crime centers. Grant guidance and vendor marketing materials make clear that these funds can be used for automated license plate readers, integrated video surveillance and analytics systems, and centralized command‑center software—in other words, purchases framed as counterterrorism investments but deployed in everyday policing.
Vendors have learned to design products around this federal money, pitching ALPR networks, camera systems, and analytic platforms as “grant-ready” solutions that can be acquired with little or no upfront local cost. Motorola Solutions, for example, advertises how SHSP and UASI dollars can be used for “law enforcement surveillance equipment” and “video surveillance, warning, and access control” systems. Flock Safety, partnering with Lexipol, a company that writes use policies for law enforcement, offers a “License Plate Readers Grant Assistance Program” that helps police departments identify federal and state grants and tailor their applications to fund ALPR projects.
Grant assistance programs let police chiefs fast‑track new surveillance: the paperwork is outsourced, the grant eats the upfront cost, and even when there is a formal paper trail, the practical checks from residents, councils, and procurement rules often get watered down or bypassed.
On paper, these systems arrive “for free” through a federal grant; in practice, they lock cities into recurring software, subscription, and data‑hosting fees that quietly turn into permanent budget lines—and a lasting surveillance infrastructure—as soon as police and prosecutors start to rely on them. In Santa Cruz, California, the police department explicitly sought to use a DHS-funded SHSP grant to pay for a new citywide network of Flock ALPR cameras at the city’s entrances and exits, with local funds covering additional cameras. In Sumner, Washington, a $50,000 grant was used to cover the entire first year of a Flock system — including installation and maintenance — after which the city is on the hook for roughly $39,000 every year in ongoing fees. The free grant money opens the door, but local governments are left with years of financial, political, and permanent surveillance entanglements they never fully vetted.
The most dangerous cost of this “free” funding is not just budgetary; it is the way it ties local systems into federal data pipelines. Since 9/11, DHS has used these grant streams to build a nationwide network of at least 79–80 state and regional fusion centers that integrate and share data from federal, state, local, tribal, and private partners. Research shows that state fusion centers rely heavily on the DHS Homeland Security Grant Program (especially SHSP and UASI) to “mature their capabilities,” with some centers reporting that 100 percent of their annual expenditures are covered by these grants.
Civil rights investigations have documented how this funding architecture creates a backdoor channel for ICE and other federal agencies to access local surveillance data for their own purposes. A recent report by the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) describes ICE agents using a Philadelphia‑area fusion center to query the city’s ALPR network to track undocumented drivers in a self‑described sanctuary city.
Ultimately, federal grants follow the same script as trials and foundation gifts: what looks “free” ends up costing communities their data, their sanctuary protections, and their power over how local surveillance is used.
Protecting Yourself Against “Free” Technology
The most important protection against “free” surveillance technology is to reject it outright. Cities do not have to accept federal grants, vendor trials, or philanthropic donations. Saying no to “free” tech is not just a policy choice; it is a political power that local governments possess and can exercise. Communities and their elected officials can and should refuse surveillance systems that arrive through federal grants, vendor pilots, or private donations, regardless of how attractive the initial price tag appears.
For those cities that have already accepted surveillance technology, the imperative is equally clear: shut it down. When a community has rejected use of a spying tool, the capabilities, equipment, and data collected from that tool should be shut off immediately. Full stop.
And for any surveillance technology that remains in operation, even temporarily, there must be clear rules: when and how equipment is used, how that data is retained and shared, who owns data and how companies can access and use it, transparency requirements, and consequences for any misuse and abuse.
“Free” surveillance technology is never free. Someone profits or gains power from it. Police technology vendors, federal agencies, and wealthy donors do not offer these systems out of generosity; they offer them because surveillance serves their interests, not ours. That is the real cost of “free” surveillance.
A California police department is none too happy that its license plate reader records were accessed by federal employees it never gave explicit permission to peruse. And, once again, it’s Flock Safety shrugging itself into another PR black eye.
Mountain View police criticized the company supplying its automated license plate reader system after an audit turned up “unauthorized” use by federal law enforcement agencies.
At least six offices of four agencies accessed data from the first camera in the city’s Flock Safety license-tracking system from August to November 2024 without the police department’s permission or knowledge, according to a press release Friday night.
Flock has been swimming in a cesspool of its own making for several months now, thanks to it being the public face of “How To Hunt Down Someone Who Wanted An Abortion.” That debacle was followed by even more negative press (and congressional rebuke) for its apparent unwillingness to place any limits at all on access to the hundreds of millions of license plate records its cameras have captured, including those owned by private individuals.
Mountain View is in California. And that’s only one problem with everything in this paragraph:
The city said its system was accessed by Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives offices in Kentucky and Tennessee, which investigate crimes related to guns, explosives, arson and the illegal trafficking of alcohol and tobacco; the inspector general’s office of the U.S.. General Services Administration, which manages federal buildings, procurement, and property; Air Force bases in Langley, Virginia, and in Ohio; and the Lake Mead National Recreation Area in Nevada.
Imagine trying to explain this to anyone. While it’s somewhat understandable that the ATF might be running nationwide searches on Flock’s platform, it’s almost impossible to explain why images captured by a single camera in Mountain View, California were accessed by the Inspector General for the GSA, much less Lake Mead Recreation Area staffers.
This explains how this happened. But it doesn’t do anything to explain why.
They accessed Mountain View’s system for one camera via a “nationwide” search setting that was turned on by Flock Safety, police said.
Apparently, this is neither opt-in or opt-out. It just is. The Mountain View police said they “worked closely” with Flock to block out-of-state access, as well as limit internal access to searches expressly approved by the department’s police chief.
Flock doesn’t seem to care what its customers want. Either it can’t do what this department asked or it simply chose not to because a system that can’t be accessed by government randos scattered around the nation is much tougher to sell than a locked-down portal that actually serves the needs of the people paying for it.
The privacy protection that Flock promised to Oregonians — that Flock software will automatically examine the reason provided by law enforcement officers for terms indicating an abortion- or immigration-related search — is meaningless when law enforcement officials provide generic reasons like “investigation” or “crime.” Likewise, Flock’s filters are meaningless if no reason for a search is provided in the first place. While the search reasons collected by Flock, obtained by press and activists through open records requests, have occasionally revealed searches for immigration and abortion enforcement, these are likely just the tip of the iceberg. Presumably, most officers using Flock to hunt down immigrants and women who have received abortions are not going to type that in as the reason for their search. And, regardless, given that Flock has washed its hands of any obligation to audit its customers, Flock customers have no reason to trust a search reason provided by another agency.
I now believe that abuses of your product are not only likely but inevitable, and that Flock is unable and uninterested in preventing them.
Flock just keeps making Wyden’s points for him. The PD wanted limited access with actual oversight. Flock gave the PD a lending library of license plate/location images anyone with or without a library card (so to speak) could check out at will. Flock is part of the surveillance problem. And it’s clear it’s happy being a tool that can be readily and easily abused, no matter what its paying customers actually want from its technology.
“Flock Safety” may be the brand name, but this company’s earliest sales successes had nothing to with safety. Its target audience was homeowners associations and people running gated communities in upscale neighborhoods. The purpose of the cameras (and, eventually, the attached license plate reader tech) was to make sure people who were plenty safe already weren’t annoyed by occasional intrusions by the rest of the world outside of their gates.
Then it went the Ring route, offering cheap cameras to cops. It was just inkjet printers all over again. The cameras were affordable. Subscription fees for access to footage and the company’s search engine were the real moneymaker.
And, much like Ring, Flock has ended up on the wrong side of public opinion. While it hasn’t quite generated the amount of negative press Ring’s cozy relationship with cop shops has (yet!), it’s been getting eyeballed pretty fiercely by people who aren’t fans of its access-it-all-from-anywhere attitude. A report from 404 Media showed Texas law enforcement officers utilizing the nationwide network of Flock ALPR data to hunt down someone who had engaged in a medication abortion. Weeks later, it was discovered this search was performed on behalf of her vengeful boyfriend, who sought to press criminal charges against her.
Other news has surfaced as well, making Flock Safety look even worse. It has placed almost no restrictions on access by anyone from anywhere, which has resulted in a lot of local law enforcement agencies performing searches federal agencies like CBP, US Border Patrol, and ICE can’t perform themselves. In some cases, Flock’s lack of restraint and nonexistent privacy policies has made their cameras pretty much illegal. In other cases, local lawmakers are finally reining in use of this camera network due to its steady abuse by federal officers.
Police departments in Redmond and Lynnwood have temporarily shut down their Flock license plate reader systems following growing public concerns about privacy and system access, according to city officials.
Redmond’s City Council voted unanimously Monday to turn off its Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) cameras after learning that U.S. Border Patrol improperly accessed Auburn’s Flock system last month.
Redmond’s police chief, Darrell Lowe, insists no improper/proxy access has happened on his watch. But that doesn’t mean all that much, because it’s unclear whether or not Flock Safety would inform local cops if these agencies did. For that matter, proxy searches for federal agencies generally have access to any records generated anywhere in the country. So, it’s hardly comforting to assure people your agency hasn’t been approached directly by federal officers.
That was the point Senator Ron Wyden made in his letter to Flock Safety — one in which he pointed out that Flock has zero desire to deter abuse of its camera network, much less engage in good faith discussions about how it could go about siloing its networks so searches are restricted to areas directly overseen by local law enforcement.
The police chief in Lynnwood, however, didn’t try to make excuses. He actually attempted to do something when these concerns were first raised.
“Flock cameras have already proven to be an invaluable investigative tool in solving crimes and keeping our community safe,” Lynnwood Police Chief Cole Langdon said. “However, it’s equally important that we maintain the public’s trust.”
The ALPR program in Lynnwood launched June 29, 2025, with 25 cameras funded through a Washington Auto Theft Prevention Authority grant.
Shortly after implementation, the department learned a vendor-enabled “nationwide search” feature allowed broader access than Lynnwood authorized.
Police said they worked with Flock Safety to disable that feature on July 8.
While Flock pitched in there to respect its customer’s request, it has also gone the other way just as frequently. The company has previously been caught illegally installing cameras. In September, it was caught reinstalling cameras the city of Evanston, Illinois had ordered removed because the network (and Flock’s access options) violated the state’s privacy laws.
Private surveillance vendor Flock Safety reinstalled all of its stationary license plate cameras in Evanston that had previously been removed, apparently doing so without authorization from the city, which sent the company a cease-and-desist order Tuesday afternoon demanding that the cams be taken back down.
The city previously ordered Flock to shut down 19 automated license plate readers (18 stationary and one flex camera that can be attached to a squad car) provided by the company and put its contract with Flock on a 30-day termination notice on Aug. 26.
Predictably, this push-back against Flock is generally occurring in areas already being threatened/invaded on a daily basis by the US military and swarms of federal officers. But that’s to be expected. Those most threatened by federal abuse of local camera networks are always going to be the first to fight back. The reason it’s not happening in “red” states is because the people running those states honestly don’t care what route enables authoritarianism, just so long as it does so while their party still holds power.
More than 80 law enforcement agencies across the United States have used language perpetuating harmful stereotypes against Romani people when searching the nationwide Flock Safety automated license plate reader (ALPR) network, according to audit logs obtained and analyzed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
When police run a search through the Flock Safety network, which links thousands of ALPR systems, they are prompted to leave a reason and/or case number for the search. Between June 2024 and October 2025, cops performed hundreds of searches for license plates using terms such as “roma” and “g*psy,” and in many instances, without any mention of a suspected crime. Other uses include “g*psy vehicle,” “g*psy group,” “possible g*psy,” “roma traveler” and “g*psy ruse,” perpetuating systemic harm by demeaning individuals based on their race or ethnicity.
These queries were run through thousands of police departments’ systems—and it appears that none of these agencies flagged the searches as inappropriate.
These searches are, by definition, racist.
Word Choices and Flock Searches
We are using the terms “Roma” and “Romani people” as umbrella terms, recognizing that they represent different but related groups. Since 2020, the U.S. federal government has officially recognized “Anti-Roma Racism” as including behaviors such as “stereotyping Roma as persons who engage in criminal behavior” and using the slur “g*psy.” According to the U.S. Department of State, this language “leads to the treatment of Roma as an alleged alien group and associates them with a series of pejorative stereotypes and distorted images that represent a specific form of racism.”
Nevertheless, police officers have run hundreds of searches for license plates using the terms “roma” and “g*psy.” (Unlike the police ALPR queries we’ve uncovered, we substitute an asterisk for the Y to avoid repeating this racist slur). In many cases, these terms have been used on their own, with no mention of crime. In other cases, the terms have been used in contexts like “g*psy scam” and “roma burglary,” when ethnicity should have no relevance to how a crime is investigated or prosecuted.
A “g*psy scam” and “roma burglary” do not exist in criminal law separate from any other type of fraud or burglary. Several agencies contacted by EFF have since acknowledged the inappropriate use and expressed efforts to address the issue internally.
“The use of the term does not reflect the values or expected practices of our department,” a representative of the Palos Heights (IL) Police Department wrote to EFF after being confronted with two dozen searches involving the term “g*psy.” “We do not condone the use of outdated or offensive terminology, and we will take this inquiry as an opportunity to educate those who are unaware of the negative connotation and to ensure that investigative notations and search reasons are documented in a manner that is accurate, professional, and free of potentially harmful language.”
Of course, the broader issue is that allowing “g*psy” or “Roma” as a reason for a search isn’t just offensive, it implies the criminalization an ethnic group. In fact, the Grand Prairie Police Department in Texas searched for “g*psy” six times while using Flock’s “Convoy” feature, which allows an agency to identify vehicles traveling together—in essence targeting an entire traveling community of Roma without specifying a crime.
At the bottom of this post is a list of agencies and the terms they used when searching the Flock system.
Anti-Roma Racism in an Age of Surveillance
Racism against Romani people has been a problem for centuries, with one of its most horrific manifestations during the Holocaust, when the Third Reich and its allies perpetuated genocide by murdering hundreds of thousands of Romani people and sterilizing thousands more. Despite efforts by the UN and EU to combat anti-Roma discrimination, this form of racism persists. As scholars Margareta Matache and Mary T. Bassett explain, it is perpetuated by modern American policing practices:
In recent years, police departments have set up task forces specialised in “G*psy crimes”, appointed “G*psy crime” detectives, and organised police training courses on “G*psy criminality”. The National Association of Bunco Investigators (NABI), an organisation of law enforcement professionals focusing on “non-traditional organised crime”, has even created a database of individuals arrested or suspected of criminal activity, which clearly marked those who were Roma.
Thus, it is no surprise that a 2020 Harvard University survey of Romani Americans found that 4 out of 10 respondents reported being subjected to racial profiling by police. This demonstrates the ongoing challenges they face due to systemic racism and biased policing.
Notably, many police agencies using surveillance technologies like ALPRs have adopted some sort of basic policy against biased policing or the use of these systems to target people based on race or ethnicity. But even when such policies are in place, an agency’s failure to enforce them allows these discriminatory practices to persist. These searches were also run through the systems of thousands of other police departments that may have their own policies and state laws that prohibit bias-based policing—yet none of those agencies appeared to have flagged the searches as inappropriate.
The Flock search data in question here shows that surveillance technology exacerbates racism, and even well-meaning policies to address bias can quickly fall apart without proper oversight and accountability.
Cops In Their Own Words
EFF reached out to a sample of the police departments that ran these searches. Here are five representative responses we received from police departments in Illinois, California, and Virginia. They do not inspire confidence.
1. Lake County Sheriff’s Office, IL
In June 2025, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office ran three searches for a dark colored pick-up truck, using the reason: “G*PSY Scam.” The search covered 1,233 networks, representing 14,467 different ALPR devices.
In response to EFF, a sheriff’s representative wrote via email:
“Thank you for reaching out and for bringing this to our attention. We certainly understand your concern regarding the use of that terminology, which we do not condone or support, and we want to assure you that we are looking into the matter.
Any sort of discriminatory practice is strictly prohibited at our organization. If you have the time to take a look at our commitment to the community and our strong relationship with the community, I firmly believe you will see discrimination is not tolerated and is quite frankly repudiated by those serving in our organization.
We appreciate you bringing this to our attention so we can look further into this and address it.”
2. Sacramento Police Department, CA
In May 2025, the Sacramento Police Department ran six searches using the term “g*psy.” The search covered 468 networks, representing 12,885 different ALPR devices.
In response to EFF, a police representative wrote:
“Thank you again for reaching out. We looked into the searches you mentioned and were able to confirm the entries. We’ve since reminded the team to be mindful about how they document investigative reasons. The entry reflected an investigative lead, not a disparaging reference.
We appreciate the chance to clarify.”
3. Palos Heights Police Department, IL
In September 2024, the Palos Heights Police Department ran more than two dozen searches using terms such as “g*psy vehicle,” “g*psy scam” and “g*psy concrete vehicle.” Most searches hit roughly 1,000 networks.
In response to EFF, a police representative said the searches were related to a singular criminal investigation into a vehicle involved in a “suspicious circumstance/fraudulent contracting incident” and is “not indicative of a general search based on racial or ethnic profiling.” However, the agency acknowledged the language was inappropriate:
“The use of the term does not reflect the values or expected practices of our department. We do not condone the use of outdated or offensive terminology, and we will take this inquiry as an opportunity to educate those who are unaware of the negative connotation and to ensure that investigative notations and search reasons are documented in a manner that is accurate, professional, and free of potentially harmful language.
We appreciate your outreach on this matter and the opportunity to provide clarification.”
4. Irvine Police Department, CA
In February and May 2025, the Irvine Police Department ran eight searches using the term “roma” in the reason field. The searches covered 1,420 networks, representing 29,364 different ALPR devices.
In a call with EFF, an IPD representative explained that the cases were related to a series of organized thefts. However, they acknowledged the issue, saying, “I think it’s an opportunity for our agency to look at those entries and to use a case number or use a different term.”
5. Fairfax County Police Department, VA
Between December 2024 and April 2025, the Fairfax County Police Department ran more than 150 searches involving terms such as “g*psy case” and “roma crew burglaries.” Fairfax County PD continued to defend its use of this language.
In response to EFF, a police representative wrote:
“Thank you for your inquiry. When conducting searches in investigative databases, our detectives must use the exact case identifiers, terms, or names connected to a criminal investigation in order to properly retrieve information. These entries reflect terminology already tied to specific cases and investigative files from other agencies, not a bias or judgment about any group of people. The use of such identifiers does not reflect bias or discrimination and is not inconsistent with our Bias-Based Policing policy within our Human Relations General Order.”
A National Trend
Roma individuals and families are not the only ones being systematically and discriminatorily targeted by ALPR surveillance technologies. For example, Flock audit logs show agencies ran 400 more searches using terms targeting Traveller communities more generally, with a specific focus on Irish Travellers, often without any mention of a crime.
Across the country, these tools are enabling and amplifying racial profiling by embedding longstanding policing biases into surveillance technologies. For example, data from Oak Park, IL, show that 84% of drivers stopped in Flock-related traffic incidents were Black—despite Black people making up only 19% of the local population. ALPR systems are far from being neutral tools for public safety and are increasingly being used to fuel discriminatory policing practices against historically marginalized people.
The racially coded language in Flock’s logs mirrors long-standing patterns of discriminatory policing. Terms like “furtive movements,” “suspicious behavior,” and “high crime area” have always been cited by police to try to justify stops and searches of Black, Latine, and Native communities. These phrases might not appear in official logs because they’re embedded earlier in enforcement—in the traffic stop without clear cause, the undocumented stop-and-frisk, the intelligence bulletin flagging entire neighborhoods as suspect. They function invisibly until a body-worn camera, court filing, or audit brings them to light. Flock’s network didn’t create racial profiling; it industrialized it, turning deeply encoded and vague language into scalable surveillance that can search thousands of cameras across state lines.
The Path Forward
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, recently recommended that local governments reevaluate their decisions to install Flock Safety in their communities. We agree, but we also understand that sometimes elected officials need to see the abuse with their own eyes first.
We know which agencies ran these racist searches, and they should be held accountable. But we also know that the vast majority of Flock Safety’s clients—thousands of police and sheriffs—also allowed those racist searches to run through their Flock Safety systems unchallenged.
Elected officials must act decisively to address the racist policing enabled by Flock’s infrastructure. First, they should demand a complete audit of all ALPR searches conducted in their jurisdiction and a review of search logs to determine (a) whether their police agencies participated in discriminatory policing and (b) what safeguards, if any, exist to prevent such abuse. Second, officials should institute immediate restrictions on data-sharing through Flock’s nationwide network. As demonstrated by California law, for example, police agencies should not be able to share their ALPR data with federal authorities or out-of-state agencies, thus eliminating a vehicle for discriminatory searches spreading across state lines.
Ultimately, elected officials must terminate Flock Safety contracts entirely. The evidence is now clear: audit logs and internal policies alone cannot prevent a surveillance system from becoming a tool for racist policing. The fundamental architecture of Flock—thousands of cameras feeding into a nationwide searchable network—makes discrimination inevitable when enforcement mechanisms fail.
As Sen. Wyden astutely explained, “local elected officials can best protect their constituents from the inevitable abuses of Flock cameras by removing Flock from their communities.”
Table Overview and Notes
The following table compiles terms used by agencies to describe the reasons for searching the Flock Safety ALPR database. In a small number of cases, we removed additional information such as case numbers, specific incident details, and officers’ names that were present in the reason field.
We removed one agency from the list due to the agency indicating that the word was a person’s name and not a reference to Romani people.
In general, we did not include searches that used the term “Romanian,” although many of those may also be indicative of anti-Roma bias. We also did not include uses of “traveler” or “Traveller” when it did not include a clear ethnic modifier; however, we believe many of those searches are likely relevant.
A text-based version of the spreadsheet is available here.
