Kenosha says farewell to Flock citing security, misuse and data sharing concerns

Our Take

Credit to TMJ4 News for digging into a story that says the quiet part out loud: Kenosha didn't reject automated license plate readers because they're a bad idea, it rejected one vendor's version of the bad idea. City officials cited real, documented problems with Flock — security holes, misuse by operators, and data being shared far beyond local control. Those are the same concerns we've been tracking for years, and it's validating to see a local government finally act on them.

But the punchline here is the real story. Days after walking away from Flock, Kenosha turned around and signed a contract with Axon Outpost, another ALPR company. Swapping the logo on the camera pole doesn't fix the underlying problem: a network of always-on license plate scanners feeding a database that can be queried, shared, and abused. If the concern was misuse and data sharing, the question isn't 'which vendor,' it's whether a city needs this kind of persistent surveillance infrastructure at all.

This is exactly the pattern DeFlock exists to expose — municipalities treating ALPR vendors as interchangeable, without asking whether the mass license plate tracking itself is justified. Check our map to see what's already deployed near you, and hit take action if you want to push back before your city signs its own 'new vendor, same surveillance' deal.