Flock CEO's Tone Deaf Response Highlights Privacy Concerns
The short version: A University of Washington study shows Flock data flowed to Border Patrol through backdoors and unauthorized sharing agreements, and the CEO's dismissive response only confirms what critics have long warned about.
Our Take
The channel AI Privacy & Business Counsel just closed out its Flock series with what might be the most damning entry yet, and it's not hard to see why. A University of Washington study found that at least 8 Washington state law enforcement agencies had direct data-sharing arrangements with U.S. Border Patrol, while audits revealed a separate backdoor exposing at least 10 more agencies to federal access they never agreed to. Local police departments, the ones whose cameras are capturing your plate as you drive to work, didn't even know their data was being pulled by immigration enforcement thousands of times over.
This is the exact scenario we've been warning about since day one: networked ALPR systems create pipelines that nobody fully controls, and "local use only" policies are only as strong as the technical and legal walls around them, walls that keep turning out to have holes. When a company's own CEO responds to findings like this with tone-deaf deflection instead of accountability, it tells you everything about how seriously these companies take the privacy promises they make to the towns that sign their contracts.
If you want to see whether Flock or similar ALPR cameras are already watching your own neighborhood, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back on surveillance creep where you live, our take-action page has concrete steps for getting it in front of your local officials.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of AI Privacy & Business Counsel, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.