Flock Safety updates license plate reader rules to prevent misuse

Our Take

Gulf Coast News reports that Flock Safety is tweaking its rules after documented cases of cops misusing license plate reader data — running searches for personal reasons, sharing access outside authorized agencies, that kind of thing. Credit to the Gulf Coast News team for keeping local attention on this. But let's be clear about what's happening here: a company that sells surveillance infrastructure to police departments is writing its own homework assignment after getting caught, then grading itself.

This is the pattern with Flock every time misuse surfaces. A local story breaks, there's some embarrassment, and the company rolls out a policy revision with no independent audit, no public enforcement mechanism, and no real consequence for the departments that violated trust in the first place. Policy language on a corporate website doesn't stop an officer from looking up an ex's plate or a department from letting ICE piggyback on local camera networks. Only transparency laws, local ordinances, and outside oversight actually do that — and Flock has fought hard against exactly those things in city council meetings across the country.

If you want to know whether your town already has these cameras watching your daily movements, check our camera map. And if you think 'we updated our terms of service' shouldn't be the end of this conversation, our take-action page has real steps for pushing your local government toward actual accountability.