Lynnwood votes to end Flock license plate cameras after immigration enforcement concerns

Our Take

Lynnwood just handed the surveillance-accountability movement a real win. As KOMO News reports, the city council didn't just quietly let a contract lapse — it unanimously voted to terminate its relationship with Flock Safety after questions surfaced about whether the local ALPR network had been accessed for immigration-related searches. That's the nightmare scenario privacy advocates have been warning about for years: a "public safety" tool built for local police quietly becomes a backdoor for federal agencies with entirely different missions and far less local accountability.

What makes this case notable is the follow-through. The cameras weren't just switched off months ago pending review — the council is now committing to physically remove all 25 units, even without a firm timeline yet. That's a meaningfully different outcome than the usual pattern of officials promising "policy fixes" or "audit trails" while the hardware stays bolted to the traffic poles, ready to be reactivated or repurposed the moment public attention moves on.

Lynnwood's reversal should be a template, not a footnote. Every city with a Flock contract needs to be asking who else can query that data, under what agreements, and with what oversight — because once plate-read data exists, it rarely stays contained to its original purpose. Check our camera map to see what's operating near you, and hit take action if you want to push your own city council toward the kind of scrutiny Lynnwood just delivered.