SFPD Audit Found 299 Illegal Flock Searches by Federal Agencies

Our Take

Credit to Verified Privacy VPN for digging into San Francisco's self-audit of its Flock Safety network, because this is exactly the kind of accountability check most cities never bother to run. San Francisco has one of the stricter local ordinances on the books limiting who can query its ALPR data and why, and even there, the audit turned up hundreds of searches from federal agencies and out-of-state departments that shouldn't have had access at all. If a city with actual guardrails and the willingness to audit itself still came up with 299 violations, imagine what's happening in the thousands of jurisdictions running Flock cameras with zero local oversight.

This is the core problem with the whole Flock model: a nationwide, interconnected database of vehicle movements that agencies can query far beyond their own jurisdiction, governed by a patchwork of local policies that are only as good as someone's willingness to enforce them. Flock's pitch has always been that audit logs and local control keep the system in check. San Francisco's own numbers say otherwise. Federal agencies pulling data outside the agreed rules isn't a hypothetical risk anymore, it's a documented fact in one of the most privacy-conscious cities in the country.

If you want to see how far this network reaches into your own neighborhood, check our camera map, and if your city hasn't run an audit like this, that's a conversation worth starting at the next council meeting. Head to our take-action page for tools to push back.