August 28, 2026

Our Take

Credit where it's due: Magnetic Norse did the unglamorous work of actually filing a public records request, and the result is telling in its emptiness. A state contract worth real taxpayer money, and the agency administering it apparently exchanged almost nothing in writing with Flock Safety over an entire month. Either the real conversations are happening somewhere records requests don't reach — phone calls, texts, Slack, whatever — or the office responsible for babysitting this surveillance vendor isn't doing much babysitting at all.

This is the pattern we keep seeing with ALPR contracts nationwide: the public is told these systems come with oversight, audits, and accountability, but when someone actually asks for the paper trail, there isn't one. Two pages, one of which is a logo, is not oversight. It's a rubber stamp with extra steps. If the people managing a statewide license plate reader network aren't generating emails about performance, misuse, data sharing, or problems, that silence is itself a finding.

If you live in Michigan or anywhere else running Flock cameras, this is exactly the kind of gap worth poking at with your own records requests. Check our camera map to see what's deployed near you, and hit our take-action page for tools to start asking your own agencies the same uncomfortable questions.