Flock unveils new safeguards addressing reports of police misusing data

Our Take

NBC News reports that Flock Safety is rolling out new guardrails after mounting evidence that police departments around the country have been misusing ALPR data — running searches for personal reasons, sharing plate lookups with agencies chasing immigration cases or abortion-related travel, and generally treating a 'public safety tool' like a personal Rolodex. Credit to NBC for pushing this into the mainstream, but let's be clear-eyed about what's happening here: a company facing a PR crisis is announcing policy tweaks, not structural change.

Audit logs, access tiers, and stricter 'reasonable suspicion' language sound good in a press release, but they're self-policing measures from a vendor whose entire business model depends on cities buying more cameras and states sharing more data across jurisdictional lines. Flock doesn't answer to the people whose movements it tracks — it answers to the police departments and city councils writing the checks. When the fox announces new henhouse rules, that's not oversight, that's damage control.

The real safeguard is knowing where these cameras are and pushing your local officials to reject or roll back these contracts entirely. Check our camera map to see what's been deployed near you, and if you want to push back, our take-action resources will show you how.