Lynnwood dumps flock safety cameras

Our Take

Credit to KING 5 Seattle for covering this, because Lynnwood is exactly the kind of story that doesn't make national news but should. A city council looked at what Flock's network of always-on plate readers actually does — log every car, every driver, every trip, indefinitely — and decided the tradeoff wasn't worth it. That's a rare and welcome outcome in a surveillance landscape where most councils rubber-stamp these contracts without ever reading the data-sharing fine print.

What makes Lynnwood notable isn't just the vote, it's the sequence: cameras go up quietly, someone starts asking who else can query the database, and suddenly "neighborhood safety tool" looks a lot more like a permanent, searchable record of everyone's movements — shared across agencies with little oversight. That's the pattern we've documented city after city, and it's why local fights matter more than people think. One council saying no is a data point other councils can point to when their own vendor pitch shows up on the agenda.

If your city has Flock cameras or is considering them, don't wait for a news crew to show up after the fact. Check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and use our take-action resources to push your own council toward a Lynnwood-style outcome instead of a rubber stamp.