Federal agencies accessing ‘Flock’ camera systems in WA | FOX 13 Seattle

Our Take

Credit to FOX 13 Seattle for putting a local news spotlight on something we've been warning about for a while: local Flock networks don't stay local. The University of Washington report they cite shows federal agencies, including ICE, pulling data out of camera systems that cities and counties in Washington installed for garden-variety police work. That's the whole problem with this technology in a nutshell — once the plate-scanning infrastructure exists and is networked, it becomes a backdoor for agencies and purposes that local officials, and the voters who elected them, never signed off on.

Washington has state laws meant to limit cooperation with federal immigration enforcement precisely because residents didn't want their community turned into a surveillance pipeline for ICE. A report showing federal access to Flock data anyway suggests those guardrails are either being ignored, worked around, or were never built to withstand a system this porous. Flock's own audit logs and 'network sharing' features make it trivially easy for one agency's camera feed to become every other agency's search tool, state lines and local sanctuary policies notwithstanding.

This is exactly why we track where these cameras are going up and who's operating them — because the fight isn't just about whether your local PD has a camera on your street, it's about who else gets to look through it later. Check our map to see what's been installed near you, and if your city council hasn't asked hard questions about data-sharing agreements, our take-action page has tools to help you make them.