Data privacy advocate implores Palo Alto to conduct a meaningful audit of the Flock System #deflock

Our Take

Matt Schlegel's clip captures something we see in city council chambers over and over: officials asked to take Flock Safety's word for it. A representative from Safety over Surveillance stood up in Palo Alto and said what should be obvious — if you're going to let a private company blanket your streets with license plate readers, you don't get to grade your own homework. An audit means pulling raw logs, checking who searched the database and why, confirming data retention actually matches policy, and verifying claims about out-of-state and federal access. Anything less is a press release with extra steps.

This matters because Flock's entire pitch to city councils rests on trust: trust that searches are logged, trust that data isn't shared with agencies hunting down immigrants or people seeking abortion care, trust that the network isn't being used for anything beyond the narrow case it was sold on. Palo Alto isn't a border town or a crime hotspot driving this debate — it's a wealthy, tech-literate city whose residents are simply asking the system to prove itself. That a 'meaningful audit' even needs to be demanded tells you how little independent scrutiny these networks get by default nationwide.

Credit to Matt Schlegel for putting this moment on record — local meetings like this are where accountability actually starts. If you want to see how dense Flock's camera network already is near you, check our camera map, and if you'd rather push your own council toward a real audit instead of a rubber stamp, our take-action page has the tools to do it.