“You Can’t Have It Both Ways”: Resident Challenges Elk Grove’s Flock Cameras

Our Take

Credit to ElkGroveNews for capturing this exchange, because it's the same script we hear in city council chambers across the country: a resident asks a straightforward question about Flock Safety cameras, and the police department reaches for carefully lawyered language about what the system 'does' and 'doesn't' do. Justin's pushback at the Sept. 23 meeting — essentially 'you can't have it both ways' — cuts right to the core problem. You can't tell the public these cameras don't track movement while also marketing the system's ability to flag vehicles, build travel patterns, and share plate reads with other agencies through networks that stretch far beyond city limits.

This is the semantic game ALPR vendors and their customers play everywhere: 'we don't track,' as if logging a vehicle's location and timestamp at every camera it passes isn't tracking by any plain definition of the word. Residents deserve straight answers about retention periods, who can query the data, and whether Elk Grove's feed is accessible to ICE, out-of-state agencies, or random officers browsing for unrelated reasons. When city staff won't engage honestly with that distinction, it's a sign the oversight conversation is just getting started, not finished.

If you live near Elk Grove or anywhere else with Flock infrastructure, don't wait for a council meeting to find out how many cameras are watching your commute — check our camera map now, and if you want to push back the way Justin did, our take-action page has tools to help you do it effectively.