Flock Search Logs: What Does “LOL” Explain?

Our Take

Flock Safety's entire pitch to the public rests on one word: accountability. Every search is supposedly logged, every officer supposedly has to type a reason, and that reason is supposedly reviewable. Finding Margins pulls back the curtain on what that "accountability" looks like in practice, walking through EFF's published log extracts where the stated justification for running a plate search is, in at least one case, literally "LOL." That's not a redacted secret — it's the audit trail working exactly as designed, and it's a joke.

This matters because the justification field is the only real check standing between a nationwide camera network and totally unrestrained lookups. If cops can type anything — a joke, a shrug, a single word with no relation to a case number — then the audit log isn't oversight, it's theater. Agencies and vendors point to these logs whenever a reporter or city council asks hard questions, as if their mere existence proves restraint. Finding Margins' extract shows how easily that proof collapses the moment anyone actually reads the entries.

We'd rather you see the raw material than take our word for it, so credit to Finding Margins for surfacing it and labeling their editorial clearly. If you want to know whether a Flock camera is watching your own street, check our map, and if you want to push your city to tighten audit requirements or drop ALPR contracts altogether, our action guide has concrete next steps.