ABC13 EXCLUSIVE: Flock camera use draws scrutiny over privacy, oversight and data access
The short version: WSET's local exclusive lays out the same old pitch — fast leads, no warrant needed — without asking who audits the audit logs.
Our Take
Credit to WSET ABC13 for doing what a lot of local newsrooms won't: putting "privacy, oversight and data access" in the same headline as Flock. That framing matters, because most local coverage of ALPRs still reads like a press release from the Sheriff's office. The "less than a second" line in the description is doing a lot of work — that's precisely the problem. It takes a second to capture your plate, timestamp, location, and direction of travel, and it takes essentially zero seconds of suspicion to justify doing it, because the camera doesn't care whether you've done anything wrong.
The recurring theme in every one of these local exclusives is the same: police departments emphasize the wins — a recovered stolen car, a located missing person — while the actual mechanics of oversight get a sentence or two near the bottom. Who can query the database? How long is data retained? Is there an audit log, and who reviews it? Can other agencies, including federal ones, pull from a local network without anyone in that town knowing? Those are the questions that determine whether this is a narrow public-safety tool or a de facto tracking system for anyone who drives a car, and they rarely get answered on camera.
If your town runs Flock cameras, you can probably find them, and the surrounding agencies quietly sharing that data, on our map. Local reporting like this is a start, but the real accountability work happens at city council meetings and public records requests. Check our take-action page for how to push your own local government on retention policies and data-sharing agreements before the next "exclusive" airs.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WSET ABC 13, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.