Flock says license plates are “public by design.” Then two cities paid $80,000.

Our Take

Flock Safety loves to say license plates are "public by design" — footage snapped on public roads, no expectation of privacy, nothing to see here. So when a resident in Oregon simply asked a small Washington city for one hour of what its cameras recorded, you'd think the answer would be easy. Instead, as Magnetic Norse lays out, two cities ended up spending roughly $80,000 fighting the request instead of just handing over the data their own vendor insists is already public.

That gap between the marketing pitch and the legal reality is the whole story. If plate scans are genuinely public, there's no reason a routine records request should cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars to resolve. But if agencies are willing to lawyer up rather than release an hour of footage, that tells you these systems are treated as anything but public when it's convenient — opaque, defended, and shielded from the very residents paying for them. Credit to Magnetic Norse for pulling the thread on what should have been a simple ask.

This is exactly the kind of friction we track: cities adopting ALPR networks with big promises about transparency, then stonewalling the public once someone actually tests that promise. Check our camera map to see what's watching near you, and visit take-action for tools to push your own city toward real accountability.