Monterey County delays vote on new Flock cameras as privacy fears grow over 10-year deal

Our Take

Credit to KSBW Action News 8 for tracking this one closely. A county that quietly approved three cameras back in 2023 is now staring down a proposal to balloon that network to 103 units locked in by a decade-long contract. That's not a pilot program anymore — that's permanent infrastructure, and once a sheriff's office signs a 10-year deal, there's little incentive to ever scale it back, question its effectiveness, or revisit the privacy tradeoffs. Delaying the vote is the board doing its job, but the fact that public comment and reported vandalism of existing cameras are the forces slowing this down tells you the community got there before most of its elected officials did.

This is the pattern we see across the country: a handful of cameras get approved with minimal scrutiny, the network creeps upward year after year, and by the time anyone asks hard questions about retention, data sharing, or who else can query the system, the contract is already locked in for a decade. Ten years is a long time in surveillance technology — long enough for Flock's capabilities, partnerships, and data-sharing agreements to shift well beyond whatever the board thought it was approving in 2026. Monterey County residents pushing back now are doing the work that should happen before the ink dries, not after.

If you're in Monterey County or anywhere else watching your local government quietly expand ALPR coverage, check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and head to our take-action page for tools to push back before a multi-year contract takes the decision out of your hands.