His Town Denied Information On Flock Cameras. Now, He's Suing.
The short version: A Scarsdale resident is suing after officials allegedly stonewalled public records requests about a Flock Safety ALPR contract, as reported by Jessica Burbank.
Our Take
This is exactly the pattern we track at DeFlock USA: a town quietly signs a contract with Flock Safety, a company now valued in the billions off the back of license plate data, and when a resident asks basic questions, the answers dry up. Jessica Burbank's reporting on Josh Frankel's fight in Scarsdale is a good reminder that these fights aren't theoretical — they're happening in ordinary suburbs where nobody voted on whether their daily movements should be logged and stored by a private surveillance vendor.
Public records requests exist precisely so residents don't have to take a town's word for it that a surveillance system is narrow, secure, or even necessary. When officials stall or deny those requests, it raises the obvious question: what exactly are they trying to keep out of public view? Lawsuits like this one are often the only real check left once local government decides transparency is optional.
If your town has Flock cameras and you don't know the terms of the contract, who has access to the data, or how long it's retained, you're not alone — and you have options. Check our camera map to see what's already been documented near you, and visit our take-action page for tools to start asking your own officials the hard questions.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Jessica Burbank, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.