Flock to require case number for searches, recommends storing data for only seven days

Our Take

Credit to WWMT-TV for catching the timing here: Flock rolls out these 'reforms' during the same week advocates nationwide are pushing back hardest against ALPR surveillance. Requiring a case number for searches and making the misuse-detection tool mandatory are genuinely overdue — basic audit trail stuff that should've been there from day one, not a corporate favor. But notice what's doing the heavy lifting in the headline: a recommendation. Flock isn't mandating 7-day retention, it's suggesting it, and conveniently grandfathering in every department already sitting on 30 days of your driving history. That's not a policy change, that's a press release.

A case number requirement only matters if someone is actually auditing whether that number corresponds to a real, lawful investigation — and so far, the industry's track record on self-policing searches has been to look the other way until a reporter or a lawsuit forces transparency. Flock writing its own rules, on its own timeline, with carve-outs for its paying customers, isn't the same as binding law or local ordinance. Real accountability means city councils and state legislatures setting hard caps on retention and audit requirements that Flock doesn't get to soften for existing contracts.

If your town has one of these systems watching the road, you deserve to know it, and you deserve a say in how long that data sits and who can search it. Check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and use our take-action resources to push your local officials past PR announcements and toward actual enforceable limits.