Cops Have Full Access to Flock Cameras

Our Take

Credit to Lisa Cabrera for putting a spotlight on something we harp on constantly: once a Flock Safety camera goes up, the access to that data rarely stays as narrow as city councils promise. Cabrera's video digs into just how broad law enforcement access to these systems can be, and that's the crux of the problem — these aren't neighborhood watch tools, they're a shared surveillance backbone that agencies can query far beyond the town that paid for the install.

This matters because 'full access' isn't a glitch, it's the business model. Flock's pitch to police departments is interoperability — the more agencies plugged into the network, the more valuable the data becomes, and the less any single community controls who's looking at its residents' movements. When that access expands quietly through data-sharing agreements, most people never find out until a video like this one explains it.

If you want to know whether this is happening in your own backyard, check our camera map to see documented ALPR locations, and head to take-action for tools to push back on unchecked surveillance expansion in your city.