WHO CHECKS FLOCK SEARCHES?
The short version: Max Born Show asks who audits Flock searches — the honest answer is almost nobody, and that accountability gap is the whole ballgame.
Our Take
The Max Born Show puts its finger on the question that should keep every city council member up at night: when a cop runs a search on Flock's ALPR network, who actually checks that it was legitimate? In most departments, the answer is some version of "trust us." Flock gives agencies a reason field to log why they're searching, but self-reported justifications aren't oversight — they're paperwork. A system that logs everyone's movements is only as accountable as the audits nobody is funding and the reviewers nobody has hired.
This matters because the entire sales pitch for mass ALPR deployment rests on the assumption that access will be narrow and searches will be justified. Reporting and public records requests around the country keep surfacing the same pattern: officers searching plates for personal reasons, departments sharing data across state lines for things that aren't even crimes in the searching state, and audit logs that exist on paper but get reviewed by no one in practice. Without real, independent auditing — not vendor dashboards, not internal honor systems — "accountability" is just a word in a press release.
If your town has Flock cameras, the question this video raises is the one to bring to your next city council meeting: who pulls the audit logs, how often, and who outside the department ever sees them? Check our camera map to see what's already watching your streets, and hit take action for tools to push your local officials on real oversight.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Max Born Show, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.