US cities are dropping Flock's license plate cameras

Flock was founded in 2017 and is based in Atlanta. It sells surveillance tools to police departments and communities.

The best known is the license plate reader, a camera that reads the plates of passing cars and logs where and when they went by. The company also sells drones and microphone-based devices that pick up sounds like gunshots.

Police say the tools help find missing people and stolen cars. More than 100,000 Flock cameras are in use across the US, and the company works with more than 6,000 law enforcement agencies.

In the past three months, six places have moved to end their contracts: Monroe, Ohio; Newburgh, New York; Richmond, Virginia; Hopkinton, Massachusetts; New Bedford, Massachusetts; and Lansing, Michigan.

Police in East Bridgewater and Grafton, Massachusetts, also announced plans to stop using Flock cameras. Asheville, North Carolina, lost its access after the city voted to end its contract in August.

• El Paso County, Colorado: the sheriff's office said in September it would stop using Flock cameras.
• South Windsor, Connecticut: the town voted in October to remove cameras that went live last year without a public warning or vote.
• League City, Texas: residents voted this week against their police department's continued use of the readers. The cameras are now set to be removed.

In real life Picture a camera on the pole at the end of your street. Until recently, you may not have known it was there, who bought it, or who can search what it saw.

The reasons range from privacy to how the data is shared and with whom. Some towns also raise concerns about how the cameras were bought.

Why it matters: a camera on a roadside is something you can see. Tatiana Rice, a senior director at the Future of Privacy Forum, said that "a camera at the end of your street is tangible in a way that everyday sharing and selling of personal data online is not."

The backlash is part of a wider pushback against fast-moving AI technology. That includes the data center building boom and facial recognition.

Misuse has been a real problem. In August, an officer in Brentwood, Missouri, was accused of using Flock cameras to stalk his ex-wife during their divorce.

In September, an officer from East Texas was sentenced to prison for using Flock to stalk his ex-girlfriend and her family.

Another growing concern is how immigration officials have been able to access the technology. In March, Ithaca, New York, passed a resolution to end its contract with Flock.

The resolution said there were "proven instances of Flock Safety infrastructure being used by federal agents for information purposes even without specific authorizations from the contracting locality." It also said Flock had allowed ICE and the ATF, the federal firearms agency, to use query results from its database of state and local license plate data.

Flock says it does not sell data and does not have a contract with ICE. The company also says every customer owns its data and controls who can see it.

Flock told TechCrunch that police departments across the country use its technology to solve serious crimes, locate suspects and find missing people. "While we respect every community's decision, removing a tool that is actively helping solve violent crimes and protect communities moves public safety backward," the company said.

In August, Flock shortened the default storage period for new customers from 30 days to seven. It also said agencies now need a case code, a note tying the search to a real case, before they can search the database.

Virginia offers one picture of how the system works. The data is encrypted and stored in a cloud service called Amazon Web Services GovCloud. Police search it during investigations, and by state law the images are deleted after 21 days.

Many local governments are not dropping Flock. Some add rules instead, and some look at other vendors.

• Cleveland, Ohio: voted this summer to extend its contract, but began restricting searches related to immigration. It also limited database access to the Cleveland Police, cutting off the Northeast Ohio Regional Fusion Center.
• Cleveland's next step: the city said the cameras are used and needed for investigative purposes, and its Department of Public Safety is reviewing responses to a request for proposals sent to other vendors.

Adam Schwartz of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy nonprofit, said police departments often decide to use Flock with little oversight from city councils. He said activists have asked councils to use their buying power, called procurement, to refuse to pay for license plate readers. In his words, "many city councils are listening."

Rules are moving too. This summer, Florida barred license plate readers from state highways, and Texas paused state funding for Flock.

In Virginia, state Sen. Glen Sturtevant said he will introduce a bill in the next General Assembly session to ban Flock cameras. Several Virginia localities, including Lynchburg, have started to end or pause their use of Flock since July.

In Congress, Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, introduced the Flock-Off Act to bar federal money from buying Flock-style surveillance. In October, Sens. Bernie Sanders and Jeff Merkley and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez introduced the Ban Flock Act.

An earlier count this year found 53 municipalities in 20 states that had rejected or shut off Flock cameras. Flock was valued at roughly $7.5 billion at that time and is backed by the investment firm Andreessen Horowitz.

It reported more than $300 million in annual recurring revenue, the money it expects to keep earning from subscriptions each year. Its cameras cost an estimated $2,500 a year each, plus installation.

That low price helped it spread quickly. It is also why one town's council can vote to leave without the others noticing.

• Check your town: many councils discuss Flock in public meetings, and the records are usually open to residents.
• Ask who can search: the key questions are who can see the data, for how long, and whether federal agencies can reach it.
• Expect more votes: several towns are still reviewing contracts, and state bills are on the way.
• Expect mixed results: some places leave Flock, others keep it with new limits.

For more on how these cameras show up on maps, see our story on MapQuest's Surveillance Layer.