DeFlocked

Estimated Read Time: 3.5 to 4.5 minutes

[Political Analysis]

Municipalities are finding that once they are installed, they are very, very hard to remove. As more cities and towns feel the backlash against ALPRs and start taking them down, Flock is saying, "Not so fast!"

Flock ‘Objects to Our Removing Their Equipment’: Emails Reveal Why a Town Put Bags Over Its Flock Cameras

404 Media

Jason Koebler

Jul 22, 2026

For weeks, Verona, Wisconsin tried to get Flock to remove the three automated license plate cameras that its city council had voted to stop using. Flock told city employees not to remove the cameras, and a Flock employee told city officials that they were unsure whether the cameras could be remotely disabled, which led the town to decide to put black plastic trash bags over them until Flock eventually removed the cameras itself, according to emails obtained using a public records request by 404 Media.

The emails give insight into the process cities face while deFlocking themselves after voting not to renew a contract with the AI surveillance company. As we’ve previously reported, multiple cities around the country have decided to put black trash bags over their Flock cameras while they wait for them to be removed; this is in part because, until the cameras are physically removed by Flock, cities are unsure whether they have the legal right to remove the cameras themselves and are not sure whether they can disable their recording operations. The emails show Verona city officials telling each other that they had made multiple requests to Flock to have the cameras removed, and show a work order from Flock in which the cameras were set to have maintenance performed on them rather than being removed.

But there are even more cameras that aren't used by cities—private companies use them, and that raises further questions. For instance, who is responsible if the camera system produces a false positive... who is liable?

A Flock spokesperson told 404 Media that the discrepancy occurred because Verona voted to not renew its contract rather than outright canceling it mid-term. It is clear from emails obtained by 404 Media, however, that Verona city officials wanted the cameras to come down as quickly as possible.

Then there is a question about Flock itself!

Flock Safety Credibility Lost as it Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police Departments, and Public Across the Country

The ACLU documents how an automatic license plate reader company has lied about its operations, signaling a need for reputable governments to avoid working with Flock Safety.

ACLU

Chad Marlow & Jay Stanley

July 2, 2026

During a city council meeting in a suburb of Wisconsin in April, the city of Oshkosh considered whether it should approve a contract to use automatic license plate readers (ALPR) from Flock Safety, a prominent company that provides ALPRs to law enforcement agencies across the country. During the meeting, one city council member asked Flock if the company’s ALPR system created heat maps that could reveal where a particular vehicle had driven over a period of time. Flock’s chief information security officer, who was in attendance, told the council that Flock’s system did not “create a pattern or heat map of an individual’s movement” through the tracking of their vehicles. At the end of that meeting, the Oshkosh City Council approved a contract with Flock. The very next morning, the city learned that Flock had lied.

Later that day, the city council reconvened to discuss what it had learned. Confronting Flock, Oshkosh Deputy Mayor Joe Stephenson said “I don't know how this body can govern if someone tells untruths, mistruths, exaggerated truths. I don't know how I can make a decision or discern what's right or what's wrong, or even the capabilities of this system if you lie to me.”

[…]

This is far from the first time Flock has misled the public and elected officials. The company has demonstrated a pattern of treating legitimate operational questions and concerns not as problems to be solved, but rather as mere public relations issues.

In Colorado, Loveland Police Chief Tim Doran raised concern that federal agents were accessing the town’s ALPR data. Flock responded by telling the chief that federal agencies no longer had access to Loveland’s license plate readers, and had their CEO reiterate to the press that federal data sharing was a non-issue because Flock had no federal contracts. After contradictory information later came to light, the company was forced to admit that it did, in fact, have contracts with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Homeland Security (DHS) for pilot projects that gave those agencies direct access to license data. “We clearly communicated poorly,” Flock’s CEO said, acknowledging that Flock’s “public statements inadvertently provided inaccurate information.”

This doesn’t exactly give you warm, fuzzy feelings.

Flock knew that, despite not being a customer, ICE had indirect access to Flock’s data and system through the company’s state and local law enforcement customers. The issue was never about having direct access to Flock’s data, it was about having any access to the data. But rather than address these data security and control issues on their merits, Flock released a misleading blog which reads as an attempt to confuse the public and create a false sense of security among its potential government customers. Ultimately, Flock was forced to accept that its denials were simply not credible. The CEO admitted Flock was used for immigration enforcement but argued that such matters were not Flock’s problem.

One of the major investors behind Flock is Peter Thiel, who gave $15 million to a single Super PAC backing JD Vance, $1.25 million to Trump’s 2016 campaign, and tens of millions more to conservative PACs. The venture capital mega-donors who fund Flock have poured massive fortunes into the Republican Party.

Metro News out of West Virginia reported that;

“The legal issues with this contract are numerous, but we are starting with how it was awarded in the first place,” Sparks said. “Simply put, the city acted hastily and did not follow its own laws when approving this contract, so it should be considered null and void from the start.”

“City code is clear that a private company cannot use property for commercial purposes,” Sparks added. “If the city wanted to grant Flock the right to use property belonging to the City of Huntington, there’s a proper process by which to do that. That process includes public notice, a public hearing, and other procedural safeguards to make sure that city property is used appropriately.”

[…]

“As other towns and cities are waking up to the egregious abuses of this technology, Huntington officials worked behind closed doors for months to thwart the will of their constituents and push this invasive surveillance on the city,” Baumwell said. “We will not stand by while the city runs roughshod over the will of the people and the privacy rights of every person in Huntington.”

Welcome to the brave new world of Big Brother.

In my town, they installed them on all the roads leading in and out. I also noticed them in the town next to us. When it was mentioned on local Facebook pages, all these people thought it was great to keep the "undesirables" out, complaining about how it was the Democrats' fault that crime was so high!

But here’s the thing: the town has a crime safety grade of A+. The overall crime rate is 55% below the national average. The violent crime risk is about 1 in 521, and the property crime risk is about 1 in 61. This makes the town safer than 100% of major U.S. cities with populations over 50,000, according to the latest data from the FBI and local law enforcement (source: DoorProfit).

Yet Republicans keep lying about crime! The news always starts with "Breaking News!" at the top of their broadcasts, giving the false impression of rampant crime.

The Institution of Justice wrote in 2025;

“News stories from around the nation have shown the dangers of giving officers unfettered access to ALPR cameras, which are now in thousands of local communities,” said IJ Attorney Michael Soyfer. “These cameras collect massive amounts of data about ordinary people’s movements, data that can be mined to reveal habits, patterns, and behaviors. This unusual decision to wade into a lawsuit to defend an ever-growing mass surveillance network should raise alarm bells over how the federal government plans to use this surveillance.” 

Industry players have not been forthcoming about their involvement with the feds. One major ALPR company, Flock Safety, insisted for months that it had no federal contracts. But in response to journalists’ questions, Flock eventually admitted that wasn’t true and that it had been running a “pilot program” with Customs and Border Protection (CBP). In the wake of that admission, Flock announced in August it was ending its partnership with federal law enforcement.

These private companies are not bound by the Constitution. What they are claiming is that they have a right to set up ALPRs alongside public roads, collect data, and sell that data to anyone willing to buy it!

Then we have the misuse of that data!

Police Keep Losing Their Jobs for Using Flock Cameras to Stalk People

Advocates say it’s too easy to abuse automated license plate reader technology.

Mother Jones

Sophie Hurwitz

July 18, 2026

Flock cameras—solar-powered, automated license plate readers, weighing less than 3 pounds and designed to be unobtrusive—can be found on 80,000 street corners throughout the country. The company behind the cameras built an $8.3 billion business empowering officers to track people’s movements. Nationwide, Flock cameras log billions of license plates each month. And now dozens of reports are emerging of police using the cameras not to solve crimes, but to stalk their partners and exes.

[…]

But the backlash against Flock and other ALPRs is growing. The technology, activists say, holds potential for misuse. And even when it’s used as intended, some researchers say the company’s data sharing practices lead to privacy rights violations. Throughout 2025, at least 30 municipalities canceled their Flock contracts. Grassroots groups such as DeFlock have built maps showing the public where these license-plate readers are located. (Langley called DeFlock and other activists “terroristic” last year, and apologized this week.) 

And Marlow of the ACLU expects the pushback to keep getting louder. “In these incredibly divisive political times, we’re actually seeing the rare issue that unites Americans: opposition to government surveillance,” Marlow said. “And I don’t think it’s going anywhere. I think this movement is only going to grow.”

I think we are on the threshold of fulfilling the 1984 prophecy of Big Brother—but with an oligarchical twist!

[/Political Analysis]

Stop & Think.

With abortion and trans healthcare, Republicans are trying to go after citizens of their home state for getting medical care that is illegal in their state, but completely legal where it was performed! How is that legal?

Does that mean if you go to another state to gamble in a casino, your home state can arrest you for gambling? I think not. Does that mean if you go to another state to smoke pot, they can arrest you when you come back—even if you didn't bring any weed back and just smoked it there?

Now stop and think: why do Republicans think it's okay to do this for abortions and trans healthcare?

Here is what they claim: it's a conspiracy because you planned the abortion while still inside their state, where it is illegal. But by that logic, if a senior citizens' group plans a bus trip from a state where gambling is illegal to a state with legal casinos, are they committing a conspiracy, too? Can you imagine if Utah arrested senior citizens for a trip to Las Vegas?

AG: state can prosecute those who help women travel for abortions

Alabama Daily News

AP 

September 3, 2023

Alabama’s attorney general argued in a court filing that the state has the authority to bring conspiracy charges against groups who help women travel to another state for an abortion.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall’s office made the assertion in a Monday motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by an abortion assistance fund and others arguing such prosecutions would be unconstitutional. The groups are seeking a legal ruling clarifying that Alabama can’t prosecute people for providing financial, appointment or travel assistance for an Alabama woman to obtain an abortion in another state.

Alabama bans abortion at any stage of pregnancy. Marshall argued while it’s legal for a woman to travel out of state for an abortion, he suggested groups that help her do so could face prosecution.

You see how they are twisting the law. The person receiving the abortion or trans healthcare isn't directly arrested, but everyone who helped them can be prosecuted for aiding and abetting a felony. That is even more sinister—parents could be arrested just for seeking healthcare for their children.

That is why shield laws, like Connecticut’s, are so important. But you can also see the dangers with Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs). In Connecticut, data from these license plate readers could be used to track us. Even though Connecticut law requires a court order to dig through that data, there have been numerous reports that the private companies managing the system have given information to ICE and CBP without a court order.

The U.S. Constitution should offer protection through the Interstate Commerce Clause, the Full Faith and Credit Clause, and the Privileges and Immunities Clause.

Then, of course, if the courts step in and ban states from prosecuting people who travel out of state for healthcare, Republicans will just blame it on an "activist" court. For conservatives, it's a win-win situation.

 

Is Big Brother Now A Private Company

I'm heading up to the Cape today... so it is prewritten blogs today!

---

So, have the feds handed over their "Big Brother" surveillance to private companies?

Silent Watchers: The rise of Connecticut’s police camera network

Insider Investigator

Katherine Revello

July 12, 2026

Connecticut has the highest per capita rate of automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras in New England and across other northeastern states, including New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.

According to DeFlock, Connecticut ranks twenty-fifth overall for the number of per capita cameras in the state, averaging roughly 1.78 cameras per 10,000 residents. 

Those cameras are maintained by a variety of police departments and private businesses and use artificial intelligence to take pictures of and ‘read’ the license plate and make and model characteristics of every vehicle that goes past. The cameras can be either mounted to roadside infrastructure, like a pole or traffic light, or in the dashboard of a police car.

Every plate read is dumped into a massive database law enforcement can search and check against various crime hotlists. The majority of the data collected and stored is not connected to a crime and is never searched for or viewed by police before it’s purged from the system, often after a 30-day retention period.

That database involves the entire Flock network. As the quote notes, "Every plate read is dumped into a massive database law enforcement can search and check against various crime hotlists." But the problem is that there are errors in this database. Basically, these are warrantless searches!

The Electronic Freedom Foundation writes;

Imagine driving to get your nails done with your family and all of a sudden, you are pulled over by police officers for allegedly driving a stolen car. You are dragged out of the car and detained at gun point. So are your daughter, sister, and nieces. The police handcuff your family, even the children, and force everyone to lie face-down on the pavement, before eventually realizing that they made a mistake. This happened to Brittney Gilliam and her family on a warm Sunday in Aurora, Colorado, in August 2020.

And the error? The police officers who pulled them over were relying on information generated by automated license plate readers (ALPRs). These are high-speed, computer-controlled camera systems that automatically capture all license plate numbers that come into view, upload them to a central server, and compare them to a “hot list” of vehicles sought by police. The ALPR system told the police that Gilliam’s car had the same license plate number as a stolen vehicle. But the stolen vehicle was a motorcycle with Montana plates, while Gilliam’s vehicle was an SUV with Colorado plates.

Couple that with gun-happy ICE agents, and it spells disaster!

Police over-reliance on ALPR systems is also a problem. Detroit police knew that the vehicle used in a shooting was a Dodge Charger. Officers then used ALPR cameras to find the license plate numbers of all Dodge Chargers in the area around the time. One such car, observed fully two miles away from the shooting, was owned by Isoke Robinson.  Police arrived at her house and handcuffed her, placed her 2-year old son in the back of their patrol car, and impounded her car for three weeks. None of the officers even bothered to check her car’s fog lights, though the vehicle used for the  shooting had a missing fog light.

Officers have also abused ALPR databases to obtain information for their own personal gain, for example, to stalk an ex-wife. Sadly, officer abuse of police databases is a recurring problem.

In my town there are twelve reported cameras.

The Institute for Justice also found problems with the data.

But those machine errors account for about one-third of the mistakes in the cases IJ identified. The rest involved human error, with officers entering wrong information into the system or misinterpreting what the ALPR data says.

Last year in San Diego, for instance, officers were searching for a red Alfa Romeo connected to an attempted carjacking. The officers didn’t have a plate and were instead relying on Flock’s “vehicle signature” technology, which captures detailed characteristics of individual cars like make, model, and color. 

The Flock system gave them a positive hit on a superficially matching car—but it was a totally different red Alfa Romeo, located five miles away from the crime at the time it occurred. Officers nevertheless arrested all three of the car’s occupants. One passenger spent nearly a month behind bars during the holidays before officers realized their error and set him free. 

People lives are at stake... there can be no false reporting!

People's lives are at stake—there can be no false reporting!

Also, there have been a number of cases where the police used the data to track ex-girlfriends. The Institute for Justice in another article reported;

An ongoing review of media reports and public records by the Institute for Justice has identified at least 24 cases nationwide of officers allegedly abusing ALPR data this way, with the bulk of those incidents happening since 2024. Nearly all of these officers were criminally charged and lost their jobs, either by resigning or getting fired. 

Flock Safety and other ALPR providers emphasize that they have internal safeguards to prevent this kind of misuse. But only a few of the 24 analyzed cases were initially discovered through internal investigations, according to media reports. Most incidents came to light only after victims reported the officers’ behavior to the police, typically in the context of a broader stalking allegation. 

“The fundamental problem with these systems is that they place private information about people’s movements over time in the hands of every officer,” said Michael Soyfer, an Institute for Justice attorney who is representing residents of San Jose and Norfolk in lawsuits challenging their cities’ ALPR surveillance networks. “Without the constitutional safeguard of a warrant requirement, that predictably allows officers to abuse their access to these systems for things like stalking romantic partners.” 

In an article in the Courthouse News they write;

In a lawsuit, two California drivers have accused tech company Flock Safety of violating state law by allowing out-of-state and federal agencies to access information captured by its automated license-plate recognition (ALPR) cameras.

“Flock has created an Orwellian mass-surveillance infrastructure that is practically impossible to avoid, particularly for anyone operating a vehicle in the towns and cities across this country where Flock has installed its cameras,” the drivers say in their complaint, filed Thursday in state court in San Francisco.

“Flock attempts to evade responsibility and shift liability for its violations by pointing fingers at its own customers,” they claim. “But Flock cannot rely on weaponized incompetence when its obligations under California law are crystal clear.”

They go on to write that various police agencies go around the law by search the databases at the request of ICE and CPB.

The Mountain View Police Department, the plaintiffs say, discovered only recently that federal agencies accessed its cameras’ data through a nationwide search tool. They say this feature was enabled without the police department’s permission or knowledge.

In recent months, the cities of Santa Cruz, Richmond, Mountain View and Los Altos Hills all shut down Flock cameras or terminated their contracts, according to the drivers.

Last October, California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the city of El Cajon over its refusal to comply with state law prohibiting the sharing of license plate data with federal and out-of-state law enforcement agencies.

Here in Connecticut they tried to pass a law but it never made it to the floor of the legislature last session. In the bill HB 5449: AN ACT CONCERNING AUTOMATED LICENSE PLATE READER SYSTEMS, and it states...

108 (5) Unless authorized pursuant to section 29-6d of the general

109 statutes, collect automated license plate reader data on the premises or

110 within a distance established by the Police Officer Standards and

111 Training Council pursuant to section 2 of this act, of a reproductive or

112 sexual health facility, as defined in section 42-515 of the general statutes,

113 that primarily provides gender-affirming health care services or a

114 nonprofit or community organization that primarily serves immigrant

115 communities, excluding any property under federal jurisdiction,

116 provided such facility or organization notified the Police Officer

117 Standards and Training Council of such facility's or organization's

118 location;

You have to wonder if this is ultimately just a clever way to bypass the Fourth Amendment. After all, it is no longer the government directly collecting your personal data—it is a private company doing the legwork, which then sells access right back to government agencies. When private corporations build massive, unregulated tracking databases that police departments simply "subscribe" to, it creates a dangerous constitutional gray area.

These are, indeed, the new shades of Big Brother.