Policy & Regulation
At least 10 local governments have dropped Flock surveillance cameras
Since this summer, at least 10 local governments and police departments have acted to curb, restrict or end their use of Flock Safety's surveillance technology amid growing concerns about mass surveillance and data privacy.
Flock, founded in 2017, sells license-plate readers, drones and gunshot-detecting microphone devices that police use to help solve crimes; more than 100,000 of its cameras are in use nationwide. In the three months since, six places have ended their Flock contracts outright — Monroe, Ohio; Newburgh, New York; Richmond, Virginia; Hopkinton and New Bedford, Massachusetts; and Lansing, Michigan — while police in East Bridgewater and Grafton, Massachusetts announced plans to stop using the cameras. This week, League City, Texas residents voted against their police department’s continued use of Flock license-plate readers, and the cameras are now being removed. Asheville, North Carolina lost Flock access after the city voted to end its contract in August, and Colorado’s El Paso County Sheriff’s Office said in September it would also stop using the technology, with Sheriff Joseph Roybal saying his department has the tools to catch criminals without it.
The backlash tracks a broader pushback against fast-spreading AI-adjacent technology, including data-center buildouts and facial recognition. Tatiana Rice of the Future of Privacy Forum told TechCrunch the reaction reflects “growing public skepticism toward technology,” with Flock drawing attention partly because its cameras are physically visible along roads. Misuse has fueled some of the concern: a Brentwood, Missouri officer faced accusations of turning Flock’s cameras on his own ex-wife amid their divorce, and a separate officer in East Texas drew a prison sentence for using the system to track down and stalk a former girlfriend and her relatives. A separate worry centers on immigration enforcement — Ithaca, New York passed a resolution in March alleging Flock let federal agents query its license-plate database without local authorization, including use by ICE and the ATF.
Flock disputes that it sells or shares data, or holds a contract with ICE, and says it has shortened its default data-retention period from 30 to seven days and now requires a case code before a database search. Not every city is pulling back: Cleveland, Ohio voted this summer to keep its contract while restricting immigration-related searches and cutting off a regional intelligence center’s access, and officials there said they’re reviewing other vendors’ proposals even as they keep using Flock for investigations.
Why it matters
The same procurement fights playing out over Flock — about data access, oversight and consent — are shaping how cities weigh AI-driven infrastructure more broadly, from license-plate readers to data centers, as councils face pressure to claw back decisions made with little public input.