Cell phone location data requires a judicial warrant. You can also choose to turn your phone off or leave it at home whenever you want. Flock is always recording, you can’t opt out. Police can search without a warrant, probable cause, or case number. Carpenter v. United States, Chatrie v United States
Privacy is a fundamental human right, recognized by the United Nations and many other organizations. Privacy underpins human dignity and other key values such as freedom of association and freedom of speech. It’s why we have blinds on our windows and doors on our bathrooms. It allows whistleblowers to make anonymous reports. The government has no business knowing when you go a gun store, mosque, synagogue, strip club, AA meeting, or protest. [GILC]
This is based on some legal interpretations that a license plate number is not “personal”. This is a weak argument, because existing tools make it easy to find the registered owner of a license plate. Including Flock’s own Nova tool which their own employees describe like this: “You’re going to be able to access data and jump from LPR to person and understand what that context is, link to other people that are related to that person […] marriage or through gang affiliation, et cetera”. In the modern world of AI and big data, analysts can create a highly targeted profile by aggregating millions of data points that would each be harmless individually. This is known as the Mosaic Effect.
Flock’s major funders include Andreessen Horowitz and Founders Fund. Founders Fund is founded by Peter Thiel, who also co-founded Palantir Technologies. Palantir has contracts with ICE worth nearly $140 million. While Flock and Palantir are not formally partnered, they represent parallel pillars of the same emerging surveillance infrastructure — Palantir ingesting government databases and intelligence data, Flock blanketing public roads with cameras — both funded by the same billionaires, and both feeding data toward the same federal enforcement apparatus with comprehensive monitoring of individuals’ movements and behaviors.
There is very little evidence that surveillance reduces crime. Flock employees authored one study showing their technology helps solve 10% of all crime, but the researcher who oversaw it later admitted the data was cherry-picked to engineer good results, and the methodology has been widely criticized by academics. [404 Media].
If SBSD has real data to demonstrate the efficacy of Flock, they should show us. So far they have only provided a few anecdotes
In August 2025, Flock admitted federal immigration agents had direct access without the knowledge of local police, contradicting months of public denials about such arrangements. When this was uncovered by public records requests, the pilot program was terminated, but how can we trust that there’s not another one yet unknown? ICE can run indirect searches through its partnership with local police departments under 287(g), RISS, and Fusion Centers. Audit logs show thousands of searches run for immigration related reasons. [footnote4a]
Flock does not require MFA (multi-factor authentication) for user accounts, which makes it easy for officers to share their password with folks from other agencies, and also vulnerable to phishing or brute force attacks. Audit logs show 5 SBSD officers running searches 24 hours a day, which strongly suggests their accounts are either shared or hacked.
Flock’s own FAQ states unequivocally, “Nobody from Flock Safety is accessing or monitoring your footage.” But audit logs in Dunwoody, Georgia show several Flock employees accessed live video feeds of private facilities including a JCC children’s gymnastics area. Logs also show administrative actions being taken by a user called “Auto-approved” with no other identifiers.
Flock shares images with gig workers in the Philippines for AI training. [404 Media].
Flock has changed their terms of service several times, redefining what “customer data” is and how they are allowed to use and share it. A previous version stated flatly, “Flock does not own and shall not sell Customer Data.” That language has since been removed, and they now have a broad license to use and disclose Customer Data.
These tools are insufficient to catch abuse. A Milwaukee cop searched his lover’s location 179 times, and only got caught thanks to public audit logs at haveibeenflocked.com, which according to CEO Garrett Langley is a “terrorist organization”.
Most searches don’t reference a case number, and use vague terms like “investigation” to make it harder to audit. [404 Media] Sedgwick police chief tracked ex-girlfriend 164 times. The Institute for Justice found at least 21 cases of cops using ALPRs to stalk romantic interests.
In July 2025, Flock announced that all LPR cameras would receive a free upgrade to record and stream live video.
The “reason” field is optional, and some agencies have instructed their officers to be “as vague as permissible”. Audit logs show less than 30% of SBSD searches reference a case number. Many searches cite reasons which don’t refer to any crime, such as “protest” or “No Kings”. Over 30,000 searches cite meaningless reasons like “inv”.
The Flock system records tens of billions of images every month with AI assisted object recognition and tagging. At scale, this system is more similar to placing a GPS tracker on every car, logging its movements 24/7. This is called the mosaic effect, where several harmless pieces of information can be combined to reveal sensitive secrets.
Flock representatives made this claim in front of Oshkosh town council, and were swiftly proven wrong by the Oshkosh Chief of Police, leading to rescission of their contract. The Flock platform contains a feature labeled “heat map” in its own user interface that shows aggregated point-in-time captures of a vehicle over a defined retention period (default 30 days). [Flock training video explaining this feature] The U.S. Army Intelligence Analysis Manual defines pattern-of-life as persistent location collection, baseline establishment, deviation detection, and predictive analysis. [source: Veteran Air Force intelligence analyst Mehlia Hauxwell]
That’s one trial-level ruling (Schmidt v. Norfolk, Jan 2026), now being appealed; the ACLU filed a Fourth Circuit amicus brief against ALPR dragnets. The law is unsettled — and a city can decline this technology regardless of the constitutional floor. “Legal” isn’t the same as “wise”.
There is currently a bill in Congress called HR 8470, the Surveillance Accountability Act, that would put an end to many of Flock’s most dangerous practices,
Police have plenty of tools to communicate, for decades before Flock came around. When a crime is detected, dispatchers can broadcast BOLOs and APBs to neighboring jurisdictions in real time using radio and other computer systems. Officers can check the NCIC (National Crime Information Center) for stolen plates and wanted persons.
Who are they? The Z107.7 poll shows 133/165 (81%) opposed to Flock. Our local petition has 778 signatures, and a separate petition in Yucca Valley has 323 signatures (as of June 30). There have been dozens of public comments at city council and almost none in favor.