The company’s bid to shield Americans’ privacy is seen by a leading Institute for Justice lawyer as insufficient to protect innocent people from mass surveillance without warrants.
In the face of growing public outcry, Flock Safety, the largest provider of automatic license plate readers (ALPR) in the United States, issued a statement on Thursday claiming to have introduced policies that would enhance privacy, accountability, and security.
Throughout the past several weeks, the debate surrounding ALPR technology has surged to new levels. Concerns about data protection and mass surveillance have spurred an anti-Flock movement, including websites that chart more than 130,000 ALPR cameras nationwide and a search engine capable of indicating whether a particular license plate has ever been queried in Flock’s database. In at least 23 states, activists have taken steps to dismantle the technology, according to The Guardian. And in July, more than 20 local jurisdictions terminated their contracts with Flock Safety altogether.
Exacerbating the anti-Flock sentiment were reports of increasing misuse of ALPR data by law enforcement, including wrongful stops at gunpoint and employing the information for purposes unrelated to policing, such as stalking romantic interests. The Institute for Justice (I.J.), a nonprofit legal organization advocating for strong Fourth Amendment protections, has cataloged more than 100 incidents of ALPR abuse to date.
Responding to the criticism, Flock Safety unveiled new data-security measures. The reforms cut the default data-retention window from 30 days to seven days unless information is flagged for preservation, require all customers to use auditing tools, and mandate case numbers for all law-enforcement searches by the end of 2026. The company also reiterated that owners of ALPR data are its customers at heart, determining who may access it and when, and emphasized that any investigative leads generated by the system must be validated by an officer.
Proponents of Flock’s approach argue that the technology has contributed to reducing crime and that these “smart regulations” could address privacy worries. Yet, their own analysis of the technology’s impact on crime relies on instances where ALPR cameras allegedly “supported,” “aided,” or “contributed to” investigations, and it does not demonstrate a clear, measurable benefit.
Civil-liberties advocates consider these steps inadequate to quell the nationwide backlash against what they view as a sweeping invasion of privacy.
“This is more cosmetic tinkering,” as Robert Frommer, a senior attorney at I.J., put it, noting that the reforms merely shift the burden onto local police departments to safeguard individuals’ data privacy and security.
Likewise, Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), remarked that “Flock’s latest declaration still reads like a public-relations fix rather than addressing the substantial privacy harms and other issues generated by its products.” The ACLU’s assessment indicates that the changes can be bypassed easily and offer little confidence that the new data-security safeguards will operate consistently or as advertised.
For example, although Flock will soon require a case number for each search by law enforcement, the company’s announcement does not specify how it will verify the legitimacy of the entered case codes. This omission is troubling, according to the ACLU, especially given that Flock’s previous attempt to curb police misuse by obliging officers to provide a reason for every data lookup did little to enhance privacy protections. Instead, officers quickly adapted to vague rationales such as “criminal justice,” “investigation,” or even more dismissive terms.
In a prior interview with Reason, I.J. attorney Michael Soyfer characterized Flock’s soon-to-be-mandatory auditing tool as a “black box,” with little public detail about its operation. Soyfer also voiced skepticism about relying on a private company to police law enforcement, especially since “Flock’s ultimate customer is the police department.”
Nevertheless, the Constitution provides a framework designed to protect Americans from unreasonable searches and seizures by police.
“One word you won’t see anywhere in Flock’s proposed reforms is ‘warrant,’” Soyfer asserted. “And until officers are required to obtain a warrant grounded in probable cause to access ALPR databases, these half measures will do nothing to shield innocent people from warrantless mass surveillance.”
