Flock is tightening its rules in response to a growing surveillance backlash
MIT Technology Review James O'Donnell ● Covered by 2 sources
Flock is forcing police to give a case number before using its plate-reader network. It’s a small fix, but the real fight is over how much surveillance the system makes possible.
Based on reporting by MIT Technology Review, James O'Donnell — read the original for the full story.
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Flock is tightening access to its nationwide license plate reader network after months of backlash over police misuse, stalking allegations, and growing anger about mass surveillance. The company says officers will now have to enter a criminal case number before running a search, and its automatic auditing system will also become mandatory rather than optional.
That case-number rule is aimed squarely at a problem that has turned into a public mess: officers using Flock data to track current or former romantic partners. A recent Washington Post investigation described 46 cases where officers were accused of abusing the cameras for unauthorized searches. Flock says the new requirement is meant to make sure each search has a legitimate purpose. But the company is not verifying those case numbers, which leaves room for people to game the system just as they have with other prompts.
The company has already seen that movie. The ACLU found that when Flock asked officers to give a reason for a search, some typed vague words like “investigation,” while others simply mocked the system. At one Oregon department, officers entered “hehehe” 20 times. Flock’s automatic auditing tool is supposed to spot suspicious search patterns and flag them to administrators, but the company has not released details on how accurate it is or allowed independent reviewers to test it.
Flock is also trying to calm broader fears about the scale of its network. It now recommends keeping data for seven days instead of 30, though agencies can ignore that advice. Departments can also limit other departments’ searches based on stated reasons, such as allowing kidnapping-related searches but blocking immigration enforcement searches. That, too, depends on officers telling the truth about why they’re looking.
The pressure is real. Some cities have dropped contracts, some states and municipalities are moving to ban license plate readers, and some agencies are switching to rivals like Axon and Motorola. Flock says the cancellations are only a small slice of the 5,000 agencies it says work with the company. Critics say the problem is bigger than a few bad searches: it is the sheer amount of searchable location data Flock has built.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
Flock is doing the classic surveillance-company shuffle: add a few guardrails, then act surprised that people still dislike the machine. A case number and a prettier audit log are not a cure for a network that turns ordinary movement into searchable history. The real tell is that independent scrutiny is still off the menu.
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