April 10, 2026
The Guardian recently provided a broad recap of data sharing and privacy concerns with Flock that have led some communities to reconsider or cancel their contracts. The Dutchtown Community Improvement District in St. Louis, MO recently cancelled their Flock contracts, citing concerns about data sharing with ICE. While Flock Safety continually reassures the public that they don’t share information with ICE, 404 Media found that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission police made dozens of searches with “immigration” as the stated search term (per a January audit), proving that ICE retains side-door access to Flock data from access points that many police departments likely wouldn’t ever consider as problematic. (Fish and Wildlife police?! Really?) 404 Media also reported that a motorcyclist in GA was issued a traffic ticket that read “CAPTURED ON FLOCK CAMERA 31 MM 1 HOLDING PHONE IN LEFT HAND.” This incident highlights two major problems: 1) Flock cameras capture more information beyond license plate images (as is often reported by Flock and municipalities to assuage concerns about privacy) and 2) the data captured by ALPRs can be used in any way with limited oversight.
If you want to learn more about Flock’s disastrous record, check out Benn Jordan’s comments at his city council meeting in February. See also a reddit post where a resident from Corona, CA shared how he is working to get rid of Flock in his community, including a link to his statements at a city council meeting. His statements are worth listening to. He mentions how Flock Safety’s data collection goes well beyond simple license plate surveillance. He also brought up the wider societal context: Flock Safety integrates with Palantir, whose CEO Alex Karp recently stated that AI technology “disrupts humanities-trained—largely Democratic—voters, and makes their economic power less. And increases the economic power of vocationally trained, working-class, often male, working-class voters.” Yikes.
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