At Least 10 US Local Governments Move to Drop Flock's Surveillance Cameras Since Summer

In the past three months, Monroe, Ohio; Newburgh, New York; Richmond, Virginia; Hopkinton and New Bedford, Massachusetts; and Lansing, Michigan, have all moved to terminate their Flock contracts, TechCrunch reported. Police in East Bridgewater and Grafton, Massachusetts, have said they will stop using the cameras, and this week voters in League City, Texas, rejected their police department's continued use of Flock plate readers, which are now due to be removed.

The pullback matters beyond one vendor. Flock, founded in 2017, has more than 100,000 cameras in use across the country, and its products, which include plate readers, drones and acoustic sensors that detect gunshots, are among the most visible deployments of automated surveillance in American towns. Opponents are using the same tool that has been turned against data centres: local procurement and ballot decisions.

The objections vary. Some councils cite privacy and data sharing, others procurement. Asheville, North Carolina, voted in August to end its contract, and the El Paso County Sheriff's Office in Colorado said in September it would stop using the cameras. "We have the tools, training, and experience to locate and apprehend criminals without relying on Flock cameras," Sheriff Joseph Roybal said in a press release. At state level, Florida barred licence plate readers from state highways this summer and Texas paused state funding for Flock.

Misuse has fed the backlash. In August an officer in Brentwood, Missouri, was accused of using Flock cameras to stalk his ex-wife, and in September an East Texas officer was jailed for using the system to stalk a former girlfriend and her family. Ithaca, New York, voted in March to end its contract, saying in its resolution that Flock infrastructure had been used by federal agents without the city's specific authorisation, including by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Flock rejected that characterisation. "Every Flock customer owns its data and controls who it is shared with and how it can be used. Flock does not sell data and does not have a contract with ICE," the company said in a statement to TechCrunch, adding that removing the cameras "moves public safety backward." In August the company cut its default data retention period for new customers from 30 days to seven and began requiring agencies to enter a case code before searching its database.

Adam Schwartz of the Electronic Frontier Foundation told TechCrunch that police departments often adopt Flock with little oversight from city councils, and that activists are pressing councils to use their purchasing power to refuse payment. Not every city is walking away: Cleveland voted this summer to extend its Flock contract while adding limits on how the system is used.