Surveillance technology company Flock is rolling out a series of policy changes following widespread reports that law enforcement officers have been using its automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) to stalk former romantic partners and harass civilians. CEO Garrett Langley is offering a public mea culpa and says the company now understands it has a direct obligation to prevent misuse of its products.
The changes, which will be implemented over the coming weeks, include making the previously optional Audit Assistance feature a mandatory component for all customers. Audit Assistance flags abnormal search behavior and immediately locks out suspicious users until an administrator reviews their activity. In addition, all users must now enter case codes before running searches. This requirement is designed to make it harder for officers to query the system for personal or nefarious reasons. Administrators can override the code requirement in emergencies, such as tracking a missing child, but those exceptions are automatically flagged for later review.
Flock also plans to reduce the default period it retains data collected by its cameras and license plate readers from 30 days to seven days. That brings the company closer to the data limits recommended by civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union. Agencies that want to preserve data longer may still choose to do so, but the default shift signals a change in position for a company that has often argued privacy decisions should be left entirely to local governments.
A new feature called Evidence Mode will preserve searches tied to a specific case number, allowing agencies to maintain a clear record of investigative activity without keeping unrelated data. Flock is also changing how information is shared between agencies. Rather than an all-or-nothing approach, local departments can set granular sharing limits. For example, a police department could allow another agency to search its Flock data in connection with a homicide investigation while blocking access for immigration enforcement or other sensitive purposes.
How Flock’s technology works
Flock is best known for its solar-powered cameras and ALPRs that capture license plates and vehicle characteristics around the clock. The company says its devices have helped recover thousands of stolen vehicles and locate missing people. According to Langley, Flock’s tools helped find almost 1,000 missing people and more than 22,000 stolen cars in July alone.
But the technology also creates a searchable database of vehicle movements, which critics say is uniquely vulnerable to abuse. Unlike traditional police records, ALPR data is stored on private company servers and can be searched with a few keystrokes. A former officer who wants to know where a particular car is parked on a given night can query the system without leaving a trace if oversight measures are weak.
Reports of ALPR misuse date back at least to 2021, when the nonprofit Institute for Justice and other organizations began collecting examples of officers using license plate readers for personal purposes. In one high-profile case reported by the Washington Post, a police chief in Braselton, Georgia, searched his ex-girlfriend’s license plate more than 500 times over a seven-month period. Prosecutors in California, meanwhile, alleged that a former Riverside County Sheriff’s Office deputy used Flock data to stalk and harass his ex-girlfriend, including looking up information about men she was dating.
These incidents and others have fueled public concern about the rapid expansion of ALPR networks. Flock says its cameras are used by thousands of law enforcement agencies across the country, and the company has faced criticism for what some advocates describe as marketing that overstates safety benefits while downplaying privacy risks.
A shift in responsibility
For years, Langley argued that Flock should not be the entity deciding how police use its tools. He said local policymakers were better positioned to craft guardrails and that companies should not unilaterally impose restrictions on public safety technology. That approach drew sharp criticism from privacy advocates, who noted that many cities and towns were adopting Flock with little debate or formal oversight.
In a Forbes interview last year, Langley described DeFlock, a website that maps Flock’s cameras and advocates against their spread, as a “terroristic” group. He later apologized and said that characterization was a mistake. The latest policy changes appear to represent a more significant shift in tone.
Langley now says he changed his mind after seeing how slowly the legislative process moves. He had hoped lawmakers would pass laws requiring audit tools like Audit Assistance, but little such regulation has materialized. “This is such an obvious way to curb abuse,” he said. “And I said, ‘Fine. You know what? I think that’s right, and we got this one wrong. We should make it a requirement.’”
He says he still believes legislators should ultimately set the rules for policing technologies, but he acknowledges the company cannot wait indefinitely. “It took me maybe longer than it should have to realize the sheer impact of the company,” he told The Verge in an interview.
Privacy advocates respond
The ACLU released an analysis of Flock’s new policies shortly after they were announced. The group said the changes appear “more focused on addressing a perceived PR problem than the significant harms its products create.” The ACLU described the shorter data retention period as a possible “step in the right direction” but noted that the real-world outcome would depend on how Evidence Mode and auditing tools are actually implemented.
The organization also called for independent review of Flock’s auditing and search-reason requirements. Relying on a vendor to police itself, the ACLU argued, is not sufficient when the consequences of failure include stalking, harassment, and discriminatory policing. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has similarly warned that ALPR networks can be used to track people seeking abortion care, protest participants, and other individuals whose activities should not be swept into a permanent government-accessible database.
How the new safeguards work
The mandatory Audit Assistance feature is perhaps the most consequential change. Flock says the system uses algorithms to identify behavior that deviates from normal patterns, such as an officer repeatedly searching a single license plate or running queries at unusual hours. When suspicious activity is detected, the user is locked out and the agency administrator is notified. Previously, only about a third of Flock’s agency customers had enabled Audit Assistance, even though it was available since April.
The company says agencies that adopted Audit Assistance saw a predictable increase in detected abuse. Langley now predicts that more officers will be fired and more will be arrested as the mandatory feature exposes misconduct across the country. “You are going to see more officers fired and more officers arrested for abusing police power,” he said.
Case numbers add another layer of accountability. Officers searching a license plate must enter a case identifier that ties the query to a legitimate investigation. If the case is not an emergency, an administrator can review the search request. The system is not foolproof, but it creates a paper trail that makes it harder for an officer to claim they were doing police work while looking up a personal contact.
Evidence Mode is designed for situations where agencies need to retain records beyond the default seven-day period. If a license plate is tied to a specific case, the relevant data can be preserved and labeled with the case number. This avoids blanket retention of all data while allowing investigators to build appeals or court filings.
Concerns remain
Even with these changes, civil liberties advocates remain skeptical. Flock’s technology is deployed in thousands of communities, and the company’s aggressive sales tactics have generated pushback from residents and local officials. Some cities have already banned Flock cameras or imposed strict limits on their use. The effectiveness of the new policies will depend on whether agencies are willing to put them into practice and whether Flock actually audits noncompliance rigorously.
There are also questions about how the new rules apply to Flock’s partner agencies and whether they will share data with federal agencies or out-of-state departments. A growing number of jurisdictions have expressed concern about ALPR data being used for immigration enforcement. Flock has said officers are prohibited from using its tools to search for reproductive care in states where such searches are restricted, but enforcement of that policy is unclear.
Langley says he expects critics to remain suspicious and that he is not asking for immediate trust. “All I guess I’m asking for is for a fair shot,” he said. He argues that the company’s safety benefits are real and that the new policies are a genuine attempt to balance privacy with public safety. He hopes that if the changes succeed, they will pressure other ALPR vendors to adopt similar safeguards.
Flock’s evolution comes at a moment when surveillance technology is facing unprecedented scrutiny. Automated license plate readers are just one part of a broader ecosystem of police technology that includes facial recognition, cell-site simulators, and predictive analytics. As that ecosystem grows, the question of who is responsible for preventing abuse becomes more urgent. Flock now says it is willing to take on some of that responsibility, but skeptics believe the company is still moving too slowly and too reluctantly.
The next few months will show whether mandatory Audit Assistance, case codes, and shorter data retention actually reduce the number of officers who use police databases for revenge, jealousy, or other personal motives. For Flock, the challenge is not just updating its software but changing a culture that has too often looked the other way when officers abused the tools they were given.
Source:The Verge News