Flock Safety was founded on dual principles: law enforcement should use cutting edge technologies

to prevent and solve crime; and these technologies should safeguard civil liberties. All of our

products have the customization, safeguards, and data ownership that allow individual, unique

communities to use those products in a way that is not prescribed by us, a private technology

company, but by the elected officials and individuals in that community.

While we take the concerns raised in the reports seriously, and have put significant resources

behind continuing to improve our products and systems, we first want to highlight the real safety

benefits of this technology — which have led to endorsements from the NAACP, Mothers Against

Drunk Driving (MADD), and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC),

amongst others. Over 1,000 missing persons have been recovered with the help of Flock

technology, thousands of violent crimes have been solved, and tens of millions of dollars worth of

stolen property have been returned. These are very real, very consequential outcomes of this

technology that are felt by real people across the U.S. on a daily basis.

Safety and privacy are both human rights. Flock seeks to protect both.

Data Ownership, Retention, and Sharing

Every Flock customer fully owns and controls 100% of its data, determining for themselves what

are acceptable and unacceptable uses, who and when should have access, and with whom to share

that data, according to the laws of their jurisdiction and the values of their community.

In some states, that means data cannot be shared out of state, while in others, that is perfectly

acceptable. Different jurisdictions may consider different actions criminal; they may also prohibit

use cases that are accepted or encouraged in a jurisdiction two hours away. The system allows for

all of these nuances.

Data sharing amongst Flock customers is always opt-in, and always at the discretion of the

customer. Sharing permissions can be changed or revoked at any time.

Flock’s default data retention period for customer data (images and metadata) is 30 days, which is

more aggressive than what most state and local law requires. This is precisely because we believe

in protecting privacy.

Case Law

ALPR cameras photograph vehicles on public roadways at fixed points in time. They do not “track”

citizens’ activities. They do not match an image of a vehicle to the registered owner or driver.

To date, two federal courts of appeals, twenty federal district courts, and four state appellate courts

have uniformly concluded that LPR technology does not violate the 4th Amendment. Last month, in

Commonwealth v. Church, No. 0737-25-1 (Va. Ct. App. Oct. 14, 2025), the Virginia Court of Appeals

reversed the only adverse decision in the country related to the use of Flock’s LPR technology.

In its ruling, the Court stated, “Because the Flock system simply took pictures of the license plate

and Church’s vehicle as he drove it down public thoroughfares in the City of Norfolk, the circuit

court erred in ruling that a search warrant was required for police to access the Flock system.”

Audit Logs and Oversight

Every search in the Flock LPR system requires a stated reason, and all searches are preserved

permanently in the audit trail of every agency whose camera was included in the search. Those

searches are viewable in an agency’s “network audit” and available for regular oversight: to

command staff, to elected officials, to communities.

To be clear, this is not a legal requirement for Flock in most jurisdictions, nor is it something that all

LPR vendors do. Flock makes auditing the default because of our commitment to accountability and

transparency, enabling the kind of oversight that many of LPRs’ most ardent detractors call for. The

concerns raised in the reports the Centre mentions began with individuals and members of the

media reviewing audit records, spurring a public conversation about how police should use

technology.

Training and Education

Flock has engaged customers across the country, along with several state law enforcement

associations, to collaborate on education and training campaigns to promote best practices on LPR

use, auditing, and compliance. This includes the integration of ethical best practices into agency

onboarding, training events to explain how LPR technology works, and ongoing communications to

promote transparency and community trust.

New Compliance Features

To make compliance easier for customers for whom certain uses of LPR are prohibited by law or

policy, we have introduced keyword filters that automatically block specific searches involving

impermissible terms. These filters are currently focused on the categories of civil immigration

enforcement and reproductive healthcare, and include a list of words and phrases related to these

use cases.

In states with clear legal restrictions on sharing license plate reader data with out-of-state and/or

federal agencies, we hard coded those limitations into the system to help customers easily comply

with their laws.

We made the sharing user interface clearer to ensure that agencies do not inadvertently share data.

We also improved audit records and tools to simplify and enable the auditing process so that

agencies can prevent misuse.

Next month, we are introducing a mandatory Offense Type dropdown, originating from NIBRS

offense categories, required to perform any LPR search. This ensures that within every search is

preserved a declaration of the specific offense under investigation, creating a stronger audit trail

and eliminating generalization.

Federal Agencies

The federal government has an important role in public safety. Local agencies often collaborate

with federal agencies, through federal task forces or otherwise, to solve some of society's most

heinous crimes like human trafficking.

However, local agencies should always have full decision-making authority and control over

whether and when to work with federal agencies. Therefore, we created a separate federal

organization designation, ensuring transparency when federal agencies request access to LPR

footage from state or local partners. These sharing relationships must be on a 1:1 basis, as Federal

agencies cannot access Statewide or National Lookup. And as always, they are fully opt-in and at the

discretion of the customer.

Finally, it is important to acknowledge that, every hour, across the country, Flock tools help law

enforcement to quickly solve crimes that deeply affect victims and communities. Thefts, carjackings,

kidnappings, human and drug trafficking, occur too often and are solved at suboptimal rates. At

Flock, we believe that all of us deserve to live with less crime, and to have our civil liberties

protected.

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