Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company, announced changes to its data retention and privacy policies on Thursday following reports of police misuse and legal challenges from civil liberties groups. The company, which operates a network of AI-powered license plate readers, said it will shorten its recommended data storage window and implement new auditing tools to monitor law enforcement access.
The updates come after a report by The Washington Post found that more than 50 law enforcement officers were accused or convicted of using license plate readers to spy on individuals for personal reasons. Additionally, Flock is currently facing lawsuits in California and Virginia, where plaintiffs argue the technology enables unwarranted mass surveillance of physical movements.
Flock’s hardware records license plate numbers and "vehicle signatures," which include the make, model, color, and unique features like decals or bumper stickers. The company stated the new policies will reduce the default data retention period from 30 days to seven days, although local or state policies can override this. It also introduced an "evidence mode" to allow detectives to save specific data for active investigations.
The shift toward a shorter seven-day retention window is intended to reduce the risk of long-term profiling, but critics like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Institute for Justice argue that these self-imposed corporate rules do not replace the need for judicial oversight. Residents and civil liberties advocates are concerned that the technology, even with shorter storage times, still captures the "whole" of a person's physical movements without a warrant. These concerns have led to legal precedents being tested in federal courts, where judges must decide if photographing a license plate in public constitutes a "search" under the Fourth Amendment, similar to how the Supreme Court ruled on cellphone location data in the Carpenter case.
The next steps for this technology involve both the courtroom and the legislature. In Virginia, an appellate court will review a lower court ruling that favored the city of Norfolk's use of the cameras. Nationally, at least two bills have been filed in Congress this year to restrict the use of Flock’s systems, while 23 states already have statutes governing automated license plate readers. Further legislative action is expected at the state level, where policy advocates believe safeguards against abuse can be implemented more rapidly than in Washington.