Flock is changing how police officers can search its nationwide network of license plate readers, after mounting criticism from civil liberties advocates, cities, and public figures. The company says the new rules are meant to create stronger guardrails around a system that gives police departments access to searchable location data from 120,000 cameras.
The shift is significant because Flock has become a central name in police technology, with 5,000 agencies having contracted with the company. But the response is also limited. Several of the new safeguards still depend on officers accurately describing why they are searching, and the company has not opened its auditing systems to independent evaluators.
What Flock is changing
The most direct change is a new requirement that officers enter a criminal case number before running a search. Flock introduced that system as an option last year, but it is now required. The stated goal is to connect each search to a legitimate criminal matter rather than allowing casual or personal lookups.
That requirement responds to a specific abuse problem. A recent Washington Post investigation found 46 cases in which officers were accused of using Flock's cameras for unauthorized purposes like stalking. Some of those accusations involved officers allegedly using the technology to stalk or harass current or former romantic partners.
Flock is also making automatic auditing mandatory. The feature analyzes officer search activity and flags suspicious searches to administrators. Like the case-number requirement, this auditing tool was introduced as an option last year and is now becoming part of the standard system.
The company has not shared detailed information about the accuracy of the automatic auditing feature. It also has not opened the tool to independent evaluators, which leaves outside observers without a clear way to judge how often the system catches abuse or misses it.
Why critics see loopholes
The new case-number requirement matches a baseline standard that civil liberties groups have asked for. But the source of concern is how easily such prompts can be treated as a formality.
The ACLU recently found that when Flock required officers to enter a reason for a search, some officers used generic terms such as “investigation” or mocked the field. At one Oregon department, officers entered “hehehe” 20 times.
The new case-number rule may face a similar weakness because Flock will not verify the case numbers. If an officer can enter a number without outside validation, the safeguard may show that a box was filled in without proving that a search was justified.
That makes the auditing system important, but also raises another question: who can evaluate the evaluator? If the company’s internal systems decide what looks suspicious, cities and the public still have to trust Flock’s own account of whether the safeguards are working.
Data retention and search limits
Flock is also changing its guidance on how long agencies should keep data. The company now recommends that agencies retain data for seven days rather than 30. Agencies can choose to overrule that recommendation, so the change is not a firm limit across the network.
Departments can also limit how other departments search data from their cameras. For example, a department might allow searches tied to “kidnapping” but block searches for “immigration enforcement.”
That feature addresses a broader worry: Flock’s network is not just a set of local cameras. It is a nationwide pool of searchable location information that can be used across departments. The ability to narrow outside searches gives agencies more control, but it still depends on officers accurately reporting the purpose of a search.
The practical effect is a system with more friction than before, but not a hard technical barrier against misuse. Officers may have to provide more information, and administrators may receive more alerts, yet the rules still leave room for inaccurate entries.
The backlash around Flock
The changes arrive as criticism of Flock has grown from multiple directions. Tucker Carlson has said the technology is contributing to a “slave state.” Some cities have reportedly dropped Flock contracts after protests, though the exact number is difficult to estimate.
In February, NPR found that at least 30 cities had dropped contracts in the last year. The activist group DeFlock puts the number higher. Flock has said those cancellations are a small share of the 5,000 agencies that have contracted with the company.
Some states or municipalities are passing laws to ban license plate readers altogether. Others that allow the technology are switching away from Flock to other industry leaders, Axon and Motorola.
For Chad Marlow, a senior policy counsel at the ACLU, the central issue is not only individual misconduct. His broader concern is the scale of surveillance made possible by Flock’s cameras. As license plate readers become more common, he argues, police can investigate people through large stores of location data without first establishing suspicion of a crime, because searching that data does not require a warrant.
Flock CEO Garrett Langley gives a different explanation for the backlash. He told MIT Technology Review, “If you look at the main reason we’ve lost customers, it’s misinformation.” He said people wrongly believe Flock does facial recognition or sells collected data to commercial buyers.
Langley also described a change in company posture, moving from optional safeguards toward a stronger responsibility to enforce guardrails. Critics, including the ACLU, say the company still has not gone far enough, especially without independent access to test whether the new tools reduce abuse.
The result is a narrower but important debate. Flock is acknowledging that optional controls are not enough for a technology that can reveal where vehicles have been seen. But the company’s new rules stop short of the structural limits its strongest critics want, leaving cities to decide whether mandatory prompts and internal audits are enough protection for a nationwide surveillance network.