Flock + Surveillance Talking Points

staffny.selfhosted.socialJun 7, 2026
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Data currently available from neighboring areas

Broome County does not have a public portal. The information and data that are being captured daily from the 100+ cameras in Broome is not available to the public.

Ithaca:

21
214,110
10,732
5.01%
Cameras
Vehicles Captured
Hotlist Hits
Hotlist Rate

Elmira:

35
139,277
52,180
37.46%
Cameras
Vehicles Captured
Hotlist Hits
Hotlist Rate

Tompkins County:

30
172,124
5,972
3.47%
Cameras
Vehicles Captured
Hotlist Hits
Hotlist Rate

Nationwide Data:

26425
251,982,224
7,833,861
3.1089%
Cameras
Vehicles Captured
Hotlist Hits
Hotlist Rate

Hotlist Hits: number of vehicles that triggered a hotlist alert
Hotlist Rates: the percentage of vehicles that triggered a hotlist alert out of the total vehicles captured by cameras

Letters to the FTC

Nov 2025: Senator Wyden wrote a letter to the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) to address the concerns about Flock, and requesting the FTC to investigate the company.

🗝️Key take aways:

  • Flock’s surveillance data can reveal Americans’ movements over time, including trips to doctors and therapists, support group meetings for alcohol or drug addiction, as well as places of worship and protests [paragraph 1]
  • Requesting Multi-factor Authentication to verify/secure law enforcement accounts, and secure systems against hacking [paragraph 1, 4-5]
  • Concerns about the National Lookup Tool leaving information sensitive to hackers or foreign spies [paragraph 3]
  • Foreign spies such as a Russian-language cybercrime forum in which Flock accounts appear to be offered for sale – thanks to Benn Jordan [paragraph 5]
  • Users could share their passwords and allowing anyone to login without MFA [paragraph 6]
    • A detective from a DEA task force was reported stating that it was a common practice for other members to use his login credentials to conduct Flock searches

Talking Points

Common Questions + Arguments

Government overreach
  1. Local governments are partnering with private companies—like Flock Safety, Motorola Solutions, PlateSmart, and others—to install ALPR cameras on their roadways (link)
  2. As reported by the ACLU, ALPRs/AI technologies enable police to access these databases without a warrant, track vehicles, and effortlessly share information with other departments throughout the country
  3. NYCLU’s senior privacy & technology strategist, Daniel Schwarz, stated
    1. “I think it raises grave concerns and serious alarms for all our privacy and civil liberties,” Schwarz said. “It gives the power to whoever has access to this database to track where people are traveling.”
  1. The "reasonable" standard in Fourth Amendment law
    1. ALPRs and mass surveillance is a violation of your Fourth Amendment Rights. There is no “reasonable” suspicion argument when your privacy is continuously violated.
    2. In Carpenter v. United States (2018), the Supreme Court explicitly rejected the argument that venturing into public eliminates Fourth Amendment protection.
  2. Distinction between isolated observation and citywide surveillance systems
    1. Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that automated surveillance:
      1. "evades the ordinary checks that constrain abusive law enforcement practices: limited police resources and community hostility."
    2. In Commonwealth v. McCarthy (2020), the Supreme Court distinguished limited camera deployment from citywide networks, noting that widespread ALPR use would bring into question constitutional protections even though individual license plate observations would not.
  3. Mosaic Theory
    1. Justice Samuel Alito stated:
      1. "society's expectation has been that law enforcement agents and others would not...and simply could not secretly monitor and catalogue every single movement of an individual's car for a very long period."
  4. Litigation on citywide ALPR networks
    1. In Jan 2026, Judge Davis (who ruled in favor of the City in Schmidt v. City of Norfolk Va.) cautioned that the constitutional analysis could change as ALPR technology expands. He wrote that:
      1. "ALPR surveillance could become too intrusive and run afoul of [constitutional privacy standards] at some point," but concluded that "at least in Norfolk, Virginia, the answer is: not today."
      2. ..even though he’d committed to fighting against what he is describing as "dragnet warrantless surveillance."
        1. A study of ALPRs in Piedmont, CA, found that less than 0.3% of ALPR hits might translate into a useful investigative lead. Most license plates recorded were not on a hot list, yet police still logged information on people's movements throughout the day.
  5. Scale and the reasonableness analysis
    1. In Broome County we have over 100 cameras (reported on).
    2. Our local police do not have a public records
    3. 6000+ Cities use ALPRs. 2,000 Plates scanned per minute. 1000s of vehicles tracked per city.
  1. Virginia became one of the first states to enact statewide ALPR regulation on July 1st, 2025
  2. Overview of Virginia’s 2025 ALPR law
    1. Law enforcement agencies in Virginia may only use ALPR for
      1. criminal investigations
      2. active investigations into missing or endangered persons or human trafficking
      3. search inquiries related to missing or endangered persons, outstanding warrants, human trafficking, stolen vehicles, or stolen license plates
    2. Law requires ALPR data to be purged after 21 days unless needed for an ongoing investigation, prosecution, or civil action
    3. Law restricts data sharing to other Virginia law enforcement, Commonwealth's Attorneys, criminal defendants or their counsel, ALPR vendors, or pursuant to a court order
    4. Law does not permit data sharing with out-of-state or federal law enforcement
  3. Compliance findings from the Virginia State Crime Commission
    1. In Jan 2026, they published findings of a statewide survey of all 361 Va LE agencies on their use of ALPRs. Click the link to look at the data on how agencies were not complying with the new statutory requirements.
  4. Data sharing concerns
    1. Before the new law, federal agencies had attempted to access local Virginia ALPR data thousands of times for immigration enforcement purposes, and one small town's Flock network data had been searched nearly 7 million times by outside agencies in a single year.
    2. Since the new law took effect, at least two Virginia localities, Charlottesville and Staunton, subsequently ended their use of Flock Safety cameras, citing concerns about federal data sharing.
  1. Flock has now hired several public officials who hold/held influence over the procurement of the company’s products
    1. Cleveland OH: former council majority leader joins Flock
      1. Kerry McCormack left office in early Oct 2025. He joined Flock Safety immediately afterward as public affairs lead for the eastern United States
      2. In late Oct 2025, an Emergency Ordinance was implemented authorizing the Director of Public Safety to enter into contract with Flock Group
    2. Moreno Valley CA: Flock hired a sitting mayor
      1. Ulises Cabrera had previously voted as mayor to fund a citywide Flock camera system in Moreno Valley before taking a job at Flock for $100k-140k plus stock options
      2. During his time at Flock, Cabrera gave presentations promoting the company's technology at city council meetings in at least two other jurisdictions: Whitewater, Kansas and Mammoth Lakes, California
  2. False positives and system failures
    1. Oct 2025: AI-powered gun detection systems misidentified a student’s snack food as a firearm. 8 cop cars went to the school, and the high schooler was forced to his knees, handcuffed, and searched
    2. Nov 2018: ALPR incorrectly flagged a Brian Hofer’s vehicle as stolen, triggering an armed police response
    3. Sept 2023: Jason Killinger wrongfully arrested based on a facial recognition alert identifying him as a man who had been issued a six-month trespass ban for sleeping on the premises. The AI system indicated a “100% match” in spite of large physical differences between the two men
  3. Common ALPR error mechanisms
    1. These incidents illustrate how ALPR systems generate misidentifications through multiple mechanisms:
      1. Plate misreads: OCR (optical character recognition) errors confuse similar characters (O/0, I/1, B/8, 2/7), causing the system to flag vehicles that match stolen vehicle databases or warrant lists.
      2. Cross-state confusion: Systems incorrectly match vehicles from different states or confuse vehicle types (such as matching car plates to motorcycle registrations).
      3. Cloned plates: Criminals using stolen or duplicated license plates create false associations between innocent vehicles and criminal activity.
      4. Stale data: Vehicles recovered from theft or resolved warrant cases remain in hot lists, triggering alerts on lawful owners.
  1. The following documented cases show that law enforcement officers have misused ALPR systems to track individuals for personal purposes.
    1. Oct 2025: Menasha Police Officer Cristian Morales used Flock data to conduct five unauthorized searches of his ex-girlfriend’s vehicle
    2. Oct 2022: Kechi Police Lieutenant Victor Heiar was arrested on charges of stalking and unlawful acts concerning computers after using Flock cameras to monitor his estranged wife’s movements over several months
    3. 2024: Sedwgwick Police Chief Lee Nygaard admitted to using Flock data 164 times to track his ex-girlfriend and her new partner
    4. Dec 2023: Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Officer Christopher Young was arrest for stalking his ex-fiance using police databses
The PEEPS Act offers a balanced framework for legislators who want to ensure that law enforcement has the tools it needs to fight crime while preserving Fourth Amendment protections for the public.
🗝️Key provisions include:
  1. Requiring law enforcement to obtain a warrant before accessing an individual’s historical location information, unless an emergency makes it impractical to do so
  2. Restricting the conveyance of historical location information to third parties
  3. Ensuring a record is created every time historical location information is accessed
  4. Mandating training for law enforcement officials who access historical location information
The PEEPS Act provides necessary protections of Fourth Amendment rights and ensures that surveillance technology is being used responsibly.


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