Opinion: Flock surveillance system is a risk for civil rights

By News Editor Cham Yu, Sports Editor Veer Mahajan, & Web Editor Scarlett Huang

Introduction

Like many cities nationwide, Fremont’s streets and intersections have become littered with license plate-reading traffic cameras in recent years. These cameras — provided by the company Flock Safety — are primarily used by local jurisdictions to track license plates and vehicle characteristics for law enforcement.

Yet the system has been criticized for its large-scale surveillance capacity, generating online criticism from high profile platforms like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and bipartisan local pushback across the country. Flock uses AI — a technology prone to error — to track vehicles, which has resulted in faulty accusations and arrests. These systems are intended to decrease crime by providing a stream of detailed, easily searchable vehicle information to police officers. However, these raise ethical concerns regarding privacy, and while the system certainly carries efficiency improvements, local governments that implement Flock must grapple with its repercussions. Entrusting law enforcement with large-scale data collection  decreases citizen confidence in police departments. The analysis with error-prone AI as a basis of arrest, made possible by Flock cameras, ultimately creates privacy risks that may violate citizens’ civil rights. 

Pervasiveness of Flock

Flock has emerged as a widespread tool not only in the Bay Area, but throughout the country — and abuse has proliferated as well. There are upwards of 100,000 Flock cameras across the 49 of the 50 US states. Fremont is no stranger to the trend. The city has been collaborating with the company at an ever-increasing rate; in April 2026, Alameda County approved a $2.45 million investment into more Flock cameras and resources, including the software Nova, which allows for real-time data collection with the ability to record plate numbers, track movements, and create heat maps, all in addition to the more than 300 already present Flock cameras. However, Nova’s centralization of data makes it easier for malicious actors to gain access to sensitive data, a concern that has already materialized in police departments around the country. 

In San Francisco, a recent data breach occurred when the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center accessed data from San Francisco’s Flock system without full disclosure. Data breaches such as this are a substantial encroachment upon citizens’ right to privacy due to the Flock system’s security vulnerabilities.

Abuse of Data

The massive amounts of data stored in Flock systems create opportunities for abuse and exploitation. Few safety measures exist to prevent illegal data usage, and existing implementations of Flock have already violated these laws. In Georgia in August, the Savannah Police Department dismissed six employees found to have been using Flock camera-provided data for personal uses, sharing access to the data with external organizations, and tracking personal, allegedly romantic acquaintances. The alarming thing here is that Flock and law enforcement agencies took no action to prevent these activities from occurring; these officers were caught only in post-facto checks, highlighting a severe lack of necessary and significant guardrails — such as restrictions to only subpoenas or warrants — against the access of information. 

Illegal circulation is also common, especially with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Flock was found to have furnished ICE with information that helped it identify immigrants — regardless of citizenship status. Whether intentionally shared by Flock or not, the point remains that Flock in its current state makes it far too simple for the data to be misused, both at an individual scale and a larger, organized level. Immigrants are not the only targets, either; the Electric Frontier Foundation found that in Texas and other states with anti-abortion laws, pregnant women attempting to cross state lines for abortions were tracked by officers using Flock-provided data. In Johnson County, Texas, the sheriff’s office was found to have searched through 83,000 of Flock’s collected records with the reason “had an abortion, search for female.” The risks for misuse extend to racial discrimination. In 2025, hundreds of Flock searches were made for words like “gypsy” or “roma” — such as specifically “gypsy vehicle,” or “possible gypsy,” or “roma traveler” — by operators. The discriminatory practice is enabled by Flock’s data centralization, demonstrating how indirectly supporting centuries-old discrimination against the Romani people. As of now, the ability for any given individual to perform mass targeted searches threatens various freedoms — including expression and speech, which adheres to all American citizens. The subjective nature of these searches, coupled with the consistent monitoring of every person in range of Flock technology makes it so each person is at risk of being targeted on a whim. Such casual violation of constitutional rights going unrecognized affects the foundation of America’s democracy.

Often, issues that are associated with Flock are due to negligence and a lack of due diligence by law enforcement agencies, rather than flaws within Flock itself; Flock stores electronic records of every search made, with user information and stated reasons for the search provided, but the onus lies on enforcement agencies to actually use this information, which they often fail to effectively do. Furthermore, Flock has started offering the Flock Safety Audit Assist since April 2026, which flags irregularities and suspicious behaviors on the enforcement end, and is also planning further improvements. Yet the existence of security breaches — like in the case in Savannah — demonstrates that existing safeguards are not enough to fully prevent discriminatory data targeting, as well as unauthorized data access. The lack of real failsafes for data breaches, and the continued expansion of the software for financial gain, must be addressed by heightened preventative measures against abuse. 

Conclusion

In its current configuration, the presence of Flock cameras augments the ability of cybercriminals to misuse information collected. This opens opportunities for violations of  citizens’ civil rights, despite the intended purpose of increasing safety. Consequently, the continued implementation of Flock cameras must address key concerns about the information security and privacy and include greater guardrails — or be stopped entirely. Citizens everywhere should stand up for their rights, and recognize that Flock technology in their current state is a mass surveillance tool that infringes on the privacy and safety of citizens everywhere.