Flock Admits It Doesn't Verify Officer Case Numbers
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- Flock operates a network of roughly 120,000 automatic license plate readers across the US and announced platform changes last Thursday aimed at curbing officer misuse
- The Washington Post identified 50 cases in which officers misused Flock and competitor systems to stalk and harass women, including a Wisconsin officer who searched an ex's car 179 times
- Flock's new safeguards require officers to enter a criminal case number before searching, but the company confirmed to MIT Technology Review it does not verify those numbers, allowing bogus entries
- Civil liberties backlash has prompted some cities to cancel Flock contracts and some states to pursue laws limiting or banning license plate readers entirely
- Flock states that 90% of searches happen within a week of an incident, yet agencies can retain data for months or years; the company recently lowered its recommended retention to seven days
- ACLU senior policy counsel Chad Marlow said the most acceptable Flock contract is "one that is never signed," while Flock CEO Garrett Langley said he will "probably always have a different view than the ACLU"
- Flock's $8 billion valuation rests on aggregating and sharing camera data across jurisdictions, a model the article argues would be undercut if searches were truly narrowed to emergencies like Amber Alerts
Why it matters: Flock's 120,000-camera network is the largest license plate reader system in the US, and its $8 billion valuation depends on cross-jurisdictional data sharing. Cities canceling contracts and states pursuing bans threaten to force the company to choose between narrower safeguards and its core business model of mass data aggregation.
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