Flock adds safeguards to licence-plate readers after wave of stalking cases

Flock Safety, a company providing law enforcement with license plate scanning cameras, is implementing new mandatory safety features following reports of system abuse. CEO Garrett Langley announced that law enforcement agencies must enable an "Audit Assistance" feature by year-end, which flags abnormal officer activity for review, and will face automatic suspension if flagged behavior occurs. Additionally, agencies can now restrict data sharing with other jurisdictions to specific offenses, addressing concerns about targeting immigrants or those seeking abortions. Flock is also reducing the default data retention period to seven days. These changes aim to curb misuse, including stalking and unauthorized surveillance, though privacy experts question their effectiveness.

Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company, has announced platform changes in response to public backlash and concerns over privacy and documented abuses by law enforcement. The company, a major provider of automated license plate readers, will implement mandatory audit tools to flag abnormal search behavior, shorten data retention from 30 to seven days, and require law enforcement users to link searches to specific case numbers. Customers will also gain the ability to restrict data searches by outside agencies for certain offense types, such as immigration enforcement. Critics argue these changes are insufficient and do not address fundamental issues of warrantless searches. Despite these changes, over 50 agencies have recently ended contracts with Flock due to privacy concerns.