As Public Opposition to Flock Grows, ACLU Responds to Surveillance Company’s “New” Updates

NEW YORK – Amid nationwide outcry against its automatic license plate readers, Flock Safety announced today that it will reduce its standard data retention policy and allegedly provide more control over local data searches, among other changes. However, according to American Civil Liberties Union’s new analysis, many of the proposed changes seem to be a thinly veiled PR attempt to counter communities’ genuine privacy concerns with its mass surveillance system with largely hollow security promises, rather than an earnest effort to address them. While the ACLU acknowledges one potentially positive development, most of the proposed changes stand little chance of making a positive difference for civil liberties.

“Transforming an exceptionally dangerous mass surveillance system into one that is fully protective of civil rights and civil liberties is a difficult, if not impossible task. That is even more the case with a company like Flock, whose nearly $1 billion in venture capitalist funding has locked it into an operational model that seeks to trade our privacy for massive profits,” said Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel at ACLU. “Given that Flock’s latest announcement still appears more focused on addressing a PR problem than the significant privacy and other harms its products create, we will continue to analyze the company’s proposals fairly and honestly. We just won’t be holding our breath.”

Flock operates more than 120,000 automatic license plate readers in at least 6,000 cities across the country, raising serious concerns around mass surveillance, data privacy, and how police and the government can use this data to go after immigrants, protestors, and others. Just this week, the Institute for Justice published a database with more than 100 incidents of ALPR abuse, including romantic stalking, wrongful stops and detentions, non-law enforcement use, and other types of misconduct.

One of the changes announced is that Flock will decrease its standard data retention option to one week from 30 days. This seems positive at first blush, but as the ACLU’s breakdown explains, the devil will be in the details. For example, an exception to the data retention policy is something called “Evidence Mode, which is “when a search is tied to a case number, that data is preserved instead of aging out after 7 days.” As the ACLU notes, “If ‘Evidence Mode’ only retains hit result data that police determine may be evidence in an active investigation of a specific case, then the change may be a positive one. But if Evidence Mode triggers the retention of any ALPR data that is searched, then the new mode could indefinitely retain all the ALPR data Flock collects and shares nationally.”

Another “change” the company is implementing is that local police will be able to decide what types of offenses other Flock customers can search their data for. The ACLU contends that this is not new. Flock has attempted this before, and the security measure failed because police were easily able to circumvent the system’s requirement that they input the purpose of their search.

Finally, Flock announced that in response to the reports of police abuse, they will now require reasons for a search, and that they plan to universally roll out its audit assistance tool to detect police misuse. Flock’s announcement fails to note how easily users have circumvented “search reason” security measures in the past or how its new policy improves the quality of the feature. And while providing “Audit Assistance” to all departments makes sense, the ACLU notes that there is no evidence that the tool works consistently to address what the Washington Post observed is a growing pattern of police officers turning Flock into a personal stalking tool. To determine the efficacy of this tool, Flock needs to have it analyzed by an independent evaluator. Until then, the ACLU says, “we don’t know if the tool is a real security measure or just window dressing.”

Dozens of communities across the country have successfully convinced their leaders to cancel Flock contracts, suspend their ALPR programs, or deactivate the cameras, with many more cities considering new legislation to rein in this mass warrantless surveillance tech. In June, the ACLU launched its “Get the Flock Out” campaign to bring together the litigation, advocacy, and legislative efforts of ACLU affiliates in each state, show how communities across the country are fighting back against the spread of Flock and other license plate readers, and lay out how lawmakers at the local, state, and federal level can best protect our rights.