EFF Report: Flock Cameras Used to Surveil Protesters, Activists, and Minority Groups

The Electronic Frontier Foundation released a comprehensive investigation in December 2025 documenting what it described as a troubling pattern of Flock Safety surveillance being used against political protesters, activists, and minority communities.

The report, titled "How Cops Are Using Flock Safety's ALPR Network to Surveil Protesters and Activists," drew on FOIA documents, audit logs, and interviews with law enforcement officials across 12 states.

Key findings included:

Surveillance of animal rights organizations: Multiple law enforcement agencies used Flock Safety's nationwide lookup tool to track vehicles associated with animal rights advocates, including those participating in legal protests outside factory farms and research facilities. No criminal charges resulted from any of the surveillance reviewed.

Racially discriminatory searches: Audit logs obtained through FOIA requests showed officers in several jurisdictions conducting searches using terms that the EFF said amounted to racial profiling, including searches filtered by vehicle type and color combinations "associated with" specific communities in internal guidance documents.

Activist tracking at protests: Plate scans collected during Black Lives Matter demonstrations in 2023 and 2024 were accessed years later during unrelated investigations, raising concerns about how long-term data retention enables retroactive surveillance of political activity.

Data retention beyond policy limits: Several agencies were found to have retained ALPR data longer than their own written policies allowed, with some systems holding records going back five or more years despite stated 30-day retention policies.

Flock Safety pushed back strongly on the report's framing, arguing that its system captures point-in-time reads and does not track individuals over time. The company noted that all access is logged and auditable, and that the documented misuse represents individual officers violating their agency's policies rather than systemic design failures.

The EFF called for federal legislation establishing minimum privacy standards for ALPR data, including mandatory data retention limits, warrants for certain categories of queries, and independent audit oversight.