Surveillance company Flock moves to increase oversight after police misuse

What This is

• Flock Safety says it will tighten controls on its license-plate camera system after reports that some police officers misused the platform to improperly track people and access vehicle location data.
• Flock said it will cut the default storage time for license-plate data from 30 to 7 days; require officers to link searches to a case number to better document why a search happened; and expand automated auditing.
• Flock says it is turning safeguards that were sometimes optional into mandatory platform features for departments.
• Some departments can set limits on which outside agencies are allowed to query their local Flock data.
• Investigations and reporting have described police misuse of plate-reader data, including unauthorized tracking and stalking, and some cases led to discipline or criminal charges.

Why This Matters

• The debate is about how much tracking power police should have without a warrant or clear limits.
• Even short-term plate data can reveal routines and relationships when it is searchable and shared across agencies.
• Automated auditing and retention rules shift real accountability from local policy to the software vendor’s design choices.
• If alerts are wrong, the costs land on drivers through stops, questioning, and lost trust in police tools.