Since this summer, at least 10 local governments and police departments have taken action to restrict, limit, or terminate the use of Flock Safety technology, due to growing concerns from the public about mass surveillance and data privacy. This backlash is also part of a broader resistance to the rapid proliferation of advanced AI technologies, which includes data center construction, facial recognition, and other AI applications.

Flock was established in 2017 and sells monitoring software such as license plate readers, drones, as well as edge computing devices based on microphones for capturing gunshots and other sounds. These tools can assist in solving crimes, for example, in searching for missing persons or stolen vehicles. There are over 100,000 Flock cameras in use across the United States.

However, in the past three months, cities such as Monroe in Ohio, Newburgh in New York, Richmond in Virginia, Hopkinton in Massachusetts, New Bedford in Massachusetts, and Lansing in Michigan have all taken action to terminate their contracts with Flock. At the same time, the police departments in East Bridgewater and Grafton in Massachusetts have also announced their plans to stop using Flock cameras. Just this week, residents of Lige City in Texas voted against the local police department's continued use of Flock license plate readers, and these cameras will now be removed.

Concerns include privacy, how data is shared and with whom it is shared, as well as concerns regarding procurement.

In Asheville, North Carolina, the police lost access to Flock after the city voted to terminate the contract in August; in El Paso County, Colorado, the sheriff's office announced in September that it would stop using Flock cameras. When asked for comments, the El Paso County Sheriff's Office referred to a press release, in which Sheriff Joseph Roybal stated that stopping the use of Flock was the correct decision for the county.

He said, "We have the tools, training, and experience to locate and arrest criminals without relying on Flock cameras."

The senior executive in charge of U.S. legislative affairs at the Future Privacy Forum (The Future of Privacy Forum) told TechCrunch that the backlash against Flock was not surprising, as it further reflects "the public's growing skepticism towards technology." Rice stated that Flock has become a target because people can see these sensors and cameras while driving on the road; data centers have also become a tangible symbol of people's dissatisfaction with emerging technologies. "A camera at the end of the street is more perceptible than the daily sharing and selling of personal data online," Rice said.

At the state level, this summer Florida prohibited the use of license plate readers on its state highways, while Texas suspended state-level funding support for Flock. Related issues also include concerns about data privacy and potential abuses of technology.

Abuse has indeed become a real issue. For example, in August, a police officer in Brentwood, Missouri, was accused of using Flock cameras to track his ex-wife during the divorce period. In September, a police officer in eastern Texas was sentenced to jail for using Flock to track his ex-girlfriend and her family.

Another growing concern is how immigration enforcement officers will be able to access this technology. A case that illustrates this issue occurred in March of this year, when Ithaca, New York, passed a resolution to terminate its contract with Flock Group.

In that resolution, the City of Ithaca stated that there were "confirmed cases where federal agents used the Flock Safety infrastructure for the purpose of information gathering, even without explicit authorization from the location of the contract," and claimed that the city had reviewed relevant reports and found that Flock "either intentionally or through negligence" allowed the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) to "use the query results from their state and local automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) databases to investigate and persecute immigrants across the United States."

In a statement, Flock told TechCrunch: "Police departments across the country use Flock technology every day to solve serious crimes, locate suspects, search for missing persons, and it has a measurable impact on public safety. While we respect the decisions of each community, removing a tool that is actively helping to combat violent crime and protect communities would be a step backward for public safety. Every Flock customer owns their own data and controls who shares it with and how it is used. Flock does not sell data, nor has it signed any contracts with ICE."

In August this year, Flock announced that it would reduce the default storage period for new customer data from 30 days to 7 days. The company also stated that institutions must now enter a case code before searching the database.

The discussions surrounding Flock resonate in many ways with the disputes over data centers. Adam Schwartz of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ( Electronic Frontier Foundation ), a digital privacy non-profit organization, told TechCrunch that many cities only started adopting Flock just a few years ago, and residents are likely unaware that it has been installed. The organization has previously conducted investigations into Flock.

Schwartz said that this lack of transparency is similar to the way data centers have sprung up across the country, often being implemented before residents even understand what's going on. He mentioned that police departments usually decide on their own to use Flock, with almost no oversight from city councils. According to local reports, in South Windsor, Connecticut, Flock cameras were put into use last year without any public notification or voting. In October, the town voted to remove these cameras.

Schwartz said, 'Activists at the grassroots level across the country have been demanding that city councils exercise their purchasing power and refuse to pay for ALPR.' He referred to the power of city councils to decide what the city purchases. He added that activists have been fighting for many years, and that 'many city councils are now listening.'

The main reason for supporting technologies like Flock is that they help to combat crime and ensure community safety. Moreover, not all local governments are abandoning Flock or similar technologies; on the contrary, some places are restricting their use or seeking alternative solutions.

For example, this summer in Cleveland, Ohio, voters voted to extend the contract with Flock, but restrictions on immigration-related searches have already been implemented. The city has also limited database access to only the Cleveland police force, cutting off access to the Northeast Ohio Integration Center, an organization that is essentially a federal intelligence agency.

When asked for a comment, the city stated: "These tools are used for investigative purposes and are necessary. The Department of Public Safety is currently reviewing the responses to tender requests (RFP) sent to other suppliers that provide similar technology to Flock."

But just like with data centers, the community hopes to have more say in these decisions. Rice said, "These tools can bring real public safety benefits, but the community clearly wants to ensure that these benefits are not achieved at the cost of civil liberties." She also stated that surveillance technology is likely to remain a political hot topic, especially now that Democrats control Congress.

In September, President Donald Trump stated that he liked the technology of Flock, "because of law enforcement," despite a Reuters poll in the same month finding that more Americans did not like this technology than those who did.

In the same month, Republican Representative Thomas Massie from Kentucky introduced a bill known as the "Flock-Off Act," which aims to prohibit the use of federal funds to purchase "Flock style surveillance" and to establish other protective measures. In October, Senator Bernie Sanders (independent from Vermont), Representatives Alexandria Ocasio - Cortez (from the Democratic Party of New York), and Senator Jeff Merkley (from the Democratic Party of Oregon) proposed the "Ban Flock Act" to put an end to the "rise of AI driven surveillance cameras."