Overview
- Alameda County supervisors postponed a vote on renewing a Flock Safety license-plate reader contract to April 21 after extensive public comment raised privacy and data-access concerns.
- Audit logs reported by The Guardian and The 74 show more than 3,000 agencies ran over 733,000 searches on Alvin Independent School District cameras from December to early January, with 620 searches citing immigration-related reasons.
- Huffman Independent School District granted Customs and Border Protection access to its Flock cameras in May, and procurement records indicate installations at over 100 public schools nationwide.
- Flock Safety says it does not work directly with DHS or ICE, asserts customers own and control data sharing, and says it disabled a national lookup feature for California agencies last year.
- California law bars sharing publicly funded ALPR data with the federal government, while local actions range from Mountain View shutting off its Flock cameras to Alameda County weighing sheriff-backed claims that the system helps solve crimes.