Overview
- This week Flock reduced its default data retention from 30 days to seven days and introduced an Evidence Mode that lets investigators lock specific license-plate hits for active cases.
- The company also said it will require all law enforcement customers to adopt stronger audit tools by year-end and added proactive lockouts that suspend user access when searches trigger abnormal behavior.
- Flock runs roughly 120,000 automated license-plate readers nationwide and shares time-stamped plate images and vehicle details with thousands of police and private customers into a central, searchable database.
- Independent audits and reporting, including a Roseville police review, documented high misread rates and cases of officers using searches for personal reasons, prompting internal probes and at least one arrest.
- More than fifty municipalities have paused or ended contracts and activists have compiled FOIA audit logs into public tools like 'Have I Been Flocked', keeping prosecutors and state lawmakers focused on transparency and access rules.