In Washington State, at least seven police departments and one sheriff’s office had granted access to the U.S. Border Patrol to their license plate reader networks in 2025, according to an analysis by the University of Washington. An audit by the city of Columbus, Ohio, found that its Flock data had been searched more than 15,000 times for potential immigration-related purposes since 2024.
Several law enforcement officers have been disciplined for misusing data from Flock’s cameras, including an officer in Milwaukee who was criminally charged after using camera data to track someone he was dating and the person’s ex.
Flock has sought to assuage the concerns of its customers by introducing so-called transparency portals that allow its clients to share audit data from the system with the public, said Torin Monahan, co-editor-in-chief of Surveillance and Society, an academic journal, and a professor in the department of communication at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
“So they implemented a number of changes, like having more controls over who has access to data, and also an audit assist log to help police departments flag or determine quicker if someone is abusing the system, for instance, by stalking their romantic partners when, obviously, they shouldn’t be using the system in those ways,” Professor Monahan said.