Flock Safety mandates new audit and data-retention rules for police license-plate scanners

Flock Safety announced on Thursday that it will require all law-enforcement customers to activate its Audit Assistance tool and to limit the default retention period for license-plate scans to seven days. The changes come after investigations revealed that more than 50 officers had been accused of misusing the company’s camera system, including stalking ex-partners and targeting immigrants or individuals seeking abortions in other states.

The company said the mandatory activation of Audit Assistance, which flags "abnormal activity" for administrative review, will apply to all customers – including police departments, retailers, universities and homeowner associations – by the end of the year. When a scan is flagged, the user will be automatically suspended pending a review, though the company did not define the criteria for "abnormal" behavior.

Under the new policy, agencies will also be able to restrict the data they share with other jurisdictions to specific investigations such as stolen-vehicle or missing-person cases, rather than providing unrestricted access to all license-plate scans.

"These changes reflect years of work and deliberation," CEO Garrett Langley wrote in a blog post. "They are not the end of that work, but simply the continuation of our commitment to both safety and privacy."

Privacy advocates expressed doubt that the measures will be sufficient. Chris Gilliard, author of Luxury Surveillance, said, "I don’t think there’s such a thing as ‘mass surveillance, but with guardrails’. Ultimately, networked cameras sprinkled across the country are incompatible with a free society."

Legal commentator Robert Frommer, senior attorney at the Institute of Justice, described the updates as superficial, adding, "This is yet more window dressing. Flock suggests that police departments limit their retention periods to seven days, while admitting that decision is still entirely up to the police departments themselves."

The revisions follow earlier reports that some California police departments shared license-plate data with states that have banned abortions, potentially violating state data-sharing laws. More than 80 cities have already ended or are reviewing contracts with Flock amid growing public opposition.