Surveillance technology company Flock Safety has introduced new policies and tools designed to reduce misuse of its automated license plate reader systems and increase accountability among law enforcement customers.
The changes include shorter data retention periods, stricter rules for sharing information and a monitoring tool called Audit Assistance. However, Flock has provided limited information about how the system actually identifies suspicious activity.
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New Rules For Data Retention
Flock is now recommending that police departments retain license plate data for seven days, down from 30 days. For exceptional cases requiring longer retention, customers can use “Evidence Mode,” which requires a specific case number.
Departments will also be able to restrict data sharing with other Flock customers based on the type of offense being investigated. The company announced these measures alongside its new privacy and transparency policies.
How Audit Assistance Works
Flock introduced Audit Assistance in April and said more than one-third of its customers have activated it. The company now plans to require all customers to enable the tool by the end of the year. According to Flock, Audit Assistance can detect unusual search patterns and flag them for administrator review. Users may also be automatically locked out until an administrator investigates the activity.
Company executives have offered some examples of what the system can identify. Flock’s head of trust and compliance Ashley Haber said it can flag an unusual search history, while co-founder Paige Todd pointed to cases where a user repeatedly searches for the same license plate over an extended period.
Flock describes the feature as a tool that can “surface atypical activity early” and provide a documented process for reviewing it. The company says it is not based on machine learning or AI, but instead analyzes search patterns. One example that could trigger a flag is searching for the same license plate under multiple case codes, which could indicate potential misuse.
However, a flag does not necessarily mean abuse occurred. It simply indicates that further investigation may be warranted.
Questions About Effectiveness Remain
Flock has not disclosed detailed information about the system’s effectiveness, including its false-positive and false-negative rates or whether an independent organization has audited it.
That lack of transparency has drawn criticism from privacy advocates. Chad Marlow, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, argued that there is not enough evidence to determine how consistently the tool detects abuse. He said independent testing would be necessary to establish whether it is a meaningful security measure or merely “window dressing.”
Cooper Quintin, a security researcher at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, also questioned whether the tool alone can prevent misuse. In his view, accountability ultimately depends on whether officers who abuse the technology face meaningful consequences.
Rachel Levinson-Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice described mandatory use of Audit Assistance as a positive step, but said the system itself should be independently audited because too little is known about how it performs in practice.
Flock Faces Continued Scrutiny
The announcement comes after years of reports involving law enforcement officers allegedly misusing Flock’s technology. Earlier this week, three former Georgia sheriff’s deputies were arrested over allegations that they used Flock cameras to monitor people with whom they had personal relationships.
The Bibb County Sheriff’s Office said Flock’s new Audit Assistance tool helped uncover the alleged misuse, giving the company an example of the technology working as intended.
Still, questions remain over how reliably the system can detect abuse and whether law enforcement agencies will be able to hold users accountable when violations occur.
