Flock ALPR privacy changes have put a one-week clock on the company’s default retention of license-plate-reader data, but they have not settled the larger argument over who can search a national record of where vehicles have been. According to the ACLU, Flock Safety announced the change after growing criticism of its surveillance system and public opposition to local deployments.
The ACLU says Flock will cut its standard retention period from one month to one week. The company also plans an “Evidence Mode” that preserves data tied to a case number instead of allowing it to expire after seven days. Flock said roughly 90 percent of searches already occur within a week, according to the ACLU’s account of the announcement. Agencies can still set retention periods required by state or local policy.
That exception is doing a lot of work. The ACLU says the practical privacy effect depends on what Evidence Mode preserves and when it can be invoked. It also disputes whether Flock’s proposed local controls over allowed search purposes and its expanded audit-assistance tool will prevent misuse. Those are advocacy assessments, but they identify the policy questions cities are now being asked to answer rather than outsource to a vendor dashboard.
What do Flock ALPR cameras collect and how are they searched?
Automatic license plate readers photograph vehicles that pass their cameras. The resulting records can include a plate number, vehicle make, model, color and other distinguishing details, paired with a time and location. Flock and similar systems place those records in searchable databases that law-enforcement agencies can use to look for a vehicle’s movements.
The Verge reported that Flock has more than 120,000 cameras across the United States, citing a company-linked figure. The scale matters because a local camera contract can feed a system used beyond the jurisdiction that bought the hardware. The Electronic Frontier Foundation says Flock encourages agencies to share data broadly and that searches can span thousands of networks.
EFF’s public-records analysis covered more than 12 million Flock searches logged by over 3,900 agencies from December 2024 through October 2025. EFF found that more than 50 federal, state and local agencies performed hundreds of searches connected to protest activity. It said Tulsa police logged at least 38 such searches, while agencies also ran searches corresponding with 2025 No Kings demonstrations.
EFF cautioned that some searches around protests may have concerned actual crimes. Still, it said officers in most of the cases it examined did not state a criminal offense in the system’s search-reason field. EFF and other civil-liberties organizations argue that searches of ALPR databases should require warrants, which is a proposed policy, not the current nationwide rule.
Why does the dispute extend beyond Flock?
Local resistance has produced real contract decisions: The Verge reported that dozens of communities have canceled contracts or turned cameras off, including Los Angeles, which temporarily suspended use of Flock readers. But a cancellation does not automatically regulate the underlying practice of vehicle-location collection, retention and interagency access.
The ACLU identifies Axon, Motorola Solutions subsidiary Vigilant Solutions, Genetec, PlateSmart, Innova Systems, Rekor, ELSAG, Perceptics and Jenoptik among companies selling ALPR systems. Its position is that rules should cover the industry rather than one brand. The live questions are comparatively mundane and consequential: how long records persist, whether preservation must be tied to a defined case, which agencies can search them, what reasons qualify, and whether audits are independently tested instead of merely promised.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.
