Flock's anti-stalking safeguards leave big loopholes for police abuse

Flock, the police-surveillance company operating some 120,000 automatic license plate readers across the US, announced policy changes last Thursday aimed at preventing officers from misusing its platform for illegal purposes like stalking. The Washington Post recently identified 50 cases of officers abusing Flock and competitor systems to stalk women—one Wisconsin officer allegedly searched for his ex-girlfriend's car 179 times. Flock's response includes requiring officers to enter a criminal case number for each search and using software to flag abnormal search patterns, but MIT Technology Review confirmed that Flock does not verify those case numbers, meaning officers can enter bogus ones exactly as they've bypassed previous safeguards.

The reforms don't address broader civil-liberties criticisms that Flock is building a mass surveillance network, not just a crime-solving tool. A growing backlash has cities canceling contracts and states considering bans on license plate readers. Defenders argue the cameras help catch kidnappers and are mostly harmless, but the article argues Flock's design decisions—what data to collect, who can search it, retention policies, and nationwide data sharing—set the terms of a bargain between security and civil liberties without public input. Flock could narrow its surveillance: verifying case numbers against police records, limiting cross-jurisdiction searches to Amber Alerts, or reducing data retention to its own recommended seven days, since 90% of searches happen within a week. The ACLU's Chad Marlow argues the real fix isn't Flock's guidelines but new laws.