The camera on your road is not the product.

Texas: most cameras are owned by HOAs, MUDs and retailers — not the government

Reporting on Texas removal efforts found that most Flock cameras in the region are not owned by counties or police at all: municipal utility districts, neighborhood associations, retail stores and homeowners associations buy their own systems and choose whether to share footage with law enforcement — which is why local governments cannot simply remove them. Guadalupe County, Hood County, Bandera, Lago Vista, Magnolia, Austin and San Marcos have removed cameras; Conroe is pushing a November ballot measure and League City's mayor floated the same. Harris County renewed through June 2027 at roughly $869,000; Dallas runs 650 cameras and plans a one-year retention; Texas DPS approved a $26 million contract; East Aldine's package runs five years at nearly $1 million.

Public safety and privacy are not mutually exclusive.

— Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis

Source · KPRC/Houston Public Media · read it

Reporting says the 2026 contract terms grant a data licence that survives termination

Reporting on Texas jurisdictions trying to exit Flock states that the company changed its contract language in 2026 in ways that make exits harder, and that the terms grant Flock a perpetual right to use customer data even after a government has terminated its relationship.

That kind of permanent, warrantless tracking doesn't belong in a free society.

— Hood County Constable John Shirley

The other side Flock has said publicly that it does not own and does not sell customer data.

Source · Houston Public Media / KPRC · read it

National Park Service is deploying Flock; rangers object

404 Media reported Flock cameras inside Yosemite and on an access road at Golden Gate NRA, with an internal NPS document also showing planned Verkada installations. Rangers objected on the record. NPS said the system monitors vehicle counts, travel times and wait times and said the cameras are "not connected to law enforcement or DMV databases."

I just think that every American should be free to visit our national parks without their location being traced and tracked by the federal government.

— A ranger

The other side The Park Service said the system monitors vehicle counts, travel times and wait times, and that the cameras are not connected to law enforcement or DMV databases.

Source · 404 Media · read it

EFF's response: the reforms don't reach the underlying problem

EFF characterized Flock's changes as a mix of overdue fixes and cosmetic ones, arguing the retention and audit changes leave the fundamental architecture untouched and that a warrant requirement is the minimum needed.

The reforms are a combination of long overdue changes along with some cosmetic fixes that fail to address the fundamental dangers of this technology.

— Electronic Frontier Foundation

The other side This is an advocacy organisation's assessment, published in response to the company's announcement.

Source · EFF · read it

Flock's resulting policy changes

After a Washington Post investigation identified 46 cases of officers accused of misusing the network to stalk or harass romantic partners, Flock announced: mandatory case numbers before searches (previously optional), automatic auditing to flag suspicious activity, a recommended default retention of 7 days instead of 30, and an option for agencies to restrict other agencies' access by stated purpose. In mid-2025 Flock had also added filters flagging immigration- and abortion-related searches and paused federal pilot programs.

In America, you only get to investigate someone if you think they've done something wrong.

— ACLU's Chad Marlow

The other side Flock's CEO attributes customer losses to misinformation. The ACLU says officers had evaded earlier safeguards by entering generic search reasons.

Source · MIT Technology Review · read it

Flock's August 2026 policy changes — what actually changed

Following the Washington Post investigation, Flock made four changes: audit assistance flagging unusual search patterns became mandatory rather than optional, with automatic lockout of flagged users pending review; all searches must be tied to a case code linked to a criminal investigation by year-end (emergency searches bypass but auto-flag); the default retention recommendation dropped from 30 days to 7 days, which agencies can override; and agencies can restrict how other jurisdictions query their cameras by offense type.

We built a tool about four months ago to automatically flag potentially abusive behavior...we are now requiring all of law enforcement to use this.

— Garrett Langley, Flock chief executive

The other side Every one of these is a vendor setting a customer may override.

Source · FOX 13 Tampa Bay · read it

Norman, Oklahoma — council rejected Flock twice, 9-0 both times; HOAs installed it anyway

Norman's city council rejected Flock twice in three years, unanimously each time, over privacy, data security, the 30-day retention window and access/storage questions. Flock cameras nonetheless operate nearby through Cleveland County Sheriff's Office installations and homeowners associations.

I guess all crime could be eliminated if you put cameras everywhere, surveillance everywhere, and had drones patrolling the skies [...] but what life are we living then?

— Mayor Stephen Tyler Holman

The other side The council said no twice, unanimously, and the cameras arrived anyway through a county agency and homeowners associations.

Source · 404 Media · read it

Flock pitched putting cameras in ~350,000 rideshare and delivery vehicles

Flock planned to install dashcams in roughly 350,000 Uber, Lyft and delivery drivers’ vehicles to feed licence plate data into its network, turning private drivers into mobile collection points.

Source · 404 Media · read it

404 Media: leaked Flock guide teaching police how to sell Flock to city councils

404 Media obtained a Flock coaching document titled "How to Speak to City Councils: Meeting the Moment with Confidence," which instructs departments to brief city managers and council members before votes, to script presentations, to reframe cost discussions around "the cost of unresolved crime," and not to contest the "mass surveillance" characterization directly.

Own the narrative before someone else does.

— Flock's coaching document for police departments

The other side Flock did not respond to a request for comment.

Source · 404 Media · read it

Flock CEO's public description of the product contradicts its own product announcements

CEO Garrett Langley told ABC7 that Flock ALPRs only take still photographs. Flock's own June 2025 blog and a Forbes interview described live video streaming from LPR cameras, and a product announcement titled "LPR Cameras Can Become Video Cameras" promised a no-cost over-the-air software update. After publication, Flock disclosed it had discontinued the video feature in March 2026 following a five-agency pilot.

A car drives by, we take a picture. It’s a static picture of a car, and then we read the license plate.

— Garrett Langley, Flock chief executive, to ABC7

The other side After publication, Flock disclosed it had discontinued the video feature in March 2026 following a five-agency pilot.

Source · 404 Media · read it

More drone waivers in ten months than in the previous seven years

More than a thousand law enforcement and public safety agencies held FAA waivers for autonomous drone operations by February 2026, and the FAA approved more beyond-visual-line-of-sight waivers between April 2025 and February 2026 than in the prior seven years combined. Nashville Metro Police ended a Drone as First Responder trial in August 2026 after public objection.

It seemed much more palatable for a drone to be framed as a 'first responder' … But in practice it is plain old surveillance.

— EFF's Beryl Lipton

The other side Not every drone programme described is a Flock product; other vendors supply some of them.

Source · Truthout · read it

Flock built a people-search tool ("Nova") sourced in part from data breaches, then reversed course

404 Media obtained internal slides, Slack messages, and meeting audio showing Flock was building Nova, a tool linking plate reads to personal data drawn from people-search tools, data brokers, and data breaches, supporting 20 toggleable data sources. Internal Slack messages show employees raising ethics objections. Two weeks later Flock announced Nova would not use breached or stolen data.

I was pretty horrified to hear we use stolen data in our system.

— Employee Slack message

The other side Two weeks after the reporting, Flock announced Nova would not use breached or stolen data.

Source · 404 Media · read it

$275 million raised, roughly 120,000 cameras, about 5,000 agencies

Flock raised $275 million at a $7.5 billion valuation in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz, stating it had passed $300 million in annual recurring revenue, up 70% year over year. Its product line then included plate readers, gunshot detection, AI video, Drone as First Responder, the Nova search tool, and domestically manufactured drones. As of 2026 the company reports roughly 120,000 cameras and about 5,000 contracted agencies.

will allow us to accelerate our investment in building technology that makes a tangible difference in people’s lives

— Garrett Langley, Flock chief executive

Source · Flock Safety · read it

Elk Grove PD — first FAA waiver for citywide DFR at 400 feet using Flock Aerodome

Flock announced that Elk Grove Police received the first FAA waiver permitting Drone as First Responder operations up to 400 feet with coverage of the entire city, using Flock's Aerodome platform, flown beyond visual line of sight.

The other side This is the company's own announcement, and reads as vendor marketing.

Source · GlobeNewswire (Flock release) · read it