Flock tightens privacy controls amid scandals over officer abuse
Flock Safety is requiring all customers to use its Audit Assistance feature to flag abnormal usage patterns, and is cutting its default license plate data retention to seven days. The changes follow reported incidents of officers misusing the surveillance network.
Why this matters: Flock's cameras are everywhere now — homeowner associations, local police, small towns — quietly building a record of where your car goes. That data has already been abused by officers using the system for personal reasons. Seven-day retention is better than indefinite storage, but the more important shift is the audit requirement. Someone is finally supposed to notice when an officer runs plates they have no business running. Whether that accountability is real depends on who reviews the alerts, what happens next, and whether those records are ever made public.
Who should care: Privacy officers · Cybersecurity · General readers · Policy
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