Real-Time Tracking of Driving Routes Nationwide... Flock Strengthens Search Rules to Block Police Unauthorized Access

Police technology company Flock is significantly strengthening the data search regulations for its license plate recognition network to prevent unauthorized lookups. On August 13, Flock announced that it will make it mandatory for officers to enter a criminal case number when inquiring about vehicle information. The measure, which was introduced as an option last year, has been changed to a requirement to fundamentally block the misuse of the real-time tracking system, following a Washington Post investigation that exposed 46 cases of private inquiries used to stalk lovers or ex-lovers.

An investigation by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) revealed that some officers bypassed the system by entering vague words like “investigation” or meaningless strings like “hehehe” into the search reason field. In fact, at one police station in Oregon, a word representing laughter was entered dozens of times as a search reason, but the system did not block it.

To prevent surveillance abuse, Flock is expanding the implementation of an auditing system that automatically detects suspicious search activity and reports it to administrators, making it a mandatory application. Regarding data retention, the company has prepared a recommendation to shorten the existing 30-day retention policy to 7 days. However, the company has not disclosed the accuracy metrics of these auditing tools, and they have not undergone independent verification by external expert organizations.

Flock has enabled an option for police departments to restrict other departments from searching camera data within their jurisdiction to specific purposes, such as kidnapping. Consequently, specific agencies can exercise granular control, allowing data sharing for kidnapping investigations while blocking searches for other purposes.

The activist group DeFlock announced that more than 30 cities have terminated their contracts with Flock. Flock stated that contract terminations account for only a small fraction of its total contracted agencies.

Chad Marlowe, senior policy counsel at the ACLU, pointed out that without a mechanism to verify the accuracy of search reasons, the new regulations also have structural limitations that inevitably rely on the goodwill of police officers.