The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is reportedly ending its contract with Flock Safety, a surveillance company that helps law enforcement track vehicles using thousands of license plate cameras installed across the United States.
ABC7 and the Los Angeles Times first reported that a senior Los Angeles Police Department official told news outlets that the department intends to let Flock's three-year contract expire when it ends Saturday. The ministry cited “serious concerns” about civil liberties and privacy. Flock's cameras are not operated by the Los Angeles Police Department, but by a company based in Atlanta, Georgia.
“Due to serious civil liberties and civil rights issues, particularly privacy and the data collected from these cameras, this contract will not be renewed,” Los Angeles Police Department Chief Information Officer Dean Giaramas said in a statement. “The Los Angeles Police Department has had to make a difficult decision, in this case, to discontinue use of the Flock service until data, privacy, security, and sharing concerns are resolved through a contractual relationship.”
A spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department did not respond to a request for comment from TechCrunch over the weekend, and it is unclear whether Flock's cameras will continue recording even without a valid contract. The police department is exploring new language in contracts that would address privacy and data storage issues, ABC7 reported.
The LAPD, the third largest police department in the United States, is one of Flock's largest government customers to date. Several major U.S. cities, including Mountain View, Calif., and South Portland, Maine, have also stopped working with Flock, citing privacy concerns and concerns that federal immigration agents were using cameras to track people in violation of local laws governing sanctuary city policies.
Flock spokeswoman Holly Bailin said in an email to TechCrunch that the monitoring company was “surprised” by the contract expiration. Flock said he was confident he could “clear up the current misunderstanding” that led to the termination of the contract. Mr. Flock did not specify what kind of misconception he was referring to.
Flock has a network of at least 80,000 cameras across the United States that scan license plates and allow police and federal agencies to track vehicles.
The company has faced intense backlash from the local community, which approved and then scrapped the deal with Flock, citing privacy and surveillance concerns. Despite finding that Flock had reinstalled cameras in some areas without permission from local authorities, some local residents have taken matters into their own hands, dismantling Flock cameras and covering them with garbage bags.
Researchers have identified an increase in documented incidents where drivers are stopped by police, detained, held at gunpoint or jailed due to false positives or errors in license plate readers. Last week, journalists from car review and news website The Drive detailed how Flock was tracked for days and then locked up by police after Flock's camera mistakenly flagged the license plate of the loan unit he was driving as stolen.
Flock has also come under intense scrutiny following several security lapses that exposed cameras and data, and in one case, independent news outlet 404 Media was able to view live footage of the company on publicly available Flock cameras. Lawmakers also called on federal consumer regulators to investigate Flock for failing to prevent security cameras from being accessed by hackers and spies, warning that many police user logins are not protected by multi-factor authentication.
404 Media also reported that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration used passwords without the knowledge of local police officers in a search for suspected immigration violations.
Do you know of any security or privacy issues with Flock Safety or issues with Flock cameras in your community? We'd love to hear from you. From your non-work device, you can contact Zack Whittaker securely in the Signal messaging app using the username zackwhittaker.1337.
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