The Los Angeles Police Department is reworking its partnership with Flock Safety, an automatic license plate reader company, with enhanced privacy protections, less than a week after announcing it would not renew its contract due to concerns about the firm’s data ownership practices.
Los Angeles is one of dozens of American cities that have discontinued its use of Flock cameras in the last year. Flock uses optical character recognition to identify numbers and letters on license plates. While this technology has been used to identify vehicles in the cases of theft or to locate missing persons, the company has increasingly been accused of privacy violations, including using the data collected for immigration enforcement.
The LAPD confirmed it is renegotiating a deal with the company, which operates 138 cameras in Los Angeles. The city entered into a memorandum of understanding with Flock in 2023, which expired in June and was not renewed.
The department directed Fortune to comments Chief Jim McDonnell made at a police commission meeting on Tuesday.
“Automated license plate reader technology is a very valuable investigative tool—helping locate violent offenders, identify stolen vehicles, and generate leads that assist in solving crimes and delivering justice for victims,” McDonnell said. “At the same time, we have a responsibility to ensure that any technology we use is supported by strong protections for individual privacy and the security of the information entrusted to us.”
Last week, LAPD announced it would not immediately renew its agreement with Flock due to apprehension about who owns and has access to the data collected by Flock’s cameras. The city also has agreements to access automated license plate reader data from vendors Axon and Motorola. The LAPD, the third-largest police department in the U.S., is among Flock’s largest government customers.
“This contract is not being renewed because of serious concerns around civil liberties and civil rights issues, particularly around privacy and the data that is being collected from these cameras,” Dean Gialamas, LAPD’s chief information officer, told ABC7. “The LAPD had to make a difficult decision, in this case discontinuing using Flock services until we can get those data, privacy, security and sharing concerns ironed out through a contractual relationship.”
The department no longer has access to data Flock collects, which is stored in the cloud and would be made accessible to LAPD personnel should it mint a new contract with the company. A new contract would allow the department to have ownership of all data and metadata Flock cameras collect, and Flock would be unable to distribute that data to any other entity or use it to train AI.
A Flock spokesperson told Fortune that while the decision to let the contract lapse came as a “surprise,” it is committed to working with the LAPD in the future.
“We are confident that through ongoing discussions with LAPD, we can clear up the current misconceptions that led to Friday’s disappointing pause,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “We hope to resume our successful partnership with the department soon.”
Cities raise privacy concerns about Flock
Reckoning with the alleged privacy violations of Flock cameras has been a national affair. Last month, Dayton, Ohio, officials pulled black trash bags over all 72 of its Flock cameras after the local police department found more than 7,000 cases of immigration enforcement-related searches made by outside entities on Flock’s data. Though the cameras were not operational following the city’s discontinuation of Flock services, officials covered them to assuage community anxiety around the devices.
Evanston, Ill., similarly halted Flock camera usage after Illinois Secretary of State Alexi Giannoulias alleged the company violated state law by giving U.S. Customs and Border Protection access to cameras as part of a “pilot program.” An audit by Oxnard, Calif., officials revealed Flock enabled a “nationwide query” giving outside agencies access to the city’s police department data without its approval or knowledge, despite the department setting security precautions to the contrary.
Flock has previously denied contracts with ICE or other immigration authorities and has said customers can give data access to certain agencies, depending on local or state laws. The LAPD said the data it collected from Flock devices was not used to assist ICE.
Tom Bowman, the policy counsel for the Center of Democracy and Technology’s Security & Surveillance Project, previously told Fortune automatic license plate readers have been around for years but gained attention following a surge of ICE activity across the country. He said that despite Flock not having direct contract with immigration enforcement agencies, the company has enabled increased access to sensitive data through “side-door handshakes,” such as law enforcement making immigration-related searches on public school-owned devices. Flock denies these “side-door handshakes.”
Bowman has advocated for increased regulations on these devices, such as limits on how long data can be stored or with whom it can be shared.
“If we’re not going to get sensible guardrails for these systems,” he said, “maybe we shouldn’t be using these systems at all.”
