this post was submitted on 27 Jan 2026
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421
Police Told to Be ‘as Vague as Permissible’ About Why They Use Flock (www.404media.co)
submitted 1 day ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
16 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Police officers are being told to “be as vague as permissible” about why they are using the Flock surveillance system in order to not leak sensitive information via public records requests, according to records obtained using a public records request. The warning originated from a Houston-area police intelligence center that includes members of the FBI and ICE and suggests without evidence that people are using a website called HaveIBeenFlocked.com to “potentially retaliate against law enforcement.”

The warnings were shared with 404 Media by researchers from Southerners Against Surveillance Systems and Infrastructure and Lucy Parsons Lab after our article about police unwittingly leaking the details of millions of surveillance targets nationwide due to public records redaction errors made by several Flock automated license plate reader system customers. This data was aggregated into a searchable tool called HaveIBeenFlocked.

Rather than looking at this incident as a huge operational security failure associated with using a massive commercial surveillance system, police see this as something that puts their officers directly in harm’s way. The data released by police departments includes the agency doing a search, the officer’s name, time of search, the license plate searched, and a “reason” field, which is the justification for doing a specific search.

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[–] adespoton@lemmy.ca 26 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

In other places, people have done all sorts of legal things in front of ALPRs, from presenting them with a steady stream of license plate photos of law enforcement vehicles from out of state, to putting on plays, dance performances and other forms of entertainment in front of them and then submitting FOIA requests for the footage since they’re being consumed (indirectly) by the government. In states that have actual privacy laws, people are requesting all information Flock has on them from the company in order to verify that it is accurate. In some places, they can even require removal.