Flock
101.

A private surveillance company that sells automated license plate readers (ALPRs) to police departments, HOAs, and private businesses. Each camera captures a photo of every passing vehicle: plate, make, color, distinguishing features, and timestamps the location.

Every Flock camera is part of a national mesh. When NCSO, Grass Valley PD, and Nevada City PD installed Flock cameras, they didn't just install local cameras. They plugged Nevada County into a database searchable by thousands of other Flock-connected agencies across the country. Out of state. Federal. The default is "share with everyone."

Any agency with a Flock account, by default. That's thousands of police departments, sheriff's offices, federal agencies, and university PDs. Searches happen without warrants, without notification, and (here) without recorded reasons.

An officer enters a plate, a partial plate, or a vehicle description. Flock returns every camera that's seen a matching vehicle, plotted on a map with timestamps. Repeat searches build movement histories: where someone goes, when, and how often.

Pan-Tilt-Zoom. Unlike a fixed ALPR that passively snaps every passing vehicle, a PTZ camera can be remotely controlled in real time. An operator can rotate it, tilt it, and zoom in close on a specific person, vehicle, building, or activity.

ALPRs surveil everyone equally. PTZ cameras let an operator pick a target and follow them. That's a sharper tool with much greater potential for abuse (tracking protesters, journalists, an ex-partner, a political opponent) and far less public accountability about how it's used.

Public records show Nevada City PD granted "VMS Go-Live" access to both Grass Valley PD and the Nevada County Sheriff's Office, meaning officers from those agencies can remotely pan, tilt, and zoom Nevada City's cameras in real time, without Nevada City PD involvement. The system is also configured to share data with 27 out-of-state agencies across 12 states.

In roughly 2.5 years, Nevada City PD's cameras have been searched over 2.4 million times by 359 different agencies. The NCRIC, a federally funded fusion center, alone ran nearly 35,000 of those searches. Nevada City has about 3,000 residents.

Nobody, as far as we can tell. Nevada City PD has not made public any policy governing who can operate the PTZs, under what circumstances, what's logged, or how long footage is retained. No public hearing was held before they were deployed.

California Civil Code § 1798.90.55(b) prohibits public agencies from sharing ALPR information with any "person or entity" that is not a California public agency. Our CPRA data shows over 5.1 million searches of Nevada County cameras by out-of-state agencies, and 4,654 different agencies nationwide have accessed our data. This is illegal.

In October 2023, the California Attorney General issued Bulletin 2023-DLE-06 explicitly prohibiting agencies from sharing ALPR data with federal immigration enforcement. Our data shows 1,175 searches by HSI, CBP, and Border Patrol against Grass Valley cameras. Every single one of them after the bulletin was issued. This is illegal.

Because no one was looking. The default settings on Flock's platform share everything with everyone, and the "transparency portal" Flock points residents to undercounts real search activity by a factor of 2,000×. Without public records requests like ours, none of this would be visible.

Tell NCSO, Grass Valley PD, and Nevada City PD to end their Flock contracts. Over 30 communities have already done so. See our demands and how to take action.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and ACLU of Northern California sued San Jose, arguing that police searching the city's ALPR database without a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment and California law. The same legal theory applies to every California jurisdiction running Flock, including ours. Read the EFF release →

A federal judge sided with Norfolk in a Fourth Amendment challenge, but warned that as ALPR networks expand and analytic tools become more powerful, the constitutional balance "could conceivably tip the other way." Translation: today's win could be tomorrow's loss as the surveillance gets denser. Courthouse News coverage →

The ACLU has documented Flock's expansion into drone integration, facial recognition partnerships, and a national surveillance network with minimal oversight. This isn't just license plates anymore. ACLU analysis →

Santa Cruz became the first city in California to terminate its Flock contract, with the City Council voting 6-1 to end it. If they can do it, so can we. KQED coverage →

Mountain View's City Council voted unanimously to terminate its Flock contract, citing the same federal access concerns we've documented here in Nevada County. City of Mountain View statement →

Canceled after 30+ community groups pressured the city council. The fight was a model for organized municipal opposition. Read how they did it →

The list keeps growing. Denver is replacing its 111 Flock cameras. South Pasadena declined to renew. Cambridge, MA canceled after Flock installed cameras without authorization. State of Surveillance is tracking the rebellion city by city. See the running list →