LAPD ends deal with surveillance giant Flock over civil liberties concerns

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is ending its deal with Flock Safety, a surveillance company that helps law enforcement track vehicles using thousands of its license plate cameras placed across the United States. A senior LAPD official told news outlets that the police department would allow its three-year contract with Flock to expire on Saturday. The department cited 'serious concerns' around civil liberties and privacy.

Flock's cameras are operated by the Atlanta, Georgia-based company and not the LAPD. '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,' LAPD's chief information officer Dean Gialamas was quoted as saying. '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.' A spokesperson for the LAPD did not respond to a request for comment, and it's unclear if Flock's cameras will continue recording in absence of an active contract.

According to ABC7, the police department is seeking new language in its contract addressing privacy and data storage concerns. As the third-largest police department in the U.S., the LAPD is one of Flock's largest government customers to date. Several major U.S.

cities have also stopped working with Flock, including Mountain View, California and South Portland, Maine, citing privacy worries and concerns that federal immigration officials used the cameras to track people in violation of their local laws governing their sanctuary city policies. The contract expiry caught the surveillance company by 'surprise,' said Flock spokesperson Holly Beilin in an email. Flock said it was confident that the company could 'clear up the current misconceptions' that led to the contract's end.

Flock would not say which specific misconceptions it was referring to. Flock has a network of at least 80,000 cameras around the U.S. that scan license plates and allow police and federal agencies to track vehicles.

The company has faced heavy backlash from local communities that have approved and then reneged on their deals with Flock over concerns with privacy and surveillance. Some locals have taken matters into their own hands by dismantling Flock cameras and covering them with trash bags, even as some communities found that Flock reinstalled cameras without permission from local authorities. Researchers have identified an uptick in documented cases of motorists being pulled over, detained, and held at gunpoint by police, or jailed, due to false positives and errors with license plate readers.