Flock Safety's 'Reforms' Are a Band-Aid on a Surveillance State: Why We Don't Let Vendors Decide Our Privacy
Flock Safety, the vendor that turned American residential streets into a continuous license-plate dragnet, has finally admitted what its critics have said for years: the technology is dangerous, the defaults are wrong, and the public is furious. In August 2026, the Electronic Frontier Foundation published a detailed teardown of Flock’s new reform package, timed to land amid a wave of towns canceling or suspending their automated license plate reader (ALPR) contracts. source↗ The reforms are a mix of long-overdue changes and cosmetic fixes that, taken together, do not resolve the fundamental problem: a private company is deciding how much privacy the public deserves.
The reform that actually matters: 7-day retention
The most consequential change is Flock’s new default retention setting. ALPR data captured by Flock cameras used to sit in the system for an optional 30 days by default. Under the new policy, that default is cut to an optional 7 days. source↗ If a police department wants to keep data beyond the retention window, officers have to enter what Flock calls
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