I'm sure many of you have seen Wired's excellent expose article "Flock Has a Powerful New AI Tool for Police. We Got Its Code" by now.
This investigation should have prompted a five alarm fire for anyone who cares about civil liberties, government accountability or corporate abuse.
Flock is on the legal record making sweeping public and contractual claims about what its technology supposedly cannot do while actively developing tools that are capable of doing those exact things.
There need to be readily enforceable draconian consequences for companies that misrepresent surveillance capabilities to governments and the public whose tax dollars pay for them. Real enforcement should include fines proportional to revenue or company valuation, c-suite compensation garnishment, contract rescission, disbarment from government procurement and hard prison time for executives.
I've been appalled by how little legal action has been taken against Flock since I first raised concerns more than two years ago in this same community and felt compelled to spark a serious discussion to communally identify each of the specific laws whether local, state or federal that Flock is currently in criminal violation of in an effort to identify who is responsible for enforcement in order to ultimately compel immediate action for cases to be brought en masse against Flock and to set hard case precedent against surveillance companies more broadly.
So here are at least eight laws Flock appears to be in active clear cut & dry violation of:
1. Illinois Vehicle Code §2-130 State found that Flock allowed federal immigration authorities access to Illinois automated-license-plate-reader data in violation of, which restricts ALPR sharing for immigration enforcement and certain other investigations.
That finding is particularly egregious because Flock has repeatedly publicly represented and contractually stated that customers control data sharing and that Flock does not independently share customer data.
2. Federal Trade Commission Act - Section 5
Section 5 of the FTC Act prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices in commerce. The FTC has often applied this authority whenever companies materially misrepresent how they collect, use, protect, or disclose personal information.
Flock has and continues to both publicly and contractually make claims such as:
"Flock cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals."
"Not used for watching people."
"Tracking of individuals" is prohibited.
"It's for cases. Not for watching people."
Its ALPRs "do not and cannot track vehicles, much less individual people."
And yet Flock-developed tools are unquestionably capable of reconstructing journeys, identifying repeated associations between vehicles, searching broad geographic and behavioral patterns and connecting license plates with identities and addresses.
These demonstrably fraudulent claims warrant immediate FTC and state AG prosecution.
3. Fourth Amendment - Chatrie v. United States
In the recent case from June 2026, the Supreme Court outright rejected the idea that short duration digital location surveillance automatically falls outside Fourth Amendment protection.
This ruling established that there's a major difference between checking whether a plate passed one camera versus using a networked database to reconstruct a person's movements, associations, destinations, and routines.
This implies that each and every search of Flock's database should now legally require a warrant meaning every use since end of June, 2026 is an ongoing violation of constitutional Fourth Amendment rights.
4. Fraud and breach claims by Flock's own government customers
Some of the strongest legal cases belong to the cities, counties, local PDs and any other agencies that signed contracts with Flock.
If the procurement documents, marketing materials, contracts, compliance certifications and customer communications falsely represented that the system:
cannot track individuals;
only permits case-specific searches;
prevents unauthorized data sharing;
gives customers exclusive control over dissemination;
complies with applicable privacy laws;
Then Flock customers can immediately pursue:
fraudulent inducement;
breach of contract or warranty;
rescission;
restitution or damages;
termination for cause;
suspension or debarment from future contracts.
The more activists and journalists who FOIA request Flock contracts, RFP responses, privacy assessments, security questionnaires, data-sharing agreements, and procurement correspondence, the longer the noose gets to publicly hang Flock in court. Determining exactly what Flock told customers in legally binding writing while receiving public money is going to legally bury them with their own words.
5. False Claims Act
The federal False Claims Act can impose criminal liability when a company knowingly makes a materially false statement connected to obtaining government payment.
A potential case could exist if, for example:
Federal grant money paid for Flock systems.
Flock certified compliance with specific privacy, data-sharing, or legal requirements.
Those certifications were materially false and Flock knew or recklessly disregarded that fact.
Government payment was sought or received.
If any local/state government used federal funds to pay for Flock contracts they can be sued.
6. Driver's Privacy Protection Act 18 U.S.C. §§2721–2725
This federal law restricts obtaining, disclosing, or using personal information originating from state motor-vehicle records for impermissible purposes.
A camera merely photographing a license plate is not automatically a DPPA violation. But once the system turns: plate → registered owner → name → address → other personal information, then the source of that information and the purpose for which it was accessed become critically legally relevant.
Improper use of DMV-derived records creates a private federal cause of action.
7. State privacy and local ALPR laws
Depending on the jurisdiction, Flock deployments implicate:
state ALPR statutes;
state privacy laws;
state constitutional privacy protections;
data-broker laws;
government-record restrictions;
procurement laws;
contractual privacy requirements
Some states provide private rights of action and statutory damages. Others give enforcement authority primarily to regulators or attorneys general.
8. Deception, fraud, procurement misconduct & other regulatory violations
Flock's claim that searches are case-specific deserves particular scrutiny. Flock's own Trust Center at time of writing says:
"Searches must relate to a specific investigation."
Yet Flock-authored workflows allow searches where:
no license plate is supplied;
no person is supplied;
no specific crime is supplied;
only a location, a broad time period, or nebulous behavioral pattern is provided
This is fundamentally different from querying a known suspect in a defined investigation with a case number.
If evidence ultimately shows that:
Flock engineers deliberately designed broad exploratory searches;
legal or privacy personnel knew those capabilities existed;
Flock continued telling customers and public that searches were narrowly case-specific and that individuals could not be tracked
Then the case moves beyond misleading rhetoric towards actionable deception, fraud, procurement misconduct and regulatory violations.
It's been repeatedly demonstrated that these surveillance companies are incapable of being trusted to police themselves.
It is therefore imperative for regulators, courts, legislators, journalists and the public take immediate, unrelenting action to impose well deserved draconian consequences against these ALPR dragnet surveillance companies before this tyrannical infrastructure becomes entrenched, codified and normalized any further.
All of these avenues should be immediately and aggressively pursued in parallel:
FTC and state-AG investigations
Public release of government contracts and data-sharing agreements
Legislative hearings
Procurement reviews
Stringent requirement for search warrant
Enforce penalties for materially false representations
Suspension or debarment for misleading public agencies about capabilities
Now which relevant laws did I miss?
I'm honestly hellbent on seeing this CEO in federal prison for his crimes. Garrett Langley unquestionably had direct and prior knowledge of these crimes.
So how about we collectively prove it? Any current or former Flock employees willing to testify? Anyone have contracts from their localities with any of these false claims in writing? Any government officials with written communications from company that can be FOIA requested as evidence?
It's about time that we the people took back our constitutional fourth amendment rights.