Flock Safety Faces Class Action Lawsuit
A class action lawsuit has been filed against Flock Safety, the Oakland-based company known for its license plate reading cameras. The suit alleges the company's data collection practices are unlawful, escalating privacy concerns around its widespread technological surveillance.
The lawsuit, filed on February 26, 2026, in San Francisco Superior Court, alleges that Flock Safety's network of AI-powered cameras violates the California ALPR Privacy Act. This state law specifically prohibits sharing automated license plate reader data with out-of-state or federal agencies. The suit was filed by Oakland-based law firm Gibbs Mura LLP and Milberg PLLC on behalf of California drivers. At the core of the complaint are allegations of extensive unauthorized data access. The lawsuit claims that between August 2024 and February 2025, law enforcement agencies outside of California searched the San Francisco Police Department's ALPR database over 1.6 million times. Similarly, the Los Altos database was allegedly searched more than a million times by external agencies in 2024 and 2025. The system's architecture enables this widespread data sharing through a feature called the "National Lookup" service. According to the lawsuit, this feature was enabled for some police departments without their full knowledge or permission, granting access to federal bodies like the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. An audit in Ventura County found its data was accessed over 364,000 times by out-of-state agencies without the sheriff's office's knowledge. This legal challenge follows several Bay Area municipalities severing ties with the company over these very data-sharing practices. Cities including Santa Cruz, Richmond, Mountain View, and Los Altos Hills have recently shut down Flock cameras or ended their contracts. Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office also suspended its use of the cameras in Cupertino and Saratoga due to the data-sharing concerns. Flock Safety captures more than just license plates; its AI-powered system also identifies vehicle make, color, and distinguishing features like bumper stickers or roof racks. This data is uploaded to encrypted cloud servers, where a "vehicle fingerprint" is created using a machine learning algorithm. The sheer volume of this data collection has been described by the plaintiffs as an "Orwellian mass-surveillance infrastructure." In response to the lawsuit, Flock Safety has stated its intention to "vigorously defend itself." The company maintains that it "takes privacy, legal compliance, and data security extremely seriously" and is committed to helping law enforcement use the technology responsibly.
