Flock Exposed - Documented Board Deceptions

DOCUMENTED CASES OF SURVEILLANCE COMPANIES NOT TELLING BOARDS THE FULL TRUTH

Compiled September 15, 2026, last expanded September 16, 2026 - all items sourced to published reporting, official audits, or the companies' own admissions. Scope: this page covers cases where a local board, council, or city was directly told something false or misleading by a vendor - as distinct from a vendor unilaterally activating a feature or installing hardware without telling anyone, which are covered on the companion pages "Cases of Unauthorized Activation" and "Cases of Unauthorized Installations." The verified examples below are all tied to Flock Safety; no comparably documented case naming Motorola or another vendor deceiving a board was found yet (see closing note).

1. Oshkosh, Wisconsin - Flock's own security chief denied the heat-map feature, and was proven wrong the next morning

During an April 2026 Oshkosh City Council meeting, a council member asked Flock directly whether its system created a "heat map" showing where a specific vehicle had traveled over time. Flock's chief information security officer, present at the meeting, told the council the system did not "create a pattern or heat map of an individual's movement." The council approved the contract that same night. By the next morning, the city learned the statement was false, and Flock later admitted its system does produce a heat map showing where a vehicle has been photographed for up to a month. Oshkosh revoked the contract within 24 hours of approving it - one of the fastest reversals on record - and Flock's response was to call its own false statement to the council "one small misconception."

Source: American Civil Liberties Union, "Flock Safety Credibility Lost as it Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police Departments, and Public Across the Country," 2026; Yahoo News, "Flock Safety Loses Oshkosh Contract After False Claims to City Council," 2026

2. Denver, Colorado - nine city council members put it in writing: the CEO lied to them directly

Nine members of the Denver City Council stated in writing that Flock's CEO "has made multiple false statements both publicly and directly to council members, which raises significant questions about Flock's trustworthiness as a vendor." The statement came after Denver's council had already voted not to renew its Flock contract over mass surveillance and immigration enforcement access concerns, even as Flock's CEO continued trying to convince officials to renew the agreement. Denver's contract was allowed to expire on March 31, 2026, the single largest contract cancellation by camera count of any city to date.

Source: DeflockILM, "What Flock Safety Told Customers, and What the Records Show," 2026; 9NEWS Denver investigation; State of Surveillance, "30+ Cities Have Canceled Flock Safety Contracts"

3. Loveland, Colorado - the police chief was told federal agents had no access, then the CEO said the same thing to the press, and both statements were false

When Loveland Police Chief Tim Doran raised concerns that federal agents were accessing the town's ALPR data, Flock responded by telling him federal agencies no longer had access, and the company's CEO, Garrett Langley, separately told the press that federal data sharing was a non-issue because Flock had no federal contracts. Contradictory information later came to light, and the company was forced to admit it did, in fact, have contracts with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Homeland Security for pilot projects giving those agencies direct access to license plate data. Flock's CEO acknowledged afterward that the company's "public statements inadvertently provided inaccurate information."

Source: American Civil Liberties Union, "Flock Safety Credibility Lost as it Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police Departments, and Public Across the Country," 2026

4. Illinois' own state audit found Flock let federal border agents into local cameras

An audit by the Illinois Secretary of State's office found that Flock Safety allowed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to access Illinois license plate cameras on Illinois roads and surveil drivers - despite state law barring that kind of access. The Secretary of State ordered the company to shut off CBP's access immediately, and Flock officials acknowledged they had not built adequate compliance protocols, with the company's CEO separately acknowledging Flock "didn't create distinct permissions and protocols" to ensure local compliance and pausing its federal pilots nationwide as a result.

Source: Illinois Secretary of State press release, August 25, 2025 - ilsos.gov; Finding Flock, "Flock Camera Cancellations: City Tracker"

5. Flock denied sharing data with the federal government, then it came out that it had been

Flock had previously denied sharing data with federal authorities. A 9NEWS investigation found the company had actually been running an undisclosed pilot program with federal immigration authorities, allowing Border Patrol to send access invitations to police departments nationwide. Flock's own CEO later acknowledged undisclosed pilots with Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security Investigations.

Source: 9NEWS Denver; Malwarebytes Labs, February 2026

6. Santa Cruz, California - the city's own camera data was quietly pulled into a national network it never agreed to join

Santa Cruz became the first city in California to terminate its Flock contract after city officials discovered their local camera data had been shared with Flock's national search network without their knowledge or intent, in apparent violation of a California law restricting that kind of sharing. Between June and October 2025 alone, state and out-of-state agencies accessed Santa Cruz camera data roughly 4,000 times on behalf of federal law enforcement, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Police Chief Bernie Escalante said the violations were not the result of any deliberate action by the city, meaning Santa Cruz's own data had been swept into nationwide searches it never authorized, through a Flock-run system it did not control. A city councilmember summed up the reaction afterward: "We should in no way consciously be in this system at all - just no way." Nearby Mountain View officials separately discovered Flock had opted their own camera network into a national "lookup" setting without the city's permission, allowing outside law enforcement agencies to access their data as well.

Source: NPR, "Why some cities are canceling Flock license plate reader contracts," 2026; KQED, "Santa Cruz the First in California to Terminate Its Contract With Flock Safety," 2026; Lookout Santa Cruz, "City of Santa Cruz pauses statewide license plate data-sharing, citing Flock Safety's violation of California law"; San José Spotlight, "Out-of-state police access Silicon Valley license plate readers"

7. Verona, Wisconsin - told the city its cameras were coming down, then quietly scheduled them for "maintenance" instead

After the Verona Common Council voted not to renew its Flock contract in the fall of 2025, and the contract lapsed in December, city officials made multiple requests for Flock to remove its three cameras from around town. Months passed with the cameras still operating. Emails later obtained by 404 Media showed that instead of removing the equipment, Flock had issued an internal work order scheduling the cameras for maintenance rather than removal, and that the company separately objected to the city removing the equipment itself. Mayor Luke Diaz said Flock "weren't removing them" despite the repeated requests, and that he was "100% certain" the cameras were still actively working even after the contract had ended. With no clear legal certainty about whether the city could disable or remove Flock's own hardware itself, Verona's solution was to cover all three cameras with black trash bags. Flock did not remove the cameras until February, and a company spokesperson later told 404 Media the delay occurred because Verona had voted not to renew the contract rather than cancel it outright mid-term - a distinction the city was never made to understand mattered at the time it made its request.

Source: 404 Media, "Flock 'Objects to Our Removing Their Equipment': Emails Reveal Why a Town Put Bags Over Its Flock Cameras," 2026; Wisconsin Examiner, "Verona has waited months for Flock cameras to come down after canceling contract," 2026; Bolts, "This Wisconsin City Ditched AI Surveillance Cameras. Now Activists Want to Keep Going."

8. A key customer protection was quietly removed from the contract without being flagged to customers

Flock's previous contract terms stated flatly: "Flock does not own and shall not sell Customer Data." That language is now absent from current contracts - a change documented by independent researchers and confirmed by the ACLU's own review of the company's shifting terms, rather than by any disclosure from Flock itself to its existing government customers.

Source: ACLU; IPVM; HaveIBeenFlocked.com, 2026

9. Sheboygan, Wisconsin - a sales rep tried to sell the city its own data behind its own police department's back

In March 2026, a Flock Safety account executive emailed the Sheboygan Department of Public Works directly, offering to sell the city up to five years of anonymized traffic volume, vehicle type, and speed data - all of it captured by Sheboygan's own 15 Flock cameras that the city itself already owned and paid for. The Sheboygan Police Department did not learn of the offer until late July 2026, and stated it was never made aware of and never consented to the sale of that data, calling Flock's conduct a breach of the Master Services Agreement between the city and the company. Police Chief Kurt Zempel and City Administrator Casey Bradley formally asked the Common Council to cancel the Flock contract entirely, and the city covered all 15 of its cameras with bags while the matter was resolved. Flock disputed the characterization, telling reporters its license plate reader technology and separate traffic data programs "are two different things" and that customers own and control their data.

Source: FOX6 Milwaukee, "Sheboygan canceling Flock contract over undisclosed data tracking," 2026; Seehafer News, "Flock Safety Attempted to Sell Off Data Collected in the City of Sheboygan," 2026; Spectrum News 1, "Wisconsin agencies suspend Flock cameras amid data concerns," 2026

10. Caught on camera saying the opposite of what its own trainers teach

Flock's public FAQ states its cameras "are not designed to search for people, scan faces, or track individuals." A television investigation caught a Flock representative repeating that same denial on camera, saying flatly, "we're not tracking people," when asked directly. But the same investigation found the company's own internal training webinars describe the exact opposite: one Flock webinar instructor described "tracking that vehicle from location to location to location," another described being "able to track your suspect's movements," and a police officer in a separate training video described using Flock cameras to follow a suspect across a state line into Kentucky. The contradiction is not about the license plate readers alone - Flock's Condor cameras are a separate pan-tilt-zoom camera line that the company's own materials describe as using artificial intelligence to detect and follow people, the very capability the public-facing FAQ denies exists.

Source: InvestigateTV, "Flock says its cameras don't track people. Its own training videos say otherwise.," 2026; Gadget Review, "Flock Safety Says Its Cameras Don't Track People. Its Own Training Videos Disagree.," 2026

11. A leaked internal guide coaches police to script the case for Flock before residents can object

404 Media obtained an internal coaching guide Flock distributes to its police customers, explicitly built to teach officers "how to speak to city councils about public safety technology." The guide's own framing, reported by 404 Media, is to "own the narrative before someone else does" - meaning police are coached to make the public case for the cameras before residents opposed to the technology get a chance to speak at public comment. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's director of strategic campaigns, Sarah T. Hamid, reviewed the guide and said it shows Flock "isn't just selling surveillance, it's scripting the public case for buying it," adding that vendors like Flock have long shaped policy debates that cities are supposed to run independently by staging council "prep calls" with local police departments. A related account documented one sheriff performing the coached pitch almost word for word at a public meeting, telling residents "everything we have is right here" and that there would be no reason for anyone to file a public records request - even though, as independent researchers have repeatedly shown throughout this site, there has been plenty left for the public to find only by filing exactly those requests.

Source: 404 Media, "'Own the Narrative': Leaked Flock Guide Shows How It Teaches Cops to Promote Its Tech," 2026; Footnote4a, "Own the narrative before someone else does," 2026

A pattern worth sitting with: every case above is a company that misled the very board deciding whether to trust it with a live feed of your comings and goings. Before your town signs anything, it's worth asking plainly - is this really the kind of company you want knowing about your daily travels?

CLOSING NOTE

Every example above traces to Flock Safety specifically, because that is where the verified, sourced documentation of board-level deception currently exists. A parallel claim about Motorola or another competitor doing the same thing to a board has not yet turned up a comparably solid source - if one surfaces, it belongs here as an additional item rather than being added on a weaker footing.

This page will be updated as more factual sources become available.