As California Cities Grow Wary of Flock Safety Cameras, Mountain View Shuts Its Off

The Mountain View Police Department has joined a growing list of law enforcement agencies to turn off automated license plate reading cameras operated by Flock Safety amid rising concerns about the company’s data privacy practices.

Police Chief Mike Canfield said in a public message on Monday that he made that decision after the city discovered that out-of-state agencies were illegally accessing its data.

“Community trust is more important than any individual tool,” he wrote. “I share your anger and frustration regarding how Flock Safety’s system enabled out-of-state agencies to search our license plate data, and I am sorry that such searches occurred.”

Last month, the Mountain View Police Department said it had discovered during an audit of its Flock program that federal agencies accessed its cameras’ data through a nationwide search tool during a brief period in 2024.

The department said the feature was “enabled without MVPD’s permission or knowledge.” It also said that 29 of its 30 cameras were accessed by other California law enforcement agencies that had not been approved to do so.

“That was against how we had designed the system,” Canfield told KQED on Tuesday.

Over the last year, more than two dozen municipalities across the U.S. have terminated contracts with Flock over reports that federal immigration agencies have used its searchable license plate database amid the Trump administration’s escalating crackdown.

In early January, Santa Cruz became the first city in California to sever relations with Flock, and Los Altos Hills quickly followed. Last week, Santa Clara County Supervisor Betty Duong moved to delay renewing the county’s Flock contract by a month while officials investigate data-sharing concerns.

Other cities across the Bay Area have opted to continue using Flock’s systems, including San Francisco and Oakland, which renewed and expanded its contract with the company in December.

Flock’s cameras record and store license plate data that its customers, such as city police departments, use to aid their investigations. The company offers contracted agencies multiple data sharing options, including “National” and “State” lookups, which share data between Flock Safety customers who opt in across the U.S., or only in the agency’s home state, respectively. Alternatively, customers can choose a 1:1 sharing option, which requires that they add agencies they would like to share data with individually.

In California, a 2015 state law prohibits state and local law enforcement agencies from sharing license plate reader data with out-of-state or federal agencies.

According to Canfield, the system MVPD built did not allow out-of-state agencies to access its data and required in-state agencies to get approval from him, or a designee, as well as sign a memorandum of understanding regarding how the information was used.

“We had built it to have very strong access controls, and we were under the impression that that’s exactly how it was functioning,” Canfield said.

But Brian Hofer, the executive director of the privacy nonprofit Secure Justice, said that the department likely did allow the sharing, regardless of whether it intended to.

“What did Flock do? Did Flock force a code change on you and lie to you about it?” he asked. “Statistically, it’s most likely to be the Mountain View Police Department that turned those things on.”

He said when similar concerns arose in Illinois and Colorado, “the local police had opted into these things and just didn’t understand the consequences.”

Canfield said it’s not clear whether any data recorded by Mountain View’s Flock cameras was actually shared, but it was accessible to national agencies for a three-month period, and has been accessible to other state agencies longer.

“I haven’t seen anything that’s particularly concerning, like search terms that would be alarming to my community,” he said. “However, there’s a lot of searches that come through that data, so unfortunately, there’s no records to know exactly what was or was not gleaned from it.”

At least one California police department, El Cajon, in San Diego County, has come under fire for sharing other in-state departments’ data with out-of-state agencies.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta sued the El Cajon Police Department in October over the practice, which violates California law.

Just this week, he wrote a motion asking the San Diego Superior Court to compel the department to stop, writing that the “data raises serious privacy concerns because of its ability to capture and track the movements of anyone who passes through a given area, thereby creating a database with millions of images, including individuals in vulnerable circumstances, such as undocumented individuals or people seeking reproductive care.”

Canfield said that despite the concerns, he believes there is “absolutely” a possibility that Mountain View’s police department will continue to use license plate reader data in the future.

“I believe in its value, and I’m proud of how we used it,” Canfield told KQED.

Whether it will be a continuation of the current pilot system or with Flock is not yet known, though. In a statement, Flock said it was addressing the department’s concerns and looked forward to resuming its “successful partnership.”

“We have a council meeting at the end of the month where we will present recommendations from staff to the City Council, and they will make a decision on the future of our pilot ALPR program,” Canfield said.

KQED’s Alex Hall contributed to this report.