On Dec. 9, the Longmont City Council voted 5-1 to immediately pause sharing all data collected by Flock, the fast-growing AI license plate reader company. Council directed the Longmont city manager and police department to research what would be required to end their Flock contract, and return in March with possible alternatives to Flock’s technology.
“I want to be really clear that my intent is not to question the good faith of LPD [Longmont Police Department] or the public service and public safety department,” said newly elected Councilmember Jake Marsing, before proposing Longmont end its Flock contract.
“My concern here is about long-term governance, long-term privacy, security implications, and whether or not we’ve built the kind of oversight structure — or whether it’s even possible to build the kind of oversight structure — to rein in this technology.”
Councilmembers said they were troubled by the lack of control over how other agencies access and use Longmont’s Flock data, including the possibility that police departments elsewhere could share it with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Longmont Public Safety Chief Zach Ardis told council that under a recent Colorado law, local agencies are barred from sharing personally identifying information for immigration enforcement. But he could not assure council that other departments would follow the law.
“To sit here and tell you that another agency won’t break the law, it’s like me telling you that you won’t go home tonight and speed,” he said. “I can’t determine what [they] will do with that data.”
Across the country, cities have begun abandoning Flock contracts amid similar concerns about data sharing with ICE. In recent weeks, municipalities in Washington, Texas and North Carolina, among others, have canceled their agreements. Locally, City of Boulder staff have said they intend to renew Boulder’s Flock contract when it expires in March 2026.
‘When we become the data’
The Longmont vote came after about 90 minutes of public comment dominated by residents concerned about the city’s use of the technology, and followed a presentation from the police department on its use of the system.
“When we, the people of Longmont, become the data, we have a right and a necessity to know how it is used,” said Gabe Viez, who works in the data destruction industry.
Kellen Lask, a senior software engineer at REI, called Flock “about as secure as your grandma’s email address,” saying that people have been able to access images from Flock cameras relatively easily. Another speaker noted a case this year in which a security researcher found Flock user accounts for sale on a Russian cybercrime forum.
Lask also argued that Flock can bypass its own privacy promises by sharing data in so-called “data clean rooms,” where companies can exchange and analyze de-identified data. The Federal Trade Commission, in November 2024, warned that clean rooms, “like other technologies that claim to protect privacy, can also be used to obfuscate privacy harms.”
And while Flock has said its cameras do not use AI facial recognition software, Lask told council that he is concerned the hardware could easily support it. “I guarantee the software is on those cameras and they have just disabled it, and that is a five-minute update to turn it on.”
Longmont resident Pavel Ivanov, who was born in Russia, told council he had seen camera systems there gradually expanded for purposes beyond public safety, including monitoring and prosecuting political activity.
“If we look at the positive consequences, we do see some better local policing,” he said. “Council, my humble opinion, it doesn’t matter. We cannot trade freedom, liberty and non-surveillance for that perceived safety.”
Police response
During council discussion, Ardis warned that canceling the contract would require additional staffing.
“If you’re going to take this tool away that cuts out hundreds of hours of manpower for us, I need council to provide the officers that we need in order to meet the needs of this community,” he said.
He said removing Flock could hinder the department’s ability to solve crimes and that other license plate readers may not offer the same data-sharing with neighboring departments.
“Flock is the market leader, so the ability to utilize other cameras within our region — City of Boulder, Boulder County, Firestone, Frederick — where we share commonality of crimes. We would lose that capability, potentially,” he said.
Ardis cited an instance in which police were able to quickly find a homicide suspect because Flock cameras in Lyons captured the license plate. He also pointed to cases involving domestic violence, missing persons and robbery cases, including one in which Flock AI tools helped identify vehicles without plate information.
“We had a robbery at a local business where all we had was a description of the vehicle. The person getting robbed at gunpoint did not get a license plate,” he said. “We just about beat him to his house and made arrests.”
Kudos indeed to Longmont and all the other major cities across the Front Range for realizing the dangers of Flock among skepticism of towards this flimsy argument of potential “deterrence”…which only begs an obvious question of exactly how incapable are local police in preventing crime and/or solving it later? I’m also quite unsurprised Boulder continues to allow such wanton public surveillance, since the City Council seems to care more about corporate interests and protecting (even vacant) property than the people, businesses, or prosperity of this city. Speaking about empty comittments to prevent speeding; look no further than the Diagonal Highway for an everyday example of how faulty the premise is for outsourcing public safety and traffic law enforcement to cameras. Because in my experience, these two cameras zones have only emboldened dangerous drivers in countless other unmonitored areas that continue to go undeterred.