Flock Safety reduces data retention to seven days following numerous instances of police misconduct.

      Garrett Langley, the CEO of the company, outlined the new package in a blog post on Flock’s site dated 13 August. It addresses six key areas: privacy, accountability, data ownership, data security, data accuracy, and transparency. According to the Associated Press, most of Flock Safety's privacy updates will become mandatory for law enforcement clients starting 1 January.

      Key announcements from Flock include a significant change in data retention. The default retention period for license plate reads will decrease from 30 days to 7 days. Flock cites its own data usage as the reason for this reduction, stating that officers complete over 90% of searches without a full plate within a week, as noted in the blog post.

      A feature called Evidence Mode enables detectives to retain specific data for ongoing investigations. This feature will be available in the coming weeks at no cost for customers who adopt the seven-day retention policy. Additionally, cities can restrict what other agencies can search for in their camera feeds. For example, City A might permit City B to search exclusively for a stolen vehicle, a missing person, or a violent crime.

      Regarding accountability tools, the Audit Assistance feature identifies unusual activity for an administrator's review, having launched 16 weeks prior, with over a third of customers currently utilizing it. By the end of the year, it will be mandatory for all law enforcement clients. A related feature, Proactive Lockout, will automatically suspend access when behaviors fall within the abnormal criteria. Officers will now be required to attach a records management code to searches, with emergency bypasses flagged for further review. Case codes were introduced as an optional feature in July 2025, but Langley mentioned he had initially resisted making them obligatory, recognizing that it’s a clear measure to prevent misuse.

      Concerning security, accuracy, and transparency, Flock engaged the security firm Bishop Fox to assess its systems this year, with a summary of the findings and subsequent fixes set to publish in September. The company has initiated a coordinated vulnerability disclosure program for researchers and made multi-factor authentication mandatory as of the start of this month.

      In terms of accuracy, the post claims that there are fewer than nine human-reported errors for every million alerts and that models are retrained weekly. Low-confidence reads are filtered out before they reach officers. The principle stated is that “an alert is a lead, not a conclusion.” Additionally, over 1,500 agencies maintain a transparency portal that details their policies, retention periods, and sharing partners.

      The impetus for these changes stemmed from reports by The Washington Post, which uncovered nearly 50 cases of officers being charged or accused of unauthorized use of the system, primarily for tracking current or former partners or family members. Recently, the Savannah Police Department terminated six employees, including four officers, discovering the unauthorized searches through Flock's voluntary audit feature.

      Langley specifically addressed one reported case of stalking, expressing regret and stating that the company could have acted more decisively earlier. Misreads have resulted in traffic stops as well; for instance, police in Plymouth, Minnesota wrongfully detained Joel Feder due to incorrectly submitted partial plate information in an FBI database. Langley acknowledged the multiple errors contributing to such incidents.

      The changes aim to address the immigration topic as well, allowing customers to block external searches related to immigration enforcement, according to the Associated Press. Flock asserts it has no contracts with ICE and does not share data independently. Its stance is that those who control the data determine access. The company removed federal entities from statewide and national lookup networks in August 2025 and, in January, introduced a toggle allowing an agency to disable all federal sharing.

      Critics have responded variously. The American Civil Liberties Union characterized the measures as rehashed inadequate safeguards but noted the shorter retention period could be a positive move. Conversely, Robert Frommer from the Institute for Justice described the package as superficial changes made in a state of panic, asserting that the fundamental problem remains unaddressed. He emphasized that it’s up to police officers to decide who to search rather than a judicial process. Andrew Guthrie Ferguson from George Washington University Law School viewed the alterations as better than the alternative but called for ongoing democratic dialogue regarding the regulations and judicial oversight for access.

      Chuck Wexler from the Police Executive Research Forum suggested that departments can find a balance, typically driven more by department policies than company actions. The Center for Democracy and Technology criticized the approach further, suggesting it merely represents a refreshed "Just Trust Us" policy.

      Established in 2017, Flock operates over 120,000 cameras across 49 states, serving around 6,000 law enforcement agencies and about 1,000 private customers, including FedEx and Lowe’s. By June, the annual revenue run rate was reported at $500 million, up from $300 million in January, with a valuation of approximately $8.3 billion. Langley emphasized that the company is not “Big Brother” but is focused on