If you’ve followed the Flock Safety story, it’s easy to file it under “cameras are creepy.” I think the lawsuits point at something more specific, and it matters for anyone whose data sits in someone else’s database, which is nearly everyone.
Here is what has been filed. Everything below is an allegation. None of these cases has been decided.
California. In February 2026, two California residents filed a proposed class action alleging Flock’s license plate reader network let federal and out-of-state agencies search where California drivers had been. Flock moved the case to federal court, and the plaintiff group has since grown from two to ten, according to a summary of the docket.
Georgia, nationwide. On August 25, a Georgia woman filed a federal class action seeking to represent everyone in the country whose plate was scanned by a Flock camera since January 1, 2024, per local reporting. The complaint points to mid-2026 arrests by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation of police personnel accused of using the database to track people for personal reasons. It also argues that even at Flock’s own claimed accuracy, the sheer volume of scans would put up to 1.4 billion inaccurate records into the system every month.
Georgia, second suit. A separate class action argues Flock is responsible for officers misusing the system because Flock controls the platform that lets them access and share the data, as described here.
Flock has said it will require all of its law enforcement customers to use an audit assistance feature by the end of 2026, per Atlanta News First.
What I take from this
Across these cases, the plaintiffs’ arguments go beyond the fact that data was collected. A lot of the weight falls on who could search it, who could share it, and who was checking. The fix Flock is now promising is an audit feature. That is my reading of the pattern, not a legal conclusion.
It’s the same question I keep coming back to with data brokers. Once your information is in a database, the risk is everything that can happen to it afterward.
I’m building a product of my own that handles customers’ data, and these cases are why I’ve started writing down every “who can see what?” question I run into. Starting tomorrow I’ll share them in a short weekly series called Shipping Secure.
What I can and can’t do about it
I want to be straight about this. ScrubTrace can’t remove your license plate scans from Flock. That is outside what I do. What I do is data brokers: I look for where your personal information is listed and send the removal requests.
If this story made you wonder how much of your information is out there, my free scan at scrubtrace.com is a reasonable place to start. It’s manual and I review it myself, so it takes a little time.
This post is general information, not legal advice.
Sources
Flock lawsuits
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