Flock says the searches were “testing and validating” its moderation safeguards, not investigative searches
Company that manufactures and operates the license-plate-reader cameras, through a company spokesperson
“Flock City PD is a demo and testing organization name used for law enforcement demonstrations and for our development engineers to conduct testing. Those searches were part of testing and validating FreeForm search moderation and related safeguards. These were not investigative searches conducted by a customer agency.”
Source and context
Reporting
About this source
404 Media's report, read in full on 2026-09-22, based on public records showing search audit logs from accounts named "Flock City PD - Law Enforcement Demo," "Flock Intelligence," and "Flock Safety - Commercial Sales Demo," which ran searches on live automated license plate reader cameras in Dunwoody, Georgia and Bryan, Texas, among other jurisdictions.
Official statement
About this source
Flock Safety's own blog post explaining its testing and development program, cited by 404 Media as the company's explanation for why sensitive search terms exist in its moderation policy testing.
Before the quotation
404 Media's report was based on public-records audit logs showing searches run by Flock City PD and related demo accounts on live cameras in Dunwoody, Georgia and Bryan, Texas.
After the quotation
404 Media reported that the audit logs nonetheless showed several sensitive searches, such as "crowd" and "a person wearing scrubs," were explicitly allowed rather than blocked, and that others, including "Star of David," received only a warning.
How this statement is classified
Responding to: The sensitive searches run through the Flock City PD and related demo accounts, including for "Star of David" and "vehicle a pretty girl would drive," were internal tests of the company's search-moderation safeguards, not investigative searches conducted by a customer law enforcement agency.
The label describes this statement’s response within the context above.
Why this label?
Relative to whether Flock Safety's use of fake police accounts to search live license-plate cameras for sensitive queries was appropriate, Flock characterizes the searches as legitimate internal testing of its own safeguards rather than improper surveillance, directly excusing the conduct 404 Media's audit logs document.
- Recorded on
- Published here
Did Flock Safety's Use of Fake Police Accounts to Search Live License-Plate Cameras Cross a Line?
Explore the case context, sources and public responses.
More from this case
Read the full case“Flock's claims that they impose restrictions on what users can search for in their database provides the opposite assurance of what they seem to purport. In doing so, they admit that their dynamic surveillance network does in fact capture this sensitive information, and that the gate to that information is controlled solely by the policies of a for-profit corporation.”Read statement