Flock Safety class action sued for sharing California license plate data with federal agencies
Law firms Gibbs Mura and Milberg PLLC filed a class action lawsuit against Flock Safety on February 26, 2026, alleging the company's license plate reader system shared California drivers' location data with federal and out-of-state law enforcement agencies in violation of California privacy laws. An audit by El Cerrito Police Department confirmed that federal agencies including the FBI and ATF accessed the department's data without authorization after system deployment in June 2023.
What happened
On February 26, 2026, law firms Gibbs Mura and Milberg PLLC filed a class action lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court against Flock Safety alleging the company's automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras violated California privacy laws by sharing license plate data with out-of-state agencies, including police departments outside California and federal authorities.
According to the lawsuit, Flock's AI-powered software captures images of every vehicle passing monitored streets and records their license plate numbers to track drivers' movements. The lawsuit alleges violations of California's ALPR Privacy Act (SB 34 from 2015), California's Unfair Competition Law, and privacy rights in California's Constitution and common law.
An audit by El Cerrito Police Department verified that federal agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and GSA Office of the Inspector General, accessed the department's Flock data without authorization when cameras were installed in June 2023 until the department took administrative control two months later. Additional unauthorized federal access was documented between September and November 2023 by the United States Postal Inspection Service.
Reported impact
The lawsuit alleges that Flock's mass surveillance system threatens Californians' privacy rights by collecting and storing vast amounts of information about innocent people. Over 200 municipal police and sheriff's departments across California use Flock's license plate readers, including San Francisco and Oakland.
Data from the San Francisco Police Department's Flock cameras was accessed by federal and out-of-state agencies more than 1.6 million times during a seven-month period, and Los Altos's readers reportedly shared information to out-of-state agencies more than a million times.
Index analysis
The incident reflects inadequate access controls in Flock's system architecture that allowed unauthorized external agencies to access California police departments' license plate databases. Flock stated it promptly fixed flaws in configuration settings that enabled the unauthorized access.
Governance controls
San Jose Police Department implemented safeguards including requiring more documentation from outside agencies, limiting camera locations, and reducing data retention to 30 days instead of a year. Mountain View City Council voted unanimously to end its contract with Flock in response to the privacy concerns.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.