Flock cameras in Texas: Pflugerville City Council rejects new agreement

PFLUGERVILLE, Texas - The City of Pflugerville has turned off and is covering the Flock license plate reader cameras in the city.

The city says that the cameras had been operational while negotiations were underway to extend the current contract.

The city's contract ended on July 31.

City Council votes to end Flock contract

The Latest:

The City Council held a meeting Tuesday night in which they discussed the cameras and the contract extension. Council ended up voting unanimously to end its agreement with Flock.

All 28 automated license plate reader cameras included in the contract will be turned off and covered.

"Public safety and public trust have to go hand in hand, and recent revelations about the Flock system have fueled concerns throughout the community; we can’t engage with organizations we can’t trust," Mayor Doug Weiss said. "Council will continue to explore tools to support law enforcement, but any vendors the City uses would need to have the safeguards in place to earn and keep the community’s confidence."

The Pflugerville Police Department has been using Flock ALPR cameras since 2020 and, if approved, the new agreement would have extended that lease by two years with updated privacy, security and data policies.

"ALPR technology is a valuable investigative tool, and we have seen firsthand its ability to help protect our community during critical incidents," Pflugerville Police Chief Willie Richards said. "But as useful as this tool is, we must have confidence that the safeguards and settings we put in place function exactly as intended. Unfortunately, we’ve lost confidence in the current system and the vendor’s ability to meet our data and privacy standards."

What sparked the shutdown of Flock cameras in Pflugerville?

What they're saying:

The city says staff has been directed to cover all city-leased cameras after an issue was discovered in the cameras' operating system.

The issue reportedly allowed non-partner law enforcement agencies to access the city's Flock data.

According to the Pflugerville Police Department's policies, the city's Flock data was only allowed to be accessed by authorized personnel and approved partner agencies for active criminal investigation.

Dig deeper:

City Councilmember Jonathan Coffman posted about the shutdown, sharing what he had learned from a phone call with the City Manager.

Coffman stated that the City Manager confirmed to him that a staff investigation into the issue revealed the system had been configured correctly "set to block the exact statewide and national sharing we were told wasn't happening."

"It happened anyway. Our settings said one thing. The system appears to be doing something else. The vendor is now aware of the reported issue," added Coffman. "To be clear, I don't believe anyone affiliated with or working for the City misconfigured a setting or hid something from Council or the public."

By the numbers:

According to Coffman, a Pflugerville resident had obtained the city's Flock records from a Texas Public Information Act request. Those records showed that 459 outside organizations conducted nearly 1.6 million searches that included Pflugerville's camera network over the last six months, says Coffman. 

Those organizations included some hundreds of miles away and outside of Texas, he added.

On Flock's own website, only 78 organizations are listed as having access to Pflugerville's data, and all are located within Texas.

Flock says there are 32 license plate reader cameras connected to the Pflugerville Police Department.

What's next:

At Tuesday night's meeting, there was overwhelming support for city leaders to end the contract with Flock after more than 150 people sent them letters to do so. The city plans to move on from Flock cameras.

The city is even considering legal action against the company over the privacy concerns and data sharing.

Coffman says that he will be calling for all contracts with Flock to be immediately canceled and for the Council to suspend Clearview AI and any other high-risk surveillance technology until "our policies and operations can catch up to what we now know."

Council also plans to vote on a new data governance policy for Secure, Accountable, Fair and Explainable technology (or SAFE) at a future meeting.

The city says that policy will codify standards for protecting "City data and confidential information, pairing accountable human judgment with technological outputs, and ensuring public transparency around —and City Council approval of — high-risk systems like ALPR technology."

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