Three days after the deal closed, Flock, apparently alive to the optics of its employees viewing a community center pool through police cameras, released a blog post titled “Understanding Flock’s Testing and Development Program.” Personally, I would not have chosen to link “employees viewing a gymnastics room” to “testing and development.” But this is Flock.

The issue Flock’s blog post addresses was raised by Dunwoody resident Jason Hunyar and amplified by YouTuber Benn Jordan: Dunwoody PD’s event logs (similar to, but not the same as, the “ALPR audit logs” this site publishes) showed Flock executives had opened camera streams inside the JCC on numerous occasions, for durations the logs don’t record. For the details, see Jason’s write-up and the posts about the April 13 Dunwoody meeting and its outcome.

The post was published under Josh Thomas’ name—the company’s Chief Communications Officer who has been speaking for Flock for the past eight years. It’s not a slapdash production by an engineering manager. His headline reads:

This article explains how Flock tests its technology in real-world environments, strengthens search safeguards, and addresses recent privacy questions about its development practices.

Let’s discuss these topics. And the buried lede.

The Lede Thomas Buried

Tucked into the middle of the post, presented as evidence of a safeguard working, is this:

In Dunwoody, a Flock employee performed a demo of this content moderation policy by searching for both “Star of David”, which our search moderation tool blocked, and “Cowboy hat,” which the search moderation tool allowed.

Flock describes the underlying feature, FreeForm, as a search tool that allows officers to query cameras for descriptive phrases like “man wearing a cowboy hat.” Read that together with the Dunwoody example: a Flock sales employee ran an identifying search against live Dunwoody camera data. The cowboy hat search, per Flock’s own description, returned results—real people, in Dunwoody, identified by what they were wearing, surfaced to a salesperson running a demo. The Star of David search was also made.

The only thing that stopped it from returning a list of Jewish residents of Dunwoody was a content filter Flock built, maintains, and can modify at any time without telling anyone.

Flock presents this as reassuring. It is the opposite.

The architecture underneath the filter is the actual story. Flock’s patent, US 11,416,545, titled “System and method for object based query of video content captured by a dynamic surveillance network,” describes parsing video “for content” and storing it “in a database in connection with data that identifies the content (object class, aspects of the object, confidence scores, time and location data, etc.).”

The patent family extends to neural networks trained to identify clothing, estimate height and weight, and classify other physical characteristics of individuals—stored, by design, in searchable databases. That is an index. It is being built continuously, by design, and is queryable by any user Flock decides gets a search box.

The filters, which are themselves AI-based pattern matching rather than deterministic blocks, block certain query strings against that index. They do not prevent the indexing. The filter can be modified or turned off. If it even works at all.

Flock is asking for credit because its AI blocks certain searches. The thing worth noticing is what those searches are being run against, and who is running them.

Recent Privacy Questions About Development Practices

Now the post’s stated topic. In his post, Jason makes a number of factual allegations, all sourced directly from Flock event logs, before concluding:

On September 30th, 2025 - Bob [Carter, VP Business Development, Flock Safety] looked at just one camera. This camera is in the gymnastics room of the JCC. I personally am curious about why a sales employee from Flock would be viewing the gymnastics room. I think this also deserves an explanation.

…

The public deserves to know why Flock employees are using Dunwoody’s Flock system to look at live videos of people and children in the pool, gymnastic facilities, and fitness studios.

Note what Jason actually asks for: an explanation. Not a prosecution, not a verdict, not a character judgment. An explanation of why sales employees at a surveillance vendor are logged into a police department’s system looking at cameras inside a community center. That question has been outstanding since January, when Jason first brought it to the city council.

In its March meeting, long after Jason first contacted the city, Dunwoody IT presented the results of their security audit. Dunwoody looked at the same logs and found no issues.^[1] They didn’t answer Jason’s question. A month later, the mayor didn’t mention that city staff had already gone over these logs. She didn’t answer Jason’s question.

Now, three months after the question was asked, the answer is delivered via blog post: the employees named online are well-intentioned people who accessed a camera network with the city’s explicit permission, as part of their job, and are now being called predators for it.

Josh Thomas asks us to accept that it is part of his company’s sales executives’ jobs to give sales demos when kids are piled into the pool on a Wednesday afternoon, or when the gymnastics room is in active use on a Tuesday at lunch.

Here is the core of what is verifiable: a Flock executive, who does not work for the police, logged into a police account and opened a camera stream inside the gymnastics room at a community center.

The event logs published by Jason—which Flock does not dispute—show multiple accesses by at least two Flock employees, Bob Carter and Randy Gluck, to cameras inside the JCC across multiple dates in 2025, including cameras pointed at the gymnastics room, pools, and children’s facilities.

But the event logs show when a user starts viewing a stream. They don’t show when a user stops, or any detail to provide critical context. Maybe Flock’s employees now better understand how inadequate logging can facilitate abuse.

We can’t tell if looking up a license plate over and over in the middle of the night with only the stated reason of “investigation” is stalking. We also can’t tell if the “pool” camera was viewed for 30 seconds from a terminal inside a police station, or if it was left running for hours or days on a bedroom TV in another state.

Flock’s employees are seeing the end-result of multiple layers of failed policy, inadequate transparency, insufficient auditing, and no accountability. Employees at a private company should not have unescorted access to police surveillance data. If they had not had access, we would not be having this conversation. It’s that simple.

The principle of least privilege is not optional; it’s AC-6 under CJIS Security Policy v6.0; access should be limited to what’s “necessary to accomplish assigned organizational tasks.”^[2] Vendor and contractor access falls under PS-7 (External Personnel Security). Account management is AC-2. And the audit controls that would normally catch any of this are in AU-2 and AU-3, and AU-9. Nearly-identical controls exist under SOC 2 and ISO 27001. Both certifications Flock touts.

Months after the issue was first raised, Flock now claims the activity was approved under “the city’s demo partner agreement.” Flock did not provide its terms. Dunwoody never produced it in response to Jason’s open records requests. Flock employees at the March and April meetings didn’t mention it. The police chief and IT director stayed silent on it during the audit presentation at the March meeting. The mayor didn’t mention it when she addressed the issue at the April council meeting.

Dunwoody has now signed the deal. The incentive to stay on-message is gone, and Flock has moved directly to publicly accusing its “partner” of hiding an agreement as a post-hoc justification of its violation of public trust.

On Being Accused of Accusing People

Flock’s post includes this line, which is the most carefully lawyered sentence in it:

Accusing someone of spying on children is not a policy disagreement; it is a life-altering allegation.

Correct. Fortunately, no one in this story has made that accusation. Jason asked for an explanation—in writing, to the Dunwoody city council, on January 12, and every month since. What Flock has now done, three months later, is respond to an accusation Jason did not make.

Flock employees had the technical capability to watch children at a community center and accessed cameras pointed at those children. Whether any individual Flock employee used that capability maliciously is unknown and largely beside the point. The capability is the problem. The access is the problem. The absence of any meaningful oversight is the problem.

Josh Thomas would like the story to be about what is in a sales executive’s heart, because that is a story he can win. The story he can’t win is the one about Flock’s architecture.

What the Logs Actually Show

Flock’s post frames the Dunwoody events as a single routine demo at an unusually sensitive location. The event logs Jason obtained by open records request show 185 JCC-camera accesses by Flock VP Bob Carter alone since January 2025.

The network sharing is even worse. The JCC’s private camera network, labeled in Flock’s system “Dunwoody GA PD - Atlanta JCC Avigilon (Do Not Share),” was at one point actively shared by Dunwoody PD with three outside agencies, including Lawrenceville GA PD, which received permissions to view, record, and download live video streams.

That sharing was removed only after Jason disclosed it to Dunwoody’s chief, and the removal was performed by a user (“John Watson”) not in the user export—which should include historical users. A ghost administrator corrected a misconfiguration that was not supposed to exist in the first place.

At the March council meeting, Dunwoody’s own lieutenant told the public that only two neighboring agencies view live streams and that liveview access is “strictly reviewed and on a case by case basis.” The logs show 1,271 agencies with access. The logs show no access by any agency, including the two confirmed active users.

This is the environment in which Flock employees, in Josh Thomas’s description, are “well-intentioned” and “accessed a camera network with the city’s explicit permission.”

They may be. There is no way to know.

Strengthened Search Safeguards

This takes up the most space in Flock’s post; we can keep it short here. Flock describes its existing broken AI-based “FreeForm” moderation system, which did exactly nothing to prevent anything that happened here.

Testing Technology in Real World Environments

Mentioned in the same breath as “development practices.” Flock does not distinguish between “development,” “testing,” and “production”—in its post or in practice. It’s not an uncommon problem for venture-backed software companies, but it’s not a small one for Flock. I have written about this many times before, and Flock continues to signal it will do nothing to address it.

Flock’s approach is to let its developers and sales execs loose on a real police department’s account, connected to real cameras, pointed at real people—and, yes, real children.

The Cybertruck example Flock offers is this:

Here’s a concrete example: when the Tesla Cybertruck came out, we had to build a whole new ML algorithm to identify it. Nothing had been seen like that before. This requires testing and training the models in real-world conditions.

“A whole new ML algorithm” is an overstatement. Flock was failing to detect the Cybertruck as a car (or truck, or whatever it is). That’s a training task, not a new algorithm, and an entire industry exists to support exactly that kind of image-recognition training.

Even if Flock does all its ML work in-house, whether overseas or not, and uses only data collected under its government contracts, all it requires is an image and someone to answer: “Cybertruck or not Cybertruck?”

Nobody at Flock needs access to a police account. Not for software development. Not for sales demos.

The Remediation

Flock describes its fix this way:

Although the camera was only viewed once during a routine demo, we understand that this is a sensitive location for many. We have therefore determined that employees will be trained to only conduct demos in more public locations, like retail parking lots.

So the reform is: Flock sales employees will continue to log into police surveillance systems, run demos against live resident data, and view live camera feeds. They will just point the cameras at people and children in more public places.

There is no commitment to stop using production police accounts for sales demos. No commitment to separate development, test, and production environments. No commitment to publish the demo partner agreements. No commitment to audit, retroactively, every access a Flock employee has made to Dunwoody’s cameras. No changes to the logs themselves. Nothing structural.

Jason’s records work also documented Flock employees using Dunwoody’s system to create API connections to third parties with whom Dunwoody has no contract; data funneled through those integrations falls outside any contractual framework. This will not be addressed.

Flock’s repetition that “local agencies—not Flock—control who can access their data” falls especially flat when it’s delivered in the same post where Flock argues that it needs access to that data because it “must be tested and demoed, both to ensure we get everything right on the technical side and so other agencies and businesses understand how the sharing works.”

If Dunwoody PD authorized Flock to share these video streams with “other agencies and businesses” then that is perhaps even more problematic than broken vendor policies and architectures. It’s a police agency acting entirely outside of the scope of its lawful duties to the detriment of the local community.

If true—if the Dunwoody chief of police allowed video from within the community center to be shared with “other agencies and businesses” without being authorized to do so by the council—he deserves to be held accountable.

The signature on the demo agreement will tell.

Addendum to My Previous Post

In my previous post I wrote:

The city’s new MSA does not prohibit Flock from accessing Dunwoody’s account, and continues to grant Flock a royalty-free license to “support and improve Flock’s products and services,” which arguably describes what happened here. The license has no specified term and cannot be revoked.

That remains true, but it understated Flock’s asserted basis for access. I had assumed Flock would rely on its license for business purposes. Instead, per the blog post:

Similarly, one of the benefits communities most value about Flock technology is the ability for law enforcement to directly access privately owned cameras, if and only if the organization allows them to, for crime-solving and security purposes. This is also a feature that must be tested and demoed, both to ensure we get everything right on the technical side and so other agencies and businesses understand how the sharing works.

In a deeply Nixonian “when I do it it’s not illegal” move, Flock treats “demos” for “other agencies and businesses” as part of the government agency’s “crime-solving and security purposes.”

That’s Flock’s real-world interpretation of “the customer owns 100% of the data” and “Flock does not access the data.”

What You Can Do

Flock has now publicly asserted that side agreements authorizing vendor access to police surveillance systems are standard practice. If that is true, such agreements may exist in your city.

They are almost certainly not posted on any public agenda. They were not, in Dunwoody, produced in response to ordinary records requests until Flock itself acknowledged them.

Consider filing a public-records request with your city or police department for any agreement or other record showing whether your agency has entered into a demo or testing arrangement with Flock.

If you obtain any such agreements, or if your agency confirms none exist, I’d love it if you let me know.

Parents across the country have a right to know whether Flock employees are watching cameras in their local daycares, community centers, and schools—whether the reason is software development, testing, sales demos, or something else.

The city also entered into a contract for FlockOS 911 that will see call data transferred to Invictus, under an order form that incorporates Flock’s standard website terms and a separate set of Prepared911 terms rather than the MSA the city just negotiated. The city’s existing Flock-provided contract with ForceMetrics for sensitive, federally-regulated criminal justice information and health data did not get a mention at all in either the meeting or the new MSA.

The most controversial aspect of the relationship, that Flock employees on Dunwoody’s account had been caught watching the pool and gymnastics room at the community center, was vaguely explained and addressed only through platitudes before being hand-waved away.

If your city has Flock cameras, the contract almost certainly contains the same structural problems described below. Flock’s standard terms give it effective ownership of your data, cap its liability at near-zero, and leave critical regulatory obligations undefined. Dunwoody tried to negotiate and still ended up here.

Sales Demos and Empty Promises

The explanation was that Flock had been using the cameras in the gymnastics center for its sales demos. It wasn’t a case of Flock executives watching children, the mayor assured the crowd. It was Flock executives showing children to some unnamed third party to sell its product. This, in the council’s view, made the situation better somehow.

The city’s new MSA does not prohibit Flock from accessing Dunwoody’s account, and continues to grant Flock a royalty-free license to “support and improve Flock’s products and services,” which arguably describes what happened here. The license has no specified term and cannot be revoked.

The city will also continue to pay^[1] to send video surveillance footage from inside the privately-owned and -operated rec center and daycare to Flock.

But, rather than write safeguards into the agreement up for a vote, residents were told Flock had promised not to do it again. In the future, Flock promises, it will not expose images of Dunwoody children practicing gymnastics or going for a swim as marketing materials for its sales prospects.

The council accepted the explanation and the promise at face-value and without further inquiry.

What Dunwoody Didn’t Win

A day before the meeting, councilmember Joe Seconder had told Jason Hunyar, the soon-to-be Dunwoody Dad who discovered Flock’s viewing of the rec center, that the MSA would be raised “as a discussion item, not a vote.” This would be so “there will be additional time to provide feedback on the MSA … and what kind of revisions we can have set forth before a vote is held by council.”

Councilmember Seconder voted to adopt the MSA at that same meeting.

@Master Service Agreement

It prohibits Flock from using Customer Data “to train, fine-tune, or improve any machine learning, artificial intelligence, or algorithmic models” without written authorization from the City Manager. An email suffices.

It contractually mandates existing Flock features for data governance: a Federal Sharing Toggle that lets the city disable all data sharing with federal agencies (as defined by Flock), and a toggle to require case numbers and search justification for every query. Neither feature has to be enabled, but both must exist.

It contractually includes Flock’s “audit log masking”, where Flock no longer exposes the complete audit trail to its customers, framing it as a measure “to protect active investigations, law-enforcement operations, and sensitive data.”

It also requires a post-login CJIS acknowledgment requirement. Never mind that the aforementioned audit logs are a required component of CJIS compliance.

It freezes Flock’s incorporated Online Terms as of the Effective Date and bars unilateral changes without a written amendment signed by the Mayor or City Manager — but stops short at requiring council approval to modify the agreement approved by council.

These are concessions that sound good but collapse under even minimal scrutiny. They do not address the structural problems that make the rest of the contract a liability.

What Dunwoody Lost

The standard terms that place effective data ownership with Flock are left unmodified:

Flock retains the exclusive right to determine and control the method, timing, format, and medium of access or delivery of Customer Data … and is not obligated to provide Customer Data in any alternative form, format or transmission method outside of the Web Interface.

It’s not your data if you can’t access it and Flock doesn’t have to hand it over. It’s also not definitionally your data:

For clarity, Flock Property also includes any derivative works, intermediate or final outputs, analyses, reports, models, or other results generated by or through the Flock Services. Except for the limited ability to access and download Customer Data within the applicable Retention Period, no rights are granted to download, extract, export, or otherwise create or retain copies of such derivative works, outputs, or other elements of Flock Property.

A license plate number, a vehicle description, and arguably the raw image that Dunwoody won’t be able to access are a “derivative work,” “output,” or “result” “generated by or through the Flock Services.” “No rights are granted” to Dunwoody to any of this data.

Until the city manager sends an email, the AI/ML restriction limits what Flock can do with Customer Data for model training. It does nothing about data Flock classifies as Flock Property.

The Battle of the Order Forms

The city’s outside counsel assured the city council that the MSA with Flock would govern the city’s agreement with Invictus. She did not explain how the MSA, between Flock and Dunwoody, applies to an agreement with a separate company. She addressed the incorporation of Flock’s online terms by conclusorily asserting that the MSA would control; a possibility, not a given.

The FlockOS 911 order form does not incorporate the MSA. It incorporates the terms and conditions on Flock’s website and the Prepared911 Terms and Conditions at a separate URL. The council’s motion conditioned approval on execution of the MSA, but a condition precedent to signing is not the same as incorporating the MSA’s terms into the document being signed. The order form still says what it says. The council unanimously voted to sign the form that incorporates those terms rather than cross out the references and explicitly incorporate the MSA.

If Flock were to make the argument that the MSA does not govern the FlockOS 911 contract, it would have a strong position; the council agreed to the terms after adopting the MSA, and the MSA’s governance does not definitively follow from its structure:

The MSA defines “Agreement” to be the MSA plus any Order Forms. Its conflict-resolution clause handles conflicts between the “Agreement” (which includes the Order Form) and (1) any statement of work or purchase order, (2) special terms listed on an order form, (3) incorporated online terms. Conflicts between the “Agreement” and any “Order Form” (which is a part of the “Agreement”) are left unaddressed, because they are definitionally the same document.

$0 Liability

It’s a circular structure that’s especially damaging in the case of the Drone-as-First-Responder (DFR) contract:

1. Dunwoody signed a DFR agreement at some unspecified earlier date.^[2]
2. The MSA is executed. It “supersedes all prior agreements, understandings, and representations relating to the Flock Services.” The original DFR agreement is now dead.
3. The new DFR Order Form, approved during the April meeting, is executed “on the date hereof or following the Effective Date,” so it’s automatically part of the “Agreement.”

But the new Order Form incorporates “the previously executed agreement,” the document the MSA just killed in Step 2. It’s trying to resurrect terms that the Entire Agreement clause superseded. The conflict clause can’t resolve this. Not because it wasn’t designed for necromancy but because the new Order Form can’t conflict with the Agreement because it is the Agreement. There’s no hierarchy for resolving an internal contradiction within the Agreement itself.

The city is prepaying $200,000 for “Flock Hardware” it does not own and cannot maintain, per the MSA,^[3] but that’s not even the worst part: the MSA caps Flock’s aggregate liability at the total amount paid in the twelve months before a claim arises. Because the entire $200,000 is due at signing, in year two the amount paid in the preceding twelve months will be $0. Flock will carry no financial liability at all for operating an aircraft under contract with Dunwoody.

Drones, like any aircraft, are heavily regulated by the FAA. Those regulations are complex and violations can lead to severe penalties. Unsafe drone operations endanger other aircraft and persons on the ground. It wouldn’t be the first time a police drone collided with another aircraft.^[4]

Pricing

The pricing on the drone contracts is opaque. The first DFR Order Form lists a $300,000 contract total: $100,000 due in July 2025 and $200,000 recurring in January 2026, with a $160,699.50 discount on “Flock Safety Drone Hardware and Services”:

The second shows $200,000 due at signing with no discounts at all:

The first order is for “Flock Safety DFR 2.0 - 400ft”. The second for “Flock DFR - M4TD + Dock 3 (2 System Set)” and “Flock911 for Aerodome”. All items are priced as “included” under a platform fee that conceals the cost of each component.

Chief Carlson’s memo describes the second agreement as “the installation of additional DFR (Drone as First Responder) coverage,” which, I’m told, means Flock will add an additional drone.

Agreements All the Way Down

The original DFR agreement, the “previously executed agreement” on the order form, is an 11-page contract with a Product Addendum for “Unmanned Air Support as a Service,” two schedules covering training and specifications, and terms that place virtually all operational liability on the city.

@The original Dunwoody-Flock Drone Agreement

That agreement itself incorporates another “previously executed agreement” on its order form. That appears to be a “Government Customer Service Agreement” from 2021, which is specific to ALPR.

The original drone agreement makes Dunwoody responsible for ensuring that all crew, including pilots, visual observers, and sensor operators, hold the qualifications and certificates required by applicable FAA regulations. It also assigns the city “the entire risk of loss, damage to, theft or destruction of, all Flock Hardware” and states, in all capitals, that loss or damage “SHALL NOT RELIEVE CUSTOMER OF ANY OBLIGATION UNDER THE AGREEMENT.”

The agreement carves all drone data, including flight logs, telemetry, radar, and fleet information, out of Customer Data entirely. It classifies it as “Flock Drone IP” owned exclusively by Flock. The city cannot share any of it with third parties without Flock’s written consent. That restriction says “any third party” without an exception for regulatory authorities, covering the patently absurd situation where the city’s pilots can’t disclose flight logs or telemetry to the FAA or even ATC.

None of this is in the MSA that council reviewed and approved. The MSA has no terms concerning the drone program. If counsel is right that the MSA controls, the original drone terms are dead and there is nothing governing drone operations, FAA certification, pilot responsibilities, or risk of loss.

If the original terms survive through the Order Form’s incorporation clause, Dunwoody is responsible for everything: the pilots, the certifications, the waivers, the airworthiness, and the losses, while Flock owns the data the drones generate. Because it’s an order form, the MSA’s conflicts clause is inapplicable.

Either way, council and residents were told they had a negotiated deal: they don’t.

The State of Madlibs

Then there are the ForceMetrics terms signed by the city. Those were stapled to a Flock order form in February 2025. ForceMetrics is a data aggregation and analytics platform that pulls together internal databases like CAD (dispatch), RMS (records management), and JMS (jail management).

@ForceMetrics Terms and Conditions

The “Informed Responder” product Dunwoody uses “surfac[es] real-time Safety Signals in search results,” to give “first responders quick, actionable insights into critical risks—such as mental health issues, dementia, drug use and domestic violence.”

The ForceMetrics agreement assigns itself a forever-license and ownership of all “Derived Data”, and claims to be the “final, complete and exclusive agreement between the Parties relating to the subject matter hereof”.

ForceMetrics receives federally-regulated criminal history record information and criminal justice information, like names, addresses, and domestic violence histories. It also gets information about mental health and substance history, categories that may be federally protected health information.

To add to this mess, the ForceMetrics terms set a different liability cap (“[t]o the extent authorized by the constitution and the laws of the State of ____,” nobody filled in the blank) and say any conflicts will be handled according to Colorado, not Georgia, law.

Flock Understands and Acknowledges

At the meeting, the most bizarre clause in the agreement was not questioned by council:

Flock understands and acknowledges that prior to Customer contracting for or using any new Flock Services that it does not use as of the Effective Date, Customer must obtain approval from the City Manager of Customer

Why Flock’s understanding matters is anyone’s guess. It could be a way to nullify any effect of the clause because it doesn’t place an affirmative duty on anyone, it merely says Flock understands something. At least someone does.

Looking past that, “any new Flock Services” presumably come with additional legal terms. Those terms, as we’ve seen here, tend to have significant effects on liability and obligations. For example, when the Flock Services send 911 caller data to parties like Invictus, or when the Flock Services come with a requirement to maintain FAA-certification.

In any organization with even slight governance in place, entering into those types of agreements is not something a staff member should be able to do, with or without city manager approval. The city attorney and city council should have a say.

Not here. Dunwoody PD will keep signing agreements without legal review or council approval. Flock will continue to operate its Dunwoody Lab as it has for years.

The MSA requires some software toggles without requiring a setting. The AI-training prohibition can, and likely will, be easily voided via an email from the city manager. Every single structural problem is left untouched: the data ownership, the liability cap that zeroes out on a prepaid contract, the order form chain that either governs nothing or governs too much, the ForceMetrics terms governed by a different state’s law with an unfilled blank in the indemnity clause, and the 911 contract that exists entirely outside of the scope of the MSA.

If there is ever a contractual violation severe enough not to be hand-waved away, one the PD and council find more concerning than using children in the pool for sales demos, Dunwoody will now have to spend a small fortune on litigating the mess it has allowed Flock to create.

Of course, when such contractual violations can be waved away with a vague assurance that it won’t happen again, Dunwoody is unlikely to stand up to Flock and to assert its contractual rights.

A public commenter characterized the relationship as abusive. That’s exactly what it looks like.

In 2021, the Riverside County Transportation Department issued the first of three encroachment permits to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department for the installation of Flock Safety cameras on county roads. By October 2023, the Board of Supervisors had unanimously approved a $6.9 million contract to expand the program to 538 cameras.

Four and a half years later, the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department’s Flock Transparency Portal shows the sheriff uses 1,718 “LPR and other cameras.”

A CPRA request to the Transportation Department produced three permits, a handful of emails, and a sworn declaration that may be more interesting than the permits themselves.

The Permits

Riverside County Ordinance 499 governs encroachments within county highway right-of-way. Any structure placed in the road right-of-way — including 13-foot surveillance poles with cameras and solar panels — requires a written permit from the Director of Transportation.

@Riverside County Ordinance 499 (as amended through 499.16)

Three such permits were issued:

ENC21120546 (December 10, 2021 – September 1, 2023)

Originally authorized two cameras. Expanded through riders to cover 33 named locations and a blanket permission to add more via individual location notifications (RD Form 136).

@ENC21120546 — Original Permit

@ENC21120546 — Rider 1

@ENC21120546 — Rider 2

ENC23110539 (November 14, 2023 – November 14, 2024)

An annual blanket permit covering “various county road rights of way.” This permit was explicitly styled as an extension of the first.

@ENC23110539 — Second Blanket Permit

ENC25061408 (December 5, 2025 – December 5, 2026)

Another annual blanket permit, the current one. It was issued with a single RD Form 136 notification on file — one camera, in Anza — and four total documents in the folder.

@ENC25061408 — Current Blanket Permit

No Permit, No Problem

The second permit expired on November 14, 2024. The third was not issued until December 5, 2025.^[1]

During those 13 months, the cameras did not come down. The $6.9 million contract continued and Flock’s operations apparently continued without interruption under Riverside County Sheriff and Republican gubernatorial candidate Chad Bianco’s watch.

Ordinance 499 Section 6 prohibits anyone from “constructing, installing, operating, or maintaining” any structure in the county right-of-way without a permit. That’s not limited to construction — it covers the cameras just sitting there running.

The permits themselves reinforce this. The authorized work is not just installation — each permit grants permission to “install, operate and maintain” the cameras. Each is “to be strictly construed and no work other than that specifically mentioned above authorized hereby.”

When the permit expires, so does the authorization to operate and maintain. The first permit’s void date was extended twice via riders — acts that only make sense if the date is an operative constraint. And in December 2025, the county issued a replacement permit with identical scope and authorization language. If the prior permit was still valid, the replacement was redundant.

The second permit’s own conditions made the obligation explicit. Condition M12 on ENC23110539 states: “Upon expiration of this permit, the permittee shall remove the temporary poles and cable.”^[2] The current permit repeats this language and adds: “It is the Permittees responsibility to maintain a valid permit.” The permittee did neither.

Nothing was removed. No extension was obtained. No replacement was issued for thirteen months.

The CPRA request covered all encroachment permits issued between January 2020 and March 2026. The county produced exactly three. The county certified under oath that no other encroachment permit, extension, or authorization exists.

No Application, No Problem

The county requires each permit application to be “in the name of the person, agency, entity, or authorized agent owning the encroachment and controlling the construction of the work.” It adds that the county “would require documentation of the Utility Owner’s authorization of a third party seeking a Permit on behalf of the Utility Owner.”

The applications list “Flock Safety” as applicant and owner — correctly, since Flock owns and installs the cameras. Three different Flock employees signed applications over the life of the program: Danny Campos, Will Warren, and Derek Porcella.

But the permits were not issued to Flock. They were issued to “Riverside County Sheriff Department C/O FLOCK SAFETY.” The Sheriff’s Department is the permittee on all three permits — holding the obligations, the liability, the strict construction clause — despite never having applied for them. There is no application from the Sheriff’s Department on file. No one at the Sheriff’s Department signed anything.

Flock applied. The Sheriff’s Department got the permits. And no authorization exists connecting the two. The county certified under oath that there are no letters of agency, powers of attorney, or similar documents from Flock authorizing the Sheriff’s Department — or anyone — to hold encroachment permits on Flock’s behalf. Nor are there any documents from the Sheriff’s Department authorizing Flock to apply on its behalf.

The county seemingly decided on its own that a permit applied for by “Applicant/Owner: Flock Safety” should be issued to the Sheriff’s Department. And Flock apparently decided that it could treat that permit as its own and forge ahead with installation.

And this didn’t happen once. The third permit application was byte-for-byte identical to the second one. The exact same PDF was filed under both permit numbers. Same date (November 7, 2023), same agent (Derek Porcella), same Flock Safety mailing address in Atlanta, same description of work, same signature.

And the same outcome: the new permit was also issued to the Sheriff’s Department, not the applicant.

@Permit Application — ENC23110539 / ENC25061408 (dated 11/7/2023)

No Authority, No Problem

This is the part that likely matters most, legally.

Riverside County Ordinance 499 Section 6 states that permits “will be issued for only Utility purposes” on county highways. The ordinance defines “Utility” as water, sewer, irrigation, gas, petroleum, cable TV, electric, and communications facilities. Surveillance cameras are none of these.

For non-utility encroachments, the Director of Transportation may issue a permit if satisfied of three things: (1) the use is in the public interest, (2) there will be no substantial injury to the county highway or impairment of its use, and (3) the use is reasonably necessary for the functions of the applicant.

Flock’s cameras are commercial surveillance products owned and operated by a private company. The Sheriff’s Department has a software service contract to access Flock’s data — both inside and outside Riverside County.

The Director’s finding that these cameras satisfy the three-prong test in Section 6 would be the legal prerequisite for every permit in the chain. Without it, the Director had no authority to issue any of them.

No such finding accompanied any permit application.

Whether such a finding could survive scrutiny is a separate question. Is a private company’s occupation of public right-of-way to operate a for-profit surveillance network “in the public interest”? Is it “reasonably necessary” for Flock’s functions that its cameras sit on county roads rather than, say, private property with the owner’s consent?

No Locations, No Problem

Riverside County has contracted for over 500 Flock cameras. Not all of those are on county roads. Some are on city streets, some on Caltrans state highway right-of-way, some on private property. The permit documents include handwritten annotations identifying specific cameras as “NON COUNTY/city,” “CALTRANS,” and “City St/Grand Terrace.”

Someone at the Transportation Department reviewed the camera deployment list, saw cameras on roads the county doesn’t control, and marked them accordingly. But no formal record of that analysis was ever created.

I asked for any records reflecting which of the 500+ cameras are within county highway right-of-way, or any determination that specific cameras did not require a permit. Again, the county certifies that no such records exist.

When the county’s records custodian was asked about the gap between 500+ contracted cameras and the roughly 80 installations documented in the permits, the only response was informal and vague: “some locations may not have been permitted as they could be private or non county maintained roads.”

That’s it. No spreadsheet, no memo, no analysis. The county issued blanket permits for “various county roads” — possibly subject to the typical Flock “deployment plan” — but never really determined which roads it was talking about.

No Traffic Plans, No Problem

Every encroachment permit in the production requires a traffic control plan under Condition C05 — a safety document showing how workers and traffic will be protected when someone is installing equipment in a roadway. The current permit, ENC25061408, goes further and requires the TCP to be signed by a Professional Engineer.

The county produced one set of traffic control plans: for the Spencer’s Crossing project, eight cameras, prepared in February 2023 under the first permit.

No other traffic control plans exist.

That’s a 98% noncompliance rate.

No Fees, No Problem

Section 15 of the ordinance requires that permit fees be paid “at or after the time application is filed, but in any event before the Permit is issued.” The fee fields on every application in the entire production — all three permits, every application, every rider — are blank.

Section 16 exempts public agencies from permit processing fees if they have “lawful authority” to use the right-of-way for the permitted purpose.

Flock applied in its own name. But the permits were issued to the Sheriff’s Department — a public agency — triggering the fee exemption. A private surveillance company applied, a public agency was listed as permittee, no fees were charged, and no one documented why.

No Records, No Problem

None of the above rests on inference or supposition. Each point traces back to a single document: a Declaration of Custodian of Records executed March 23, 2026, signed under penalty of perjury by the county’s records custodian.

The Declaration addresses each follow-up item individually and certifies that the county has no responsive records. This is not a case where documents might exist but were missed. This is the county’s official position, under oath, that these records do not exist.

This is not some isolated paperwork hiccup in Riverside County from a well-meaning county official unable to find records that really exist. Across the country, Flock cameras go up on public roads under permits that no one reviews, with safety standards no one enforces, issued to applicants that no one verifies. Flock routinely operates cameras with expired permits or without an active contract. Riverside County is one of many.

@Declaration of Custodian of Records — March 23, 2026

The Law in “Law & Order”

Riverside County’s surveillance camera program operated for over four years under three encroachment permits issued to an agency that never applied for them, based on applications from a company that never received them, without the legally required public interest determination, without traffic control plans for the vast majority of installations, without fees, and — for 13 months — without a permit at all.

Each of these permits was issued to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department. Flock — the owner/operator listed on the permit applications — never received a permit but still installed and continues to operate hundreds of surveillance cameras without a valid permit.

The $6.9 million contract belongs to Sheriff Chad Bianco’s office. The entire Flock deployment — from the first two cameras in 2021 to the 1,718 “LPRs and other cameras” now in Flock’s system under the sheriff’s name — occurred during his tenure.

Ordinance 499 Section 18 provides that any person who operates without a required permit, or who violates permit conditions in a way that jeopardizes person or property, is guilty of a misdemeanor punishable by fine, imprisonment, or both.

The wrong permittee is not a technicality. A 13-month gap is not a technicality. Not paying the fees is not a technicality. These are all separate material flaws resulting in unpermitted occupation of public right-of-way by a corporation, based on a permit issued to a sheriff tasked with enforcing the county ordinance that makes it a crime.

The Order in “Law & Order”

The county does not know, from its own records, which cameras needed permits. It has no mechanism to determine which cameras are on county roads, which are on state highways, and which are on someone else’s property.

The Director of Transportation issued permits to the Sheriff, who had never applied for any, without the required public interest finding, and without traffic control plans for all but one installation. When the second permit expired, no one acted. When a replacement was finally applied for thirteen months later it was with the same application — literally the same file — Flock had used for the prior permit. The new permit was also issued to the Sheriff.

That permit process was handled by a Permitting Manager at Flock with over a decade of experience in right-of-way permitting. None of these issues were discovered when processing the permits or through any audit or investigation in three years. Neither Flock’s permit expert, the Sheriff’s Department, nor the Transportation Department raised a flag.

That process — namedrop Chad Bianco, skip the fees, ignore the regulations — is the law and order he now offers California.

The Policy

Coralville’s ALPR policy,^[1] is a typical Lexipol-generated exercise in legal copy-pastery, virtually identical to neighboring North Liberty’s policy,^[2] but with the following, largely inoffensive, section:

That section was copy-pasted from Cedar Rapids’ policy, but it adds the non-sensical “protected characteristic” of infringing on the First Amendment, and a prohibition on use “[s]olely for immigration purposes”.

That “immigration purposes” clause was added in response to pressure from the public against the backdrop of increasingly aggressive ICE raids in Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago.

Coralville’s policy was always performative. Its prohibitions were unenforceable, and various aspects made no sense or made specific reference to the laws they facially clashed with. The Chief’s proposed policy only provided for secret oversight done exclusively within the police department with no mandatory reporting or penalties for violations—a fact specifically called out at the council meeting where the policy was adopted.

To dispel any notion that this was bad policy made in good faith: once the policy was adopted, the city almost immediately violated its own directive not to automatically share data with agencies outside Johnson County.

Residents noticed on the Coralville Flock transparency portal that Coralville PD had given Cedar Rapids (in neighboring Linn County) access. When asked about this by the public and the media—who all interpreted 427.7 as a ban on granting this type of unfettered, indefinite automated access to agencies outside Johnson County—the PD justified its actions by stating that Flock’s automatic sharing was fine because the request for automatic sharing had been made manually.^[3]

The Coralville Police Chief clearly has no qualms about sharing data. The Chief had already signed a two-year deal for mass surveillance after only talking to the City Administrator and without involving the city council, the city attorney, or finance; if he had been approached by state or federal agencies for access to Flock, there is no doubt in my mind that he would have granted it.

More so if the AG would follow the state playbook of mildly threatening sanctions, up to withholding all of a city’s state funding, for violating Iowa Code Chapter § 27A.4(1):

A local entity shall not adopt or enforce a policy or take any other action under which the local entity prohibits or discourages the enforcement of immigration laws.

Granting access for immigration purposes would be the path of least resistance for Coralville PD and its city administrator: the policy prevents oversight, and as long as the feds have access they won’t complain.

AG Bird has so far declined to enforce Iowa’s laws prohibiting surveillance data, or its laws on data security, consumer protection, or privacy, but she has threatened to use Chapter 27A to revoke funding for an entire county because its Sheriff dared distinguish between administrative and judicial warrants on Facebook.

The Gambit

For us folks who like their privacy, the gambit was clear then: file a complaint with the Iowa Attorney General about Coralville’s unlawful policy on the theory that if the AG acted, Coralville would have a choice:

1. Amend the policy. They’d need another public meeting, where the City Council, its Chief of Police, and its City Administrator, would have to face an increasingly disgruntled public’s "I told you so"s. They would have to tell the public they would be stripping the core protection they had emphatically promised only a few months earlier, after ICE had ratcheted up Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis.
2. Defy the Attorney General and risk being in an indefensible position in a legal battle that would put state funding on the line for a city of 22,000 that’s already $340M in debt, due to questionable financial decisions involving funding a private hotel and a video game arena.
3. Cancel the contract.

The violation in Coralville was much more direct than the Facebook post in rural Winneshiek County.

The Republican-led Capitol also has a long history of conflict with dark-blue Johnson County and its cities—including Coralville.

@October 2, 2025, AG Complaint Re: Coralville

I submitted the complaint by email as a PDF attachment. When I followed up a month later, I received a response:

Thank you for contacting the Iowa Attorney General’s Office. We have reviewed your concerns. The attachments referenced were not included with your email. Please forward those to our office so we can have them reviewed.

How the AG managed to review the complaint without receiving the attachments remains a mystery.

By January, after repeated attempts to deliver the complaint,^[4] I was ready to chalk it up to more inaction rather than lack of transparency, when I unexpectedly got word Coralville had been in contact with the Attorney General.

The AG had directed Coralville to “remov[e] Section 427.4.1(d) from Policy 427 [to] resolve the pending complaint in full.”^[5]

@December 16, 2025 letter from Attorney General to Coralville

Coralville city staff immediately acted to make changes to the city’s website and recommended that the offending language be removed from the PD’s policy. The AG considered this an acceptable solution.

@January 20, 2026 letter from Attorney General to Coralville

The Fallout: A Cancelled Contract and Transparency

Amending city policy requires council action. The Coralville City Council scheduled a work session following its next regular council meeting to discuss the AG’s letter. The Coralville community once again showed up and spoke out. It was effective: the council placed “Cancel the contract” on the agenda for its next meeting.

The $36,000 surveillance system that Chief Nicholson smuggled past his own city council, that the council spent months defending with contradictory and increasingly desperate arguments, that Flock’s own representative admitted was ungovernable by local policy — will be coming down.

But AG Bird did something else deserving mention: she placed my name in the opening sentence of the letter to Coralville. It is a choice to so readily disclose the identity of a complainant against a police department on a topic as politically charged as immigration enforcement.

It’s an especially unexpected level of transparency for an AG currently appealing a district court’s order that the Iowa Public Information Board (IPIB) must do its job and handle (not validate, handle) an open records complaint concerning Flock camera locations.^[6]

The Court of Appeals has been weighing that case since early last summer, which could mean the AG is not going to get a one-page order with an easy procedural win against a pro se appellee. That would be embarrassing (Update 2/25: Not 12 hours after posting this, the Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court decision—i.e., I prevailed).

The kicker is that, in the Coralville case, the original complaint is almost certainly a confidential public record under Iowa Code § 22.7(18). This is the “whistleblower protection” clause cities have used to hide community camera registries they have integrated with Axon’s Fusus (a “fusion center” software product similar to Flock’s “FlockOS”).

Communications not required by law … to the extent that the government body … could reasonably believe that those persons would be discouraged from making them to that government body if they were available for general public examination.

But, as I’ve noted while arguing with various state and local officials: the Iowa Open Records Act does not require agencies to withhold confidential public records, it merely permits it. The complaint was likely protected; the AG chose to disclose it anyway—while simultaneously litigating to prevent disclosure of public records in the IPIB case.

She exercises discretionary transparency when it serves her, rather than the public. She fights it when the roles are reversed.

The Cancellation

The gambit worked: on February 24, Coralville voted to end its contract with Flock. Within a span of weeks, both Iowa City and Coralville have instructed Flock to remove its AI surveillance cameras from public roadways. Although Iowa City is its own island within the state, this is a major victory in a state whose legislature is staunchly uncritical of police.

AG Bird got the outcome she wanted: the immigration clause is gone. But the community got the outcome it wanted: the cameras are coming down.

The AG’s selective transparency—naming a complainant against a police department while fighting to keep surveillance records secret—tells you everything you need to know about which side of the one-way mirror she prefers to stand on.

On February 16, 2026, Flock updated those terms again. The new version cleans up the structural contradictions in the December terms and locks in a set of provisions that are, in nearly every respect, worse for customers. It includes mandatory arbitration, moves disputes into the state of Georgia, and strips language that could hinder data sales.

The comparison report shows 147 changes across 96 replacements, 21 insertions, and 30 deletions. The document grew from 12 to 15 pages.

@Flock December 2025 Terms @Flock February 2026 Terms @Comparison report

Data Ownership: The Elegant Swindle

The December terms pulled an awkward trick. They defined “Footage” separately,^[1] excluded it from “Customer Data,” and then told customers they owned “Customer Data” — just not the actual images, video, and audio “their” cameras captured. It was clumsy, and it was obvious.

The February terms fix the clumsiness, but leave the harm.

“Footage” is no longer a defined term. It’s gone. “Customer Data” is redefined to include:

all (a) data and information captured by Flock Hardware on behalf of Customer through the Flock Services (e.g., images, audio, and/or video) and the metadata associated therewith^[2]

On paper, this looks like a win — footage is back inside Customer Data! Customers own their data again!

Not quite. Two things happened simultaneously.

First, the December commitment that “Flock does not own and shall not sell Customer Data” was deleted. That sentence no longer appears anywhere in the contract.

Second, the data license was expanded. December granted Flock:

a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable, worldwide license to use the Customer Data and perform all acts as may be necessary for Flock to provide the Flock Services to Customer^[3]

February grants Flock:

a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide license to (a) use and disclose Customer Data to provide the Flock Services; and (b) use Customer Data to support and improve Flock’s products and services^[4]

That’s two critical additions. The license is now perpetual — it doesn’t expire when the contract ends. And clause (b) allows Flock to use all Customer Data, including the footage it just folded back in, for its own product development. No restrictions. No limitations.

In December, customers owned the metadata but not the footage. In February, customers “own” everything — but Flock has a perpetual, irrevocable license to use all of it for anything it wants, forever.

The customer owns the house. Flock has a permanent, rent-free key.

Training Data Guardrails: Deleted

The December terms, for all their problems, included a detailed Training Data section^[5] with ostensible privacy commitments: images “stripped of all metadata and identifying information,” used “solely for the limited purpose of improving the Flock Services through machine learning,” “never sold or shared with third parties,” and “maintained separately and never combined in a manner that would render it personally identifiable.”

February deletes all of it. Section 4.3 is gone. In its place: clause (b) of the new data license — “use Customer Data to support and improve Flock’s products and services.”

Every guardrail the December terms promised for machine learning training has been removed:

• De-identification? Not required.
• Separate maintenance? Not required.
• Limited to “a small fraction of images”? No — the license covers all Customer Data.
• “Never sold or shared with third parties”? That commitment no longer exists.

The scope of data available for product development expanded from “a small fraction of images” stripped of identifying information, to the entire corpus of Customer Data — including footage, metadata, license plate numbers, timestamps, and geospatial coordinates — with no privacy restrictions whatsoever.

Governing Law: Georgia on Everyone’s Mind

This is the most significant net-new change the February terms introduce.

The December terms used the law of the state where the customer is located, with venue in that state’s courts.^[6] This was a standard and customer-favorable provision, particularly for government agencies that may have statutory rights to litigate in their home jurisdictions.

February replaces this with:

The Agreement … shall be governed exclusively by, and construed and enforced in accordance with, the laws of the State of Georgia, without regard to its conflicts of laws principles.^[7]

And it doesn’t stop at choice of law. The December terms contemplated normal court litigation. February imposes mandatory mediation followed by binding arbitration through the American Arbitration Association:

If any Dispute cannot be settled through direct discussions, the Parties agree to endeavor first to settle such Dispute by mediation administered by the American Arbitration Association under its Commercial Mediation Procedures before resorting to arbitration. The Parties further agree that any Dispute that remains unresolved by mediation shall be settled by arbitration.^[7:1]

For a government agency in Iowa, or California, or any state that isn’t Georgia, this means: if Flock breaches the contract, you don’t get to sue in your own courts under your own laws. You mediate, then arbitrate, under Georgia law, through the AAA.

Many state and local governments have statutes requiring government contracts to be governed by local law and adjudicated in local courts. Whether a mandatory arbitration clause in click-through terms can override those requirements is an open question — but one that a city’s attorney should be answering before the Order Form hits the consent agenda, not after.

Iowa’s Arbitration Statute: A Potential Defense

Although this will vary from state to state, for Iowa municipalities in particular, the mandatory arbitration clause may not survive contact with Iowa Code §679A.1(2). That statute provides that arbitration clauses for future controversies do not apply to “take it or leave it” contracts of adhesion.^[8]

Given the mechanism we’ve documented — Flock posts terms on its website, changes them at will, blocks Wayback Machine archiving, and requires cities to accept them via Order Form signature with no negotiation — there is a strong argument these qualify.

Iowa law also excludes tort claims from mandatory arbitration unless there is a separate writing executed by all parties specifically agreeing to arbitrate torts.^[9] Flock’s T&C is a single document — there is no separate tort arbitration agreement.

So if a city has a negligence claim against Flock — say, a data breach caused by failure to maintain reasonable security — the arbitration clause may not reach it under Iowa law regardless of whether the contract is adhesive.^[10]

Unfortunately, the taxpayer would be on the hook for the litigation—which could exceed the cost of the contract—either way.

Liability: The Gross Negligence Loophole Closes

The December terms capped Flock’s liability at 12 months of fees — standard SaaS boilerplate. But they included a critical exception:

NOTWITHSTANDING ANYTHING TO THE CONTRARY, THE FOREGOING LIMITATIONS OF LIABILITY SHALL NOT APPLY (I) IN THE EVENT OF GROSS NEGLIGENCE OR WILLFUL MISCONDUCT, OR (II) INDEMNIFICATION OBLIGATIONS.^[11]

February deletes this exception entirely.

Under the new terms, Flock’s liability is capped at 12 months of fees even if Flock acts with gross negligence or willful misconduct. If Flock deliberately or recklessly causes harm — say, through a data breach caused by knowing failure to maintain reasonable security — the customer’s maximum recovery is whatever it paid in the prior year.

The indemnification provisions are gone too. December’s §9.3 required Flock to indemnify customers for IP infringement claims and installation damage. February eliminates all indemnification language — Flock’s and the customer’s.

The removal of customer indemnity (which I flagged in December as a new and concerning addition) is technically customer-favorable in isolation.

The overall trade — dropping indemnification entirely while also removing the gross negligence exception — leaves customers in a strictly worse position.

Non-Appropriation: From Exit Ramp to Dead End

The December terms allowed government customers to terminate for non-appropriation with 30 days’ written notice “without penalty or other cost.”^[12]

February adds two restrictions:

Customer shall remain responsible for all amounts incurred prior to termination, and non-appropriation shall not be based on discretionary budget decisions or operate as a termination for convenience right.^[13]

The “discretionary budget decisions” language is the operative weapon here. When a city council decides not to fund a surveillance program, is that a “discretionary budget decision”?

Almost by definition, yes.

This provision appears designed to prevent government customers from using non-appropriation as an exit ramp when they simply decide they no longer want the service — which is, of course, the entire point of non-appropriation clauses.

The Constitutional Problem

In Iowa (and many other states), the non-appropriation clause isn’t a negotiating courtesy but the mechanism that keeps multi-year vendor contracts from being classified as “debt” under constitutional limits.

Debt levels for local governments can be capped.^[14] The standard way to keep a multi-year contract outside that cap is the non-appropriation clause: because the government can walk away if funds aren’t appropriated, the contract is a “current expense” rather than an enforceable multi-year debt obligation.

Iowa’s Department of Administrative Services procurement manual states that service contracts crossing fiscal year lines “should include a non-appropriation provision.”^[15] The Iowa League of Cities’ model debt policy is even more direct: certain agreements “must contain ‘annual appropriation’ provisions so that the agreement does not count against the city’s constitutional debt limit.”^[16]

If Flock’s restrictive language effectively nullifies the non-appropriation clause — by preventing cities from exercising it whenever the non-appropriation results from a “discretionary budget decision” — then the contract arguably creates an enforceable multi-year financial obligation.

That’s debt.

And if it’s debt, it may count against the constitutional cap, or worse, may require voter approval that was never obtained.

A Flock contract is unlikely to push a city over its debt limit on its own. But the principle matters: if a vendor can contractually prohibit a municipality from exercising its non-appropriation right, the constitutional protection is meaningless. Every vendor can do it. The debt limit becomes advisory.

Cities should ask their attorneys a simple question before signing: does this non-appropriation clause actually let us non-appropriate?

What Got Better

In the interest of completeness: a few changes are at least facially customer-favorable.

IP non-infringement warranty. February adds a new warranty that Flock’s services don’t infringe valid U.S. patents or registered copyrights.^[17] This is a real addition, though the carve-outs for customer combinations and customer breaches are standard.

Insurance specifics. December referenced a vague “Exhibit B” for insurance. February adds a detailed Exhibit A specifying $1M/$2M commercial general liability, $1M auto, $5M professional liability/E&O, and $5M cyber liability.^[18] Actual numbers are better than vague promises.

Retention Period coverage. December’s Retention Period applied to “Customer Data” (which excluded Footage), creating the implicit permission for indefinite footage retention that we identified in our previous analysis. February redefines the Retention Period to cover “footage captured by the Flock Hardware or Customer Hardware via the Flock Services and the associated metadata.”^[19] This theoretically closes that gap — though the period itself is still “as specified in the applicable Order Form,” which means Flock and the customer still negotiate it (or don’t) separately.

The Pattern

The December revision was the hostile restructuring. February is the cleanup.

December moved contract terms online, carved footage out of customer data, and expanded Flock’s IP claims. But it left contradictions and rough edges — the Training Data section still promised privacy guardrails that the rest of the contract was busy undermining; the governing law provision still favored customers; the liability cap still had exceptions for truly bad behavior.

February resolves those contradictions. Every resolution favors Flock.

The terms are now internally consistent: Flock has a perpetual, irrevocable license to all customer data for any purpose; disputes go to Georgia-law arbitration; liability is hard-capped regardless of fault; and the non-appropriation exit for government customers has been narrowed to the point where it may not function as intended — raising questions about whether these contracts create unconstitutional debt obligations for the municipalities that sign them.

Flock’s marketing materials, as of this writing, continue to claim that “Customers own 100% of the data collected.” The February contract no longer directly contradicts that claim but it does make it an elegant lie.

Flock Loblaw’s Law Blog

This section was added February 17, 2026. The points below address Flock’s blog post.

A Simpler, Clearer Definition of “Customer Data”

(Section text)

Agreed. It’s simple, it’s clear: there’s one big bucket of Customer Data and Flock gets a license to do whatever it wants with it.

Flock Does Not Own or Sell Customer Data

(Section text)

James Cameron owns the movie Titanic, but Walt Disney and Paramount can still charge me to see it. Cameron licensed the movie to them—to “support and improve their services.”

Ownership is irrelevant when the license grants control.

Clarifying the “Perpetual” License

(Section text)

First, “[t]his is a standard software industry provision” should hold no weight here. According to Flock (when it suits), we are dealing with sensitive criminal justice information and information that can jeopardize officer safety. Let’s not base protections on Silicon Valley trends.

The right to use data to support and improve those services must extend beyond the duration of a single customer’s contract.

Why? Why does Customer Data need to be used beyond the duration of the contract to “support and improve products and services”? It would be one thing to hang on to, say, user-submitted feedback, but that category was deleted in favor of the simplified “Customer Data” that includes the footage.

Removing that distinction is a choice.

Updates Around Disclosure Provisions

(Section text)

Similar to the “Customer Data” simplification, this deletes specific disclosure rules for each category of data in favor of a single simple and clear rule: “we can disclose what we want when we want to whomever we want.”

Governing Law

(Section text)

The updated Terms specify Georgia law as the governing law for the agreement, which is standard commercial practice

Standard practice or not, up until two days ago Flock “agree[d] that venue would be proper in the chosen courts of the State of which the Customer is located.”

Flock then quickly fast-forwards on the part where binding arbitration is now mandatory and Georgia law governs. This removes the contract from the state that its local government customers operate under.

Whether the actual arbitration ultimately happens at a Ramada in Des Moines or in a boardroom in Atlanta is irrelevant: the point is that anyone with a contract dispute must now hire a Georgia lawyer to play an Away game.

Standard Terms, Collaborative Approach

(Section text)

Finally, Flock claims it’s happy to negotiate while it continues to make its customers sign order forms that reference the terms on its website—where it can (and just did) update them at any time.

Updated February 18, 2026: Added “Section text” links. Added some clarifying statements.

I am not an attorney. This analysis reflects my interpretation of contract language and is subject to change. Cities should consult qualified attorneys regarding their specific agreements.

Flock has never been hacked. Ever. … It’s tough every day waking up to stories online that are misleading and only represent one side of the story, — Emails to Staunton, VA, Garrett Langley, Flock CEO, December 8–10, 2025.

Flock cameras are open for live viewing and footage downloading to anyone on the Internet. No hacking required, just type in the address; it’s one way to protect your “never been hacked” track record. Benn Jordan brings the receipts in his video titled "This Flock Camera Leak is like Netflix For Stalkers".

But, this post is about a smaller, but still significant, post on Flock’s own blog. It’s a screenshot included in Josh Thomas’ December 10, 2025, post titled “Offense Type Dropdown: A Simpler, More Accurate Audit.”

In the blog post, Flock announces “a new, required step in every ALPR Search: Offense Type Dropdowns,” noting “The existing Search Reason field will still be available as an optional place to add extra detail.”

With this modification, Flock has materially altered its service. Cities and the public were told “we require users to enter a reason for every search.” Even where contracts which were signed following a democratic process, which excludes quite a few contracts, Flock has thrown that democratic authorization in the dumpster and substituted its own judgment.

Of course, the “reason” field was always compliance theater, and there is no evidence to suggest that agencies regularly audit any search logs. Flock implemented warning popups to suggest users select another reason when they enter terms like “immigration,” but it’s safer to simply not to even offer the option.

The screenshot, however, shows a more direct violation of Flock’s prior terms of service. Although the terms vary based on the contract (at least, for now), the older contracts prohibit use of the system other than for a “permitted purpose”:

The purpose for usage of the equipment, the Services and support, and the Flock IP is solely to facilitate gathering evidence that could be used in a criminal investigation by the appropriate government agency and not for tracking activities that the system is not designed to capture (“Permitted Purpose”) — July 2023.

This language also appears to be what Flock CEO Garrett Langley references in a December 22 interview with Politico, when responding to the question “Do you worry about flock being used for dragnet surveillance? For example, police identifying all the cars in the vicinity of a protest?”

Langley falsely claims:

Our contracts mandate that our products can only be used for criminal investigations. What you’re describing, would be based on an issue that you might not trust your local police department. […] The police chief reports to a city council, a mayor, a city manager. My expectation is that if a police department was violating the Constitution or local legislation, that those individuals would be held accountable.

Aside from misplaced optimism about accountability without transparency, the language he references no longer appears in newer contracts. Flock has cut the “investigative purpose” language entirely:

“Permitted Purpose” means for legitimate public safety and/or business purpose, including but not limited to the awareness, prevention, and prosecution of crime; investigations; and prevention of commercial harm, to the extent permitted by law. — May 2025.

“Investigations” by itself, without further context, is now a permitted purpose.

It’s a loophole so big you could park a truck in it, but even then, it’s difficult to reconcile “City Planning/Traffic Analysis,” with public safety, business, or investigation.

Yet, it is an option in Flock’s “investigative purpose” dropdown.

Flock is quick to claim “local decisions” whenever misuse is documented, or to offload its own responsibility onto public oversight that its own products actively prevents.

This latest feature is yet more evidence that the company is not passive: it actively facilitates improper use of its systems, for purposes no city council approved.

This is the same company now asking cities to sign contracts it can rewrite at will.

The dropdown is the tell: Flock decides what the system is for. Your city council just pays for it.

5

Note

Flock published new terms in February, 2026. The February terms change the definition of “Customer Data” and remove “Footage” as a defined term. The new contract also grants Flock an extremely broad license to use the data, and includes a mandatory arbitration provision.

Read more.

How Flock Contracts Normally Work

The typical Flock contract consists of four primary documents, explicitly incorporated into one agreement:^[1][2] (1) an Order Form, (2) a Master Service Agreement, (3) a Deployment Plan, and (4) a Reinstall Fee Schedule.

Order Forms can often be found in City Council meeting minutes; they look like a purchase order for cameras (even though it’s a subscription for software). Unless you’re in Iowa, the Master Service Agreement is typically available via public records request—some cities publish it in agenda packets. The Deployment Plan is generally withheld for various made-up reasons, and the Reinstall Fee Schedule is a page on Flock’s website that Flock can change at will.

In that standard structure, the Order Form typically has the signature page, which contains something like:

By executing this Order Form, Customer represents and warrants that it has read and agrees to all of the terms and conditions contained in the Master Services Agreement attached.

So far, aside from the misleading layout of the Order Form, and agencies’ attempts at hiding these agreements from elected officials and the public, this is all fairly run-of-the-mill.

The Switch to Web-Based Terms

That changed recently. Flock adopted new Order Forms. They are virtually identical to the old ones, but, right above the signature line the new Order Form now reads:

By executing this Order Form, Customer represents and warrants that it has read and agrees all ^[3] of the terms and conditions contained in the Terms of Service located at https://www.flocksafety.com/terms-and-conditions

While we know that even opening a pack of protein powder requires agreeing to terms on a website, it is uncommon, and highly concerning, for a city government to agree to a contract that is maintained exclusively by a vendor.

We’re not talking about a $5 refund if you don’t like your protein: these contracts are worth millions in some cases, and, more importantly, they control and inform the government’s decisions about your rights and your freedom.

Agencies like the Iowa Public Information Board (IPIB) have previously found that parts of the contract published on a vendor’s website are not subject to open records laws:

the City did not possess the records identified as the “deployment plan” and the “reinstall fee schedule.” [The City] indicated that [it] would not seek to acquire the documents from the third party vendor

In a non-precedential decision, IPIB concluded that this made the online portions of the contract the property of the vendor, and not subject to the Iowa Open Records Act:^[4]

Because the City provided all requested documents within its possession, additional documents requested were the property of the Vendor rather than a public document belonging to the City, there is no violation of Iowa Code

This interpretation was always unhinged, but now that nearly the entirety of the contract has been moved to Flock’s website,^[5] it has become outright disturbing.

New Order Forms Void Old Protections

Although the terms stipulate that modifications must be in writing, the exception is “as set forth herein.” At the bottom of its Terms & Conditions page, Flock includes the notice “these Terms and Conditions are subject to change.”

It is not possible to get a copy from archive.org’s Wayback Machine, because, according to Wayback Machine Director Mark Graham, Flock has expressly requested that its website be excluded.

This means you can’t use The Wayback Machine to pull up a copy of the terms, as they were when your city signed it.

“But,” you might say, “my city already signed a paper contract, so we’re safe.”

I wouldn’t be so sure.

This Agreement … supersedes and cancels all previous or contemporaneous negotiations, discussions or agreements, whether written and oral, communications and other understandings relating to the subject matter of this Agreement. … None of Customer’s purchase orders, authorizations or similar documents will alter the terms of this Agreement, and any such conflicting terms are expressly rejected.

This language appears to create a mechanism whereby if the customer signs a new Order Form, for a contract extension or an extra camera, or even to repair a camera or to add new users, it replaces all prior agreements.

Smaller expenditures like repairs will almost universally happen through a city’s consent agenda, or police chiefs will simply sign the forms themselves, depending on state law and city policy.

The chance of an Order Form for “camera repair” getting flagged as replacing a preexisting agreement is approximately zero.

Of course, Flock is likely to quietly proceed under the new terms, even if the city doesn’t flag it.

What Changed in December 2025

What follows are some important changes from a comparison between a copy of Flock’s October 2024 terms, archived as current in July 2025, and the new, December 19, 2025 terms.

There may have been versions in the interceding period, but, as stated before, The Wayback Machine does not archive them, and I don’t regularly save the T&Cs for companies I have no relationship with. Yet.

Data Ownership: Flock wants it all, Flock gets it all

Perhaps the biggest change is that under Flock’s new terms, cities no longer own the video, images, or audio, even if that information is captured via non-Flock cameras that the city owns outright but plugged into “Wing,” FlockOS, or similar “Flock Services.”

The new language reads:

For clarity, Customer Data does not include the underlying raw Footage captured by the Flock Hardware […] “Footage” means still images, video, audio, and other raw data captured by the Flock Hardware or Customer Hardware via the Flock Services.

This is a marked departure from the language in earlier contracts:

“Customer Data” means the data, media, and content provided by Customer through the Services. For the avoidance of doubt, the Customer Data will include the Footage. […] As between Flock and Customer, all right, title and interest in the Customer Data, belong to and are retained solely by Customer.

As well as from the information in the “fact sheets” Flock makes available through its Press Center page:

The new terms align with the arguments by the Washington cities of Stanwood and Sedro-Wooley, in their lawsuit seeking to end police accountability: it is Flock’s data until a city downloads it.

The Court in that case reviewed the contract then in effect and did not find that argument persuasive, but it appears it is the contractual reality for Flock customers—both new and existing.

Flock IP: You get what Flock decides to give you

The fairly reasonable definition of Flock IP, more or less limiting the phrase to mean “stuff Flock made” is no more. This definition:

1.9 “Flock IP” means the Services, the Embedded Software, and any intellectual property or proprietary information therein or otherwise provided to Customer and/or its Authorized End Users. Flock IP does not include Footage (as defined below). — October 2024

Is now replaced with:

1.9 “Flock IP” means the Flock Services, the Embedded Software, and all intellectual property or proprietary information therein or otherwise provided to Customer or its Authorized End Users, including, but not limited to, Flock’s technology, patents, trade secrets, trademarks, algorithms, data models, machine learning methods, documentation, and any modifications or improvements. For clarity, Flock IP also includes any derivative works, intermediate or final outputs, analyses, reports, models, or other results generated by or through the Flock Services. Except for the limited ability to access and download Customer Data within the applicable Retention Period, no rights are granted to download, extract, export, or otherwise create or retain copies of such derivative works, outputs, or other elements of the Flock IP. — December 2025

This definition is so broad that they even have to make a specific exception for the “limited ability to access and download Customer Data”—data the marketing materials still claim customers own outright.

“Customer Data” is now explicitly part of “Flock IP.”

Flock further restricts even the “limited ability” with a new clause:

For clarity, Flock retains the exclusive right to determine and control the method, timing, format, and medium of such access or delivery, and is not obligated to provide Customer Data in any alternative form, format, or transmission method outside of the Web Interface.

Even if the original footage is available to Flock, you may get an edited or altered version (e.g. cropped or with watermarks overlaid), or a reduced-resolution version. You may also get it late, or never, and the conditions for access are at Flock’s discretion.

And you will like it.

Retention Periods: Indefinite storage, no limits

1.15 “Retention Period” means the time period that the Customer Data is stored within the cloud storage, as specified in the applicable Order Form. … For clarity, Customer Data does not include the underlying raw Footage

In other words, the contract is silent on the retention period for the Footage, which is no longer owned by the Customer.

This appears to give Flock permission to retain footage indefinitely.

Liability: You’re responsible for Flock’s failures

The contract always indemnified Flock to a frankly absurd extent. It required customers to agree that the service may not be fit for purpose and limited financial damages to some laughably small amount.

That wasn’t enough for Flock, so they added a new section:

9.4 Customer Indemnity. To the extent permitted by law, Customer shall indemnify and hold harmless Flock against any damages, losses, liabilities, settlements, and expenses in connection with any claim or action that arises from an alleged violation of Customer Obligations, Customer’s Installation Obligations, Customer’s sharing of any Customer Data, including any claim that such actions violate any applicable law or third party right.

Altering the Deal

Once a Flock customer agrees to these new online terms and conditions by executing any new Order Form, there is nothing preventing Flock from altering the deal further. Flock controls the terms of its own contract.

Cities like Denver, which negotiated special terms and conditions, risk having those terms wiped out by running a new Order Form through the consent agenda—if the new order form does not include the exact “Special terms” of the original, the original terms are superseded.

As we have come to expect, Flock is not doing this in good faith or with transparency. The most recent modification was on December 19, 2025, when most city officials have long left for their holiday break.

There is always a massive push to get contracts signed before the end of the year and city councils tend to let themselves be pushed around; contracts signed in haste before December 31 will have the new terms.

What This Means

The pattern is clear: Flock is systematically relocating contract terms from negotiated documents into its own vendor-controlled portal, then modifying those terms at will.

Flock’s marketing materials are still on its website, insisting that “Customers own 100% of the data collected.” The contract now says the opposite: cities own “Customer Data,” but “Customer Data does not include the underlying raw Footage.”

The footage—the actual surveillance images of your car, your face, your movements—belongs to Flock.

Cities that signed contracts believing they owned their data may discover, upon signing any subsequent Order Form, that they’ve quietly agreed to surrender any ownership rights they thought they had.

If you want to know what the situation is for your city: even if they signed a contract before today, file public records requests and ask for copies of any new Order Forms—even if for repairs.

If those forms reference the website, the protections your city council promised you may be null and void, and the terms are now under Flock’s exclusive control.

I am not an attorney. This analysis reflects my interpretation of contract language and is subject to change. Cities should consult qualified attorneys regarding their specific agreements.

(January 30, 2026): It was pointed out that this article lacked sample order forms containing the reference to the online terms. Two examples follow.

@Contract for New Prague, MN, December 2024 @Contract for Iowa Department of Public Safety, June 2025

As more cities sign up for a Flock subscription, and more citizens are asking questions, patterns are beginning to emerge. Coralville, Iowa (pop. ~20,000) exemplifies the Flock procurement process — or the absence thereof — for small-to-midsize towns.

This post tells the story of how Flock leveraged a dysfunctional city council led by dishonest staff to get its cameras into a community that does not want them.

The Invisible Appropriation

Budgetary appropriations is where all expenditures must begin — or so the lore of cities past tells us.

The rules relevant to this story^[1] are that cities must create and submit an annual budget each year by April 30^th, for the fiscal year that generally runs from July 1 to June 30. Amendments to existing budgets must be submitted to the state by May 31^st of that year.

The first mention of what would later turn out to be a Flock contract was made at the FY2026 budget presentation, during a January 14, 2025, city council work session:

… Police Chief Kyle Nicholson said his budget proposes an increase to the overtime fee for hiring officers for security, increased EMT pay, costs for mandatory annual psychological exams, a parking ticket system, license plate recognition system, three new patrol cars with associated equipment, and the department’s share of a Mental Health Liaison. He said the estimate for the animal shelter cost for FY26 is $110,001. …

Another mention happened in finance director Ann Hester’s public presentation of the budget, during a meeting on April 22, 2025:

… And the general fund expenditures reflect of the cost necessary to provide services in a growing community and include things like three new police vehicles and equipment, new parking ticket software and license plate reading system access, a resource for future fire vehicle replacement also includes expansion of part-time EL position to full-time which will which will be funded through a grant in library board contribution. …

The final FY2026 budget contains no reference to license plate readers or similar programs in the city’s $6.7M police department/crime prevention budget.

Another public hearing on May 27, 2025, discussed an amendment to the FY2025 budget — it had no mention of license plate readers either.

The Unlawful Contract

On May 12, 2025, Coralville Chief of Police Kyle Nicholson put his signature to a $36,000, 24-month contract with Flock.

Now mind you, this is a little more than two weeks before FY2026 begins. The council had not otherwise discussed license plate readers or expenditures at this point.

But that’s not even the biggest problem.

The city’s purchasing policy (last updated in 2009) lays out a number of requirements for purchases. As in Tiffin, which has no policy covering expenditures over $5,000, Coralville’s policy is a confusing, contradictory set of rules with significant gaps.

Still, it’s reasonably clear that the policy — both as written and as intended — requires the usual: several approvals and a competitive bidding process.

It’s more than reasonably clear that the policy was not followed.

In response to public record requests, the city confirms that there was no bidding process, the city attorney did not review the contract, the finance department was unaware of it, and the city council’s only involvement in the $36,000 contract was the mention buried in a subclause in a sentence in the middle of a paragraph, deep within next year’s $104M budget.

For now, this email from Chief Kyle Nicholson sums up how the purchasing process was followed, and the level of the council’s involvement:

Now let’s get to the good part.

The Public Reckoning

Nicholson set up the meeting for the council “to learn about Flock,” at a council work session on June 24, a month and a half after he signed the contract. This was the first time the word “Flock” was mentioned in a public setting.

When people in Coralville heard about the city’s plan to allow Flock to pepper their community with AI-powered surveillance cameras, they started making noise at city council meetings.

Media mistakenly reported that the contract was for $19,000, based on a previous budget item showing $19,000 allocated for “police technology.”

The city did nothing to rectify that misconception.

In fact, the city did nothing at all. Not even inform residents that the contract had already been signed.

Even more people showed up at the August 26 city council meeting, where the city for the first time — after hearing a public comment alleging the fact — acknowledged that a two-year $36,000 contract had already been signed back in May.

Instead of addressing that problem, the council repeatedly attempted to use that fact to shut down or minimize public debate:

again contract is already signed — Hai Huynh [Aug 26, 01:30:24]

Two days later, the city council was given a copy of the contract for the first time. Not by Chief Nicholson, who had signed the contract, or City Administrator Kelly Hayworth who was supposed to approve it, or City Attorney Kevin Olson, who was supposed to review it, but by a resident opposing the contract.

Residents continued to voice their opposition to the contract at the September 23^rd city council meeting, where the city adopted its ALPR policy.

Surveillance-as-a-service, Budgets-as-approval

Defending its actions, or lack thereof, the city council maintains that policy was satisfied by approval of the non-specific budget item.

Council members emphatically claimed they made a decision:

the contract it was part of the budget it was a line item in the budget and it was approved along with the budget the line item in the budget read license plate readers. — Mayor Foster [Aug 26, 01:17:36]

And:

it was a budget item so when we approved the budget we approve all of that as a whole package mind you all of us are volunteer here… budget is this thick… we look through the budget and really there’s nothing alarming if there’s anything alarming we ask… so it was approved as a line item. — Hyunh [Aug 26, 01:28:25]

Councilman Knudson contradicts that:

I have serious concerns about our process by which we got here putting it in the budget… this is not a a trivial thing as we’ve learned… I would like to have have thought that this issue would have come before us for discussion prior to signing the contract so that bothers me quite a bit. — Knudson [Aug 26, 02:09:51]

Despite this, at the September meeting:

The contract is signed… there’s no denying that there were some things about the process that were were not great… it’s been messy… I don’t believe that anyone was trying to be sneaky or trying to pull a fast one — Mayor Foster [Sept 23, 02:16:13]

Goodrich directly contradicts the mayor when she tries to rewrite history by claiming that the council was, in fact, fully aware from the get-go:

I do have one disagreement… as a city council member I… just want to regard our police chief and also our city administrators with the highest esteem we had four opportunities to know about this contract we had it in the budget and then at a work session there was a public hearing and we approved the budget and we watched a Flock presentation after the contract was signed … I just don’t think it’s fair that we I mean as city council members we were aware of this… — Goodrich [Sept 23, 02:50:18]

The council takes contradictory positions; at times they claim to have been unaware of the contract, at other times they say that they approved it and that there was ample opportunity for public review.

Ultimately, the council completely abdicates its duties to the chief of police and city administrator.

Taken together, it paints a picture of a disengaged, dysfunctional council that exists only to rubber stamp, not to govern.

The Performative Policy

On September 23, 2025, the city council met to discuss Kyle Nicholson’s proposed (Lexipol-generated) ALPR policy. Residents showed up to urge the council to reject the policy and revisit the contract.

To begin with the policy itself: it is designed to place oversight of the police department entirely with the police department. This is, of course, an attractive proposition for the police department.

Its most glaring fatal flaw is its section on data sharing:

The ALPR data may be shared only with other law enforcement or prosecutorial agencies for official law enforcement purposes or as otherwise permitted by law, using the following procedures …The agency makes a written request … The request is reviewed … The approved request is retained on file.

If you have spent any time on this website, you know how incompatible this policy is with the Flock national network.

Based on the average volume of nationwide searches, at least 10,000 searches of Coralville ALPR data are done every day through the Flock “national lookup” network. That number does not include statewide lookups or more local searches.

Coralville did not provide a more accurate number in response to a September 22 public records request for audit logs. It also did not respond to an October 31 request for the written requests that its ALPR policy requires.

Going by the lower number of 10,000/day, Nicholson, with a straight face, still told council and the public that he would review 10,000+ requests every day. He even proposed a policy that does not allow him to release data without that review and approval. A policy that limits oversight to be internal to the police department.

Flock Sr. Director of Government Affairs Kam Simmons confirmed at the September council meeting that the policy would not bind or restrict Flock or its other customers in any way — Flock remains free to allow anyone access, and its customers are free to search Coralville data without adhering to its policy.

The policy is purely performative.

The Administrative Failure

Nobody within the city approved the contract. Many were seemingly unaware of it until late August.

In the screenshot below, you will see my public record request in purple and Police Chief Kyle Nicholson’s responses in red.

• The Chief’s January 10 Budget Memo
• Hayworth-Nicholson emails

The email communication with city administrator Kelly Hayworth that Nicholson refers to is reproduced below. In it, Nicholson misrepresents that the purchase has been properly submitted and approved:

I had [the Flock contract] specifically listed in my memo. I talked about it during my budget presentation, and [Finance Director] Ann [Hester] brought it up again during her presentation at the last council meeting.

Hayworth responded:

Then you are fine to go ahead.

Sent from my iPhone.

This stops several football fields short of being the “affirmative recommendation” required from the city administrator. Similarly, finance director Hester’s “approval” was her mentioning the words “license plate reading system access” in the middle of a budget presentation.

Hayworth did not question Nicholson’s “I had it listed in my memo.” Hayworth’s job as city manager is to act as auditor in these situations, not to rubber stamp approvals. Either he neglected to do the job city residents pay him to do, or he was actively complicit in Nicholson’s bypassing of the city’s financial controls and procedures.

His refusal to take action or speak out against the chief speaks volumes here.

The memo reads: “Includes funding for access to a license plate reading system similar to the ones used in North Liberty and the University of Iowa.” Not how much funding. Not which license plate reading system. This was the basis for Hayworth’s “approval.”

The word “Flock” was never mentioned. No bids were sought. No sole source justification was created. The city attorney did not review the contract. No cost was submitted to finance. Nothing. Nobody approved this contract because there was nothing to approve.

The council’s after-the-fact efforts to justify the purchase by claiming that its approval in the FY2026 budget was all that was needed is a transparent and unconvincing attempt to shield its chief of police from consequences. If the city terminated its contract because policy was not followed, Nicholson would be personally liable for the cost of the contract.

A few more excerpts from the city’s policy makes it clear that nothing that happened here comports in any way with city policy, let alone prudent financial management practices:

Although the City Council has established levels of expenditures for each program appropriation is not a permit nor a directive to expend funds … For proper management control it is necessary that expenditures be authorized prior to purchase.

Expenditures in many categories require authorization and concurrence by the City Administrator. (This is in addition to the initial budget approval.) The City Administrator will be the signor, for contracts, for services, or purchases.

The Finance Officer and Finance Department shall be responsible for facilitating city wide bids. This includes setting and following rules and procedures set out in this policy and ensuring that City staff does the same

It is intended that the City Council will approve final disbursement of all public funds as well as specific changes in program funding levels upon the recommendation of the City Administrator and Finance Officer. As a general rule, the Council must approve all contracts

Instead, oversight is limited to what happens in budget presentations, which, apparently, is not much:

mind you all of us are volunteer here um it’s not our full-time job but it is a full-time job for us so budget is this thick okay beside our full-time job we try really hard to read through all of that and we are not expert in any of these thing that’s why we have staff we trust our staff and their expertise to help us navigate and connect and ask question in order to make an informed decision so we look through the budget and really there’s nothing alarming — Hyunh [Aug 26, 01:28:25]

It’s Law-Breaking all the Way Down

The council, after hearing residents’ concerns about Flock sharing data with ICE asked some pointed questions of Flock regarding their control over the data, and made it a point to include it in the policy.

In response, Nicholson promised that Coralville would not be sharing data with ICE. At the August 26 meeting, he stated “…our policy states that Flock will not be used on the sole basis to enforce immigration law so if ICE is requesting access to our data it’s a no” [Aug 26, 02:11:58]

In September, a public commenter followed up on that by questioning whether the city’s policy would bind Flock in any way. Flock’s Sr. Director of Government Affairs, Kam Simmons, responded that the city could adopt any policy it wants, but it would not affect Flock or any of its customers:

I want to tell you why I gave a broader answer [than yes or no]… your department’s policy very often… is designed to govern things like how your agency uses the system not necessarily how Flock is going to use the system … so… So, no. — Kam Simmons, Flock Safety [Sept 23, 01:59:17]

Instead, Simmons said, Coralville would have to review audit logs:

if an agency isn’t checking their audit log then you’re not going to get the value out of that oversight right… if there’s an officer that runs a search… and say stolen vehicle isn’t enough information for you to be comfortable you can terminate your sharing relationship with that agency at any time" — Kam Simmons, Flock Safety [Sept 23, 01:43:59]

Of course, in light of Simmons’ comments and the practical realities of controlling access to data on Flock’s national network (where Flock controls who has access, and there is no “pre-approval” mechanism), Nicholson was already fully aware that the policy he proposed was entirely unenforceable.

But, more directly, Iowa law unequivocally bans cities from adopting policies that hinder immigration enforcement.

Nicholson and Coralville were so desperate to cover up their illegal contract that they violate public trust with an attempt at a performative, unenforceable policy. In the process, they compound their earlier violations with further violations of state law — violations that could cost the city its $7.3M in state funding.

The city is risking 7% of its budget to cover up a $36,000 contract to shield the chief of police.

Nicholson never had any intention of implementing it, or any expectation that it would be followed — there is a reason that its opening paragraph functions to disallow oversight.

Someone is violating state law, lying to the public, or both.

Probably both.

The Unresolvable Contradiction

But, aside from the glaring issues in the procurement process, there are also substantive issues with the contract itself.

The first issue is the retention period. The order form shows a period of 0 days.

Of course, it could be an error. Scrivener’s errors exist. Correcting them is trivial. It’s done by creating and approving a new document. Especially when your contract says that any modifications must happen in writing.

The problem is that there is no definitive way to say whether or not this was a typo. There is no record of any discussion about retention periods before the contract was signed.

It is entirely possible that the city specifically negotiated an “alert only” system. Such a system would fulfill the functions police most frequently tout — alert police when stolen vehicles and vehicles associated with active AMBER alerts, are spotted — without many of the issues that come with creating a national location history database.

All we know is that Nicholson signed his name to a contract that specified “0 days.”

The city council claims that it approved the system, including its retention period at a budget hearing, but asked Nicholson for clarification on the retention period at the September council meeting.

After being presented with that question, Nicholson brushes it off as a “typo” and the city council accepts it without further explanation — a further expression of their disinterest in effective governance.

At that same meeting, Simmons confirms that the retention period is a contractual choice, not an “all or nothing” choice for 30 days.

the longest… is Los Angeles which has a 5-year retention schedule… the shortest retention period on flock today is a 7-day retention period… we’re aware of that [New Hampshire 3-minute] law certainly" — Kam Simmons, Flock Safety [Sept 23, 01:25:57]

Rather than correct the “typo,” which would be a trivial matter of producing the official record showing the intent and getting the copies signed, Chief Nicholson and Flock ignore the terms of the contract and Iowa municipal law and quietly amended the contract without creating a written record.

At the August meeting, Nicholson provided his reasoning for doing so:

… they [ACLU] suggested storage for 3 minutes as opposed to 30 days which we are not in favor of… If we’re to shorten from 30 days down to 21 I’m not opposed but I think the 30 days absolutely helps us … — Chief Nicholson [Aug 26, 02:14:43]

The dais again responded to this sidelining with a shrug.

The Time-Traveling Detective

Audit records show that Hanna Dvorak (or, as Flock reports it, “H. Dvo”), a detective with the Coralville Police Department, searched the Flock system in March 2025. Two months before the contract with Flock was signed.

The city denies it had any prior agreements with Flock.

Johnson County, however, signed a 5-year memorandum of understanding with Flock that grants it unfettered access to Flock data. The University of Iowa also heavily proselytizes for Flock.

It’s possible that either of these two entities created the account, the account was then transfered to Coralville, and Flock retroactively modified the audit logs.

Flock claims the logs contain a permanent audit trail.

Johnson County, in responding to a public records request, claims it has no access to its own logs.

The University of Iowa claims its logs are exempt from Iowa’s public records law.

Coralville claims not to have had a contract before May.

Not all of these claims are true: either Coralville was using the system before May, the logs are mutable on Flock’s end, or the agencies that have released logs have tampered with them before release.

Someone is lying about immutable logs, contract dates, or both.

Coralville city council was informed about the Dvorak anomaly on September 23, the day of the policy vote.

Coralville did not respond.

A System of Lies

The procurement of Flock’s surveillance system in Coralville is not a story of a single “honest mistake,” as Mayor Foster claimed. It is a story of a complete, multi-layered system of deception designed to bypass democracy — a system of dysfunctional government that Flock helps its customers prepare for and navigate.

This system is built on a series of documented falsehoods:

A contract was secured through active misrepresentation by the Chief of Police, who equated a vague memo line item with a specific, $36,000 contract.

This misrepresentation was either negligently or complicitly rubber-stamped by a City Administrator who failed to perform his primary duty as an auditor, violating the city’s purchasing policy.

When the illegal procurement became public, the City Council invented a contradictory and logically impossible defense: that they had both approved the contract via the budget and had “no knowledge” of it. This fiction was created for the sole purpose of shielding city staff from legal and financial liability.

To quiet public outrage, the city adopted a “policy” that is a performative lie. It violates state law, is procedurally impossible for the Chief to implement (auditing tens of thousands of daily queries), and, by the vendor’s own admission, is not binding on Flock or its customers.

The official contract, which specifies an “alert-only” system with 0-day retention, is dismissed as a “typo.” The city (as far as we know) allows Flock to create a 30-day location history database, a system of mass surveillance, in direct opposition to the only contract on file.

Finally, the Flock system’s audit logs show the city’s police department using the system months before the contract was signed. This is an unresolvable contradiction. Either Coralville PD was illegally using the system, or Flock’s “immutable” audit logs were manipulated.

The entire process, from its inception to its chaotic public defense is a testament to a government and its corporate partner that believe democracy, accountability, and truth are obstacles to be routed around, not a duty to be fulfilled.

The council’s stance that each individual failure is as a minor procedural error or mistake is untenable. Signing a $36,000 contract without discussion, bids, or approvals is a deliberate choice and — in any functional organization — a fireable offense. It’s not an “oopsie” to be covered up with a gambit that may cost the city its $7.3 million in state funding.

The $36,000 they’re protecting as a sunk cost has already cost far more in democratic erosion and public trust, and that’s before the attorney general and the state auditor have weighed in.

Tiffin is a city of around 5,000 people in Johnson County, Iowa. The city does not have its own police department; instead, it has an agreement with the county “to provide law enforcement services.” This is common for smaller Iowa cities.

What’s not as common is the quote from Flock that appeared on the Tiffin city council agenda in early September. The agreement was not negotiated by the city, but hammered out by Flock and the county sheriff, without prior approval.

Whose Contract Is It, Anyway?

The quote for $98,900—as is typical with the company—lists 10 Flock “LPR” cameras, but the fine print reveals the contract is not for the purchase or lease of any hardware, but for a $30,000/year annually recurring subscription to Flock’s database with an initial term of 36 months.

This item came before the Tiffin city council in the midst of strong public outcry against the procurement process in neighboring Coralville.

The “Billing Company” and address on the quote are not Tiffin’s; they name the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office. As a general rule, of course, a city government cannot sign contracts on behalf of a county, or any other government.

But that’s not the only problem.

The improper contract was negotiated over a three-month timespan by the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department, which lacked formal authorization from either Johnson County or the City of Tiffin to do so.

Being a “fixer” for other cities is not typically in a sheriff’s job description; the position doesn’t, as a rule, require taking on procurement tasks for other governments.

Sheriff Kunkel decided otherwise.

It did not go well.

“I Assume This Process Starts With You”

A June 6, 2025 text exchange between Johnson County and an unknown person—presumably a Tiffin official—asks if Johnson County needs anything from the city “to get the conversation going for Flock.”

A few days later, Deputy Sergeant Hynes sent a kick-off email, copying Johnson County Sheriff Brad Kunkel and Crystal Raiber of Phelan Tucker Law LLP.^[1]

Many would expect a nearly $100,000 contract in a town of 5,000 people to begin with democratic, financial, or legal approval. Instead, Deputy Sergeant Hynes wrote: “[Flock Safety Sales rep] Mr. Moch—I assume this process starts with you.” A telling statement for what was to follow.

It is clear from communications that Tiffin city administrator Doug Boldt and Mayor Tim Kasparek were not leading the procurement effort. The out-of-place commendation for Sgt. Hynes from Flock Sales for “bringing this in” makes it clear he is taking on duties far outside his role.

Someone whose professional responsibilities actually include procurement might have thought to submit Flock’s deployment plan for approval. The plan is a critical part of the contract that determines where Flock will place its cameras.

Flock did not send this document to Tiffin until September 3^rd — a day after the city council meeting where the contract, still with the wrong name on it, was to be discussed.

A “Mistake” No One Caught for Three Months

At first glance, Flock putting the wrong name on a quote might appear like an honest mistake.

In this case, the contract took three months to make its way from Kunkel and Hynes’ desk to the Tiffin city council. During that time, key persons were demonstrably involved: the Sheriff, the Tiffin city administrator, and the (presumed) Tiffin city attorney.

Other people who should have been involved, but weren’t, include the Tiffin city council, the Johnson County Board of Supervisors, and the Johnson County Attorney’s office^[2]. Any of these would likely have caught the error, had they known what the sheriff was attempting to do.

None of them caught this “mistake,” despite its obvious presence on the cover sheet.

According to Johnson County, this was simply an error. But the “oops” defense creates an immediate, fatal problem.

If the contract was meant for Tiffin all along, it would be invalid on its face. Tiffin does not have a police department. Flock’s own policies and marketing materials claim they only contract with law enforcement agencies. Thousands of agencies across the country have promised their citizens and elected officials that only law enforcement will have access to this mass surveillance tool.

The story requires us to believe that the Sheriff, the Tiffin city administrator, and the Tiffin City Attorney not only missed the typo, but that everyone involved missed the fact that the correct contract would not only be invalid from the start, but could also invalidate the justification underlying many other Flock contracts.

No Authority, No Problem

When asked for a copy of the record or resolution authorizing the Sheriff to perform procurement tasks for Tiffin, city administrator Doug Boldt evasively responded, “The 28E Agreement does not prevent the purchasing authority of the City Council.”

Not to be out-evaded, Johnson County replied that a resolution authorizing the Sheriff’s department to negotiate contracts was not adopted because “no contract was entered with Flock and Johnson County.” Despite further requests, no additional documents were disclosed.

The existing Tiffin-Johnson County agreement could conceivably stretch the definition of “law enforcement” to cover the Sheriff’s Department advising on a deployment plan. If one were to try to identify high-crime areas, rather than high-traffic areas, it would seem reasonable to get input from the agency responsible for law enforcement.

But providing input does not include leading procurement processes or negotiating contracts with commercial vendors on behalf of other governments. That is specialized administrative work, not law enforcement.

The story Tiffin and Johnson County are telling is that the Johnson County Sheriff’s office spent three months, likely billed to Tiffin citizens as “law enforcement,” negotiating a contract with a commercial vendor. A contract they were not authorized to negotiate, let alone sign.

The only issue, according to the city and county, is that the contract had the wrong name on the signature line. More than two months later, the issue is yet to be corrected.

No Bids, No Justification, No Policy

Despite filing and reviewing numerous public records requests, I have yet to see competitive bids or a single-source authorization from any Flock customer in Iowa. This contract was no exception.

By all accounts, Tiffin’s taxpayers would be responsible for funding for this contract. To this end, the city has something resembling a purchase policy:

Purchases of products and materials in excess of $5,000 included in the official City Budget, except those purchase items listed in Section III, Part F below, shall require prior City Council approval.

Section III does not have a Part F, but Part B permits “Expenditures approved by the City Council.”

Purchases “with a cumulative value in excess of $1,000 but less than $5,000 … require at least two written quotations,” but no such requirement appears to exist for purchases in excess of $5,000.

Whether the city never adopted an effective policy, or whether it chose to ignore it, it sought no competitive bids and offered no sole-source justification.

City administrator Boldt admits in an email that “the City of Tiffin has only worked with Flock.”

Whether there was any further discussion before the council meeting remains unknown — despite repeated requests, Tiffin refuses to open city emails for inspection.

Instead, city administrator Doug Boldt insists the only way to inspect these public records is via the city’s preferred vendor, who will take between one and three hours to click “forward” at a staggering rate of $250 per hour.

The Contract’s Confusing Demise

Tiffin’s purchasing policy still requires council approval. On September 2^nd, 2025, the item was up for discussion. What happened next is a matter of some controversy, even in the minutes.

The official meeting minutes show that the item for the Flock quote (K-3), was both removed from the agenda, and discussed and considered with no action taken:

Text messages from the Sheriff’s office say it was “struck”:

Sir,

Fyi: Flock was struck from the agenda this evening, but we did have 1 individual show up to speak out against it, which he did in his alotted time. He is a coralville resident who is part of the group making noise about flock in coralville.

The individual “making noise,” referenced in the text message, was Coralville mayoral candidate Ryan Swenka. According to Swenka, there was no discussion. Instead, Swenka says, statements were made at the meeting that indicated that the item was struck from the agenda at the request of Sheriff Brad Kunkel.

Either way, the council chose not to publicly discuss the proposed contract. The supposed minor error has not been corrected and sent back to the council in the two-month period since September 2^nd.

The silence on this “minor error” is telling. The contract’s collapse was not due to a typo or a slight misunderstanding, but because the entire three-month process was a farce.

The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, acting as Tiffin’s unauthorized procurement agent, negotiated a $98,900 sole-source contract for which it had no authority, that Tiffin’s policies failed to cover, and that was presented for a vote before it was even finalized.

The contradictory minutes and evasive legal justifications form a paper trail of an illegitimate government action. The proposal may be dead, but the question of why taxpayer-funded “law enforcement” personnel were running a rogue procurement office, and why the Tiffin city council and the Johnson County Board of Supervisors are okay with this, remains very much alive.