Flock Quietly Breaks "No Federal Access" Promise

Flock’s sales pitch to concerned communities has been that it will not provide information to the feds, and that it has no federal contracts. It started slowly walking back those statements a while ago. Now, the FBI has direct access.

Almost two months ago, I titled a section “Flock Promises More Violations.” It has now made good on that promise. Back then, I wrote:

the gradual narrowing is interesting to watch. In a span of weeks, Flock’s messaging shifted from “Flock does not sell data,” to “Flock does not sell data to the federal government” to “Flock does not sell data to DHS agencies.”

Federal agencies have been appearing more in audit logs, tagged with [Federal]. Flock has added a toggle to its product to grant/deny federal access to data.^[1] These have largely been federal prisons, and parks like the Presidio of San Francisco.

Now, the FBI has direct access.^[2]

Flock will keep insisting that licensing data isn’t selling data. The distinction matters to surveilled citizens about as much as Netflix’s licensing model matters to a movie studio — and the studio, at least, sets the terms.

Contractually, Flock is not prohibited from granting the feds access. For that matter, it’s not prohibited from granting anyone access. Numerous private corporations and universities have access to what Flock markets as a “law enforcement only” network, and entire police departments are regularly granted access without a contract.^[3]

But communities that were sold the system by Flock and their local PD on the promise that the feds did not have access to the data now have a system deployed that does grant direct, federated access to the FBI and other federal agencies.

It’s what those cities signed up for. Flock manages access to the network. Not the city. Not the PD.

If you want to know if your city grants access to the FBI, you will have to file an open records request. It is unclear at this time whether the “federal access” configuration switch is separate from the “shared networks” file — the configuration that governs which outside agencies can query a department’s cameras (reach out if you know).

Police departments generally don’t inform elected officials or the public when they enable a software toggle—even when it comes with constitutional and liability implications. They certainly don’t seek the public’s approval before subjecting it to federal mass surveillance.