Flock Credibility Lost as It Repeatedly Lies to City Councils, Police, & Public

Summary

During a city council meeting in a suburb of Wisconsin in April, the city of Oshkosh considered whether it should approve a contract to use automatic license plate readers (ALPR) from Flock Safety, a prominent company that provides ALPRs to law enforcement agencies across the country. During the meeting, one city council member asked Flock if the company’s ALPR system created heat maps that could reveal where a particular vehicle had driven over a period of time. Flock’s chief information security officer, who was in attendance, told the council that Flock’s system did not “create a pattern or heat map of an individual’s movement” through the tracking of their vehicles. At the end of that meeting, the Oshkosh City Council approved a contract with Flock. The very next morning, the city learned that Flock had lied. Later that day, the city council reconvened to discuss what it had learned. Confronting Flock, Oshkosh Deputy Mayor Joe Stephenson said “I don't know how this body can govern if someone tells untruths, mistruths, exaggerated truths. I don't know how I can make a decision or discern what's right or what's wrong, or even the capabilities of this system if you lie to me.” “Shame on them,” Oshkosh Mayor Matt Mugerauer added. “All I'm saying is if you give bad information, then I just don't want to work with you.” Ultimately, the Oshkosh City Council voted to immediately revoke its approval, thereby setting a record for the shortest time between a city approving and cancelling a Flock contract: one day. Flock later admitted that its ALPR system does indeed produce a “heat map” that shows where “point-in-time images have been captured of a vehicle” for up to an entire month. However, the company chose to respond to the revocation of its contract by attacking the City of Oshkosh and its city council, complaining that Flock had “not [been] afforded the opportunity” to explain its lie after being caught. Flock also sought to trivialize its factually inaccurate state...