As Local Governments Rethink Surveillance Tech, Advocates Worry About Where It’s Still Used

On Feb. 17, 2026, the South Tucson City Council held a single meeting at which it voted to end its contracts with Flock Safety, the private company that supplies governments and corporations with cameras that feed into its proprietary database. The council also passed a resolution opposing immigration detention facilities.

What the council didn't vote on — or, rather, couldn't vote on — was stopping the 40-plus police departments across Arizona that had already been searching South Tucson's camera data, including Scottsdale, which had conducted more than 12,000 searches of the shared database.

The data stays stored for up to 30 days, and the police – both state and federal – could still access it anyway, with few ethical constraints and no legal oversight.  

Mapping how municipalities are responding to Flock Safety — which has drawn consistent and sharp criticism from community members and politicians alike — reveals a striking discrepancy between what governments have stated and voted for compared to what surveillance continues to look like after decisions are made. 

For LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights advocates — as well as private security experts — Flock Safety and similar surveillance has raised concerns about how the technology could expand unwanted government oversight of populations already facing increased scrutiny in public life.

The surveillance nobody voted for

Flock's cameras include automatic license plate readers, fixed video units and robotic cameras that can swivel and follow targets. Different camera systems are sometimes housed in identical casings, making it impossible to know whether a given camera is reading license plates or recording pedestrians.

Anaya Robinson, a civil liberties advocate who works for the ACLU of Colorado, has been following Flock Safety's rollout in the state. Robinson told LOOKOUT that initial pilot programs began appearing as COVID-19 lockdowns were ending.

Local governments in Castle Rock, for example, began deploying Flock Safety systems around early 2021, with Boulder following suit in 2022. The Denver Police Department did not officially launch its own city-funded pilot program until May 2024, placing more than 100 solar-powered cameras across 70 locations in the city.

Records show those deployments occurred without public input or a City Council vote. Instead, elected officials and police departments structured initial Flock Safety contracts — or extended existing ones — to fall below financial thresholds that would have required public review. By keeping annual subscription costs below the threshold for mandatory City Council authorization, agencies avoided public hearings and formal roll-call votes.

In Denver, Mayor Mike Johnston executed multiple Flock extensions without a council vote by capping the contract amount at $498,500 — just $1,500 below the city's $500,000 threshold for council approval.

In Arizona, camera deployments began without public discussion and were routinely absorbed into internal police budgets below public approval thresholds or bundled into council consent agendas that weren't subject to debate, keeping initial surveillance rollouts out of the public eye.

Robinson argued that approving Flock Safety cameras without council approval increased adoption and retention rates for Flock and was part of the company's national rollout strategy.

Because residents were not actively informed about Flock partnerships when they began, many had no idea the cameras had been installed or where they were located. In Phoenix, for example, many residents were alarmed when they learned about the surveillance.

Rakibul Hasan, an assistant professor in the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence at Arizona State University, said in an interview that if a city adopts a system without democratic approval, "all access might be considered unauthorized." The lack of informed consent and notification has remained a sticking point for residents.

As of August 2026, six cities and one county have terminated their contracts with Flock Safety in Arizona: Chandler, Flagstaff, Sedona, Sierra Vista, South Tucson and Surprise, along with Pinal County. In Colorado, the cities of Denver, Fort Collins and Salida have canceled their agreements with Flock, as has Douglas County.

But even as Flock Safety has faced pushback from governments, residents can be swept up in its surveillance without ever knowing it because of the company's private network of customers.

Privately operated Flock Safety cameras have been documented within 10 miles of Phoenix — at Home Depot and Lowe's locations, among others — that still feed into Flock's national law enforcement network. Police policies in question also completely miss the University of Arizona, which feeds the national network through 62 campus-area Flock cameras.

And even if cities establish boundaries on cooperation with ICE, the same network Flock Safety shares among private and public users has been tapped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Flock Safety maintains that it has no contract with ICE and does not provide the agency with direct access.

A tool for fear

Sam Toles, a civic technology specialist, said there "are numerous and demonstrable cases where this technology has assisted in apprehending criminals and thus keeping communities safer."

But he said there were also plenty of examples of officers misusing the technology for personal interests and questioned what could happen if Flock Safety's technology continues advancing into video and facial recognition.

"(What if) an LGBTQ rally happens and the Flock cameras capture all attendees?" Toles said. "If this were theoretically used to target individuals, this would be highly concerning."

There appear to be no Flock-specific corporate policies that directly address those concerns.

ASU tech researcher Hasan echoed Toles' concerns about the LGBTQ+ rally hypothetical, saying a chilling effect is possible: "It might discourage attending a public demonstration if the attendees can be traced."

And even if states such as Colorado explicitly protect gender-affirming care, Robinson of ACLU Colorado said people seeking reproductive health care or gender-affirming care could be surveilled in a state where those activities are protected, then harassed — or even prosecuted — in another state where they are illegal, as the case has been with people seeking abortions. 

For LGBTQ+ people in states or municipalities with increasingly hostile political climates, one rational response to visible surveillance of community spaces could be to avoid clinics, centers or events altogether. Experts said that communities don't have to wait for an example of misuse by companies or governments — the mere presence of the system can be enough to create a chilling effect.

The data you can't take back

Because participating municipalities must agree to share data through the collective network, Flock's system processes billions of location records and images every month. Flock's original policy was to retain identifiable data for 30 days, with a rolling "hard delete" cycle that purges most material after that period.

According to Flock's own website, once the retention period expires, the raw image, timestamp, location and associated license plate data are automatically and permanently deleted from its cloud servers.

However, if a specific vehicle capture or video clip is flagged as part of an active law enforcement investigation, it is extracted from the rolling deletion pool and moved into an agency's case file or "Evidence Mode." That specific record is then held according to state evidence-retention laws, which can mean years or, in capital cases, indefinitely.

Following reports of police officers using the network to stalk romantic partners, monitor political activists and facilitate federal immigration enforcement, Flock enacted a major corporate policy shift in August 2026. Under the new guidelines, Flock began recommending that client agencies reduce their default data-retention window from 30 days to seven.

However, the policy change remains optional.

Contracted municipalities and law enforcement agencies can opt out and continue storing location data for the full 30 days. Flock defended the change by saying more than 90% of law enforcement searches occur within the first week anyway, meaning the additional 23 days of historical tracking created potential privacy risks with little operational benefit.

Queer Activists are Fighting Trump’s Border Wall From Trees

In southern Arizona, a predominantly queer and femme protest camp is risking arrest to protect a cottonwood and stop a $500 million border wall project.

LOOKOUTJohn Washington (he/him)