10/15/2026
๐๐ถ๐ฏ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐๐ ๐ฆ๐ต๐ผ๐๐น๐ฑ๐ป'๐ ๐๐ฒ๐น๐ฝ ๐๐๐ถ๐น๐ฑ ๐๐น๐ผ๐ฐ๐ธ'๐ $๐ญ๐ฌ๐ฌ ๐๐ถ๐น๐น๐ถ๐ผ๐ป ๐๐ฟ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐บ
๐๐ ๐ฅ๐ผ๐๐ ๐ช๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฑ, ๐๐ถ๐ฏ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐๐ ๐๐ถ๐๐ ๐๐ผ๐๐ป๐ฐ๐ถ๐น
Flock Safety's CEO, Garrett Langley, told Forbes last year that turning his company into a $100 billion business was within reach. At the time, Flock was valued at $7.5 billion. Nobody grows a company thirteenfold by selling nine license plate cameras to a small town in East Texas. You get there by selling more cameras, more drones, more software, and more of something far more valuable: data about where people go.
On Tuesday night, the Liberty City Council voted 5-2 to renew our Flock contract. I respect my colleagues and I respect our police department. But I think we made the wrong call, and residents deserve to know what we actually signed up for.
๐ง๐ต๐ถ๐ ๐ถ๐ ๐ป๐ผ๐ ๐ท๐๐๐ ๐ฎ ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐บ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ฎ ๐ฎ๐ป๐๐บ๐ผ๐ฟ๐ฒ
Every plate Liberty's nine cameras read is shared with outside law enforcement agencies across Texas. When a council member asked about those outside searches, the chief said his monthly audit covers Liberty's own searches but doesn't include theirs. We review what our officers look up. Nobody in Liberty is regularly reviewing what everyone else looks up, even though it's one tab over on our own transparency portal.
And Flock isn't standing still. The company bought a drone maker in 2024 and now sells drones that fly themselves to the scene once dispatched. It sells software called FreeForm that lets investigators search video by typing a plain-English description of a person or car, and a platform that cross-references Flock's data with outside data sources. WIRED reported in August that Flock is testing a tool to identify drivers and find their associates based on movement patterns. Liberty pays only for the plate readers today, not these add-ons. But that's where the company is headed, and our plate data already lives on its platform.
That is not a license plate reader. That is a map of your life, and it gets more detailed with every software update.
๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ผ๐๐ฟ๐๐ต ๐๐บ๐ฒ๐ป๐ฑ๐บ๐ฒ๐ป๐ ๐ณ๐ถ๐ด๐ต๐ ๐ถ๐ ๐ฐ๐ผ๐บ๐ถ๐ป๐ด
If this isn't a constitutional problem today, it could be within a year.
In January, a federal judge in Norfolk, Virginia, ruled that the city's Flock network didn't violate the Fourth Amendment, but wrote that the analysis has to stay nimble as technology like AI changes what police surveillance can do. That case is now on appeal at the Fourth Circuit, with oral argument tentatively set for December. Here in Texas, Gov. Abbott paused state funding for Flock cameras in August. The day we voted, Comptroller Don Huffines went further and banned the use of grant money administered by his office for license plate readers, saying, "The government has no business tracking where law-abiding Texans drive." State Sen. Lois Kolkhorst says the Senate will take up the issue in January, and she backs an outright ban.
Texas cities are getting the message. Pflugerville, Bastrop, Liberty Hill, San Marcos and others have already ended their contracts. Flock itself is reportedly cutting about 18 percent of its workforce. Liberty just signed up for another year anyway.
๐ช๐ต๐ฒ๐ฟ๐ฒ ๐ถ๐ ๐๐ต๐ฒ ๐ฒ๐๐ถ๐ฑ๐ฒ๐ป๐ฐ๐ฒ?
Supporters argued Tuesday night that Flock keeps officers and residents safer. I want that to be true. But when the question of officer safety came up, nobody in the room could point to a single instance or example where Flock had made an officer safer. The best anyone could offer was that more information in an officer's hands might help in general.
The broader research is thin. One of the only studies of fixed camera networks found a drop in vehicle theft and about a 16 percent rise in vehicle theft clearance, and its own authors cautioned that not all of that gain could be credited to the cameras. That's a real but narrow result, mostly about stolen cars. The broader clearance study Flock likes to cite was run by Flock itself, with university researchers, using a survey of its own customers. Meanwhile, Liberty runs about five or six searches a month.
Here's what we do know. Our data is kept for 30 days, even though Flock itself has cut its default to seven. Once it's shared, we can't verify it's ever deleted. And if a resident's information is misused or leaked, staff said the liability would fall on the city, not on Flock.
Our officers deserve real tools. The roughly $27,000 a year we spend on Flock could buy tools that don't come with these strings attached.
๐๐ฏ๐ผ๐๐ ๐๐ต๐ผ๐๐ฒ ๐ฎ๐น๐ถ๐ฒ๐ป ๐ฟ๐ผ๐ฏ๐ผ๐๐
During the debate, the mayor assured us that if it ever turned out we were giving our information to "alien robots or something," we could cancel the contract with 30 days' notice.
Funny timing. The very next day, researchers announced they had made contact with a fleet of rogue Chinese AI agents running on Tencent's servers. The agents had been slipping past Alibaba's defenses to ask its map app for directions to the entrances of parks, zoos and a hospital. When the researchers left a hidden message, the agents wrote back.
So, no aliens yet. Just robots that want to know where you park. The aliens are running a little behind schedule, but the robots are right on time.
The line got a laugh, but it gets the technology exactly backwards. The risk was never little green men. It's ordinary software. The rogue agents behind the Hugging Face and Tencent incidents weren't science fiction. They were built on the same kind of AI that companies like Flock are now building into their products, running on everyday cloud servers and quietly hunting for exposed credentials and unprotected data. They didn't announce themselves. They just went to work.
That's the danger of treating AI as a punchline. Flock isn't really selling us the camera on the pole anymore. It's selling a platform that keeps adding AI on top of the data those cameras collect. The chief told us any new AI features would require a contract change and a council vote. Good. But that safeguard only works if the people casting the vote understand what they're approving. If AI risk sounds like alien robots to the people deciding, we aren't evaluating the product in front of us. We're guessing.
The good news, we're told, is that we can cancel with 30 days' notice. The bad news is the data doesn't come back with us. And as other towns have learned the hard way, sometimes the cameras don't leave either.
"๐ช๐ฒ ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ป ๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ป๐ฐ๐ฒ๐น ๐ฎ๐ป๐๐๐ถ๐บ๐ฒ." ๐๐ฎ๐ป ๐๐ฒ?
The promise that Liberty can walk away on 30 days' notice deserves a hard look, because other Flock customers have tried. Their contracts aren't ours, but the pattern is worth knowing.
Last fall, Elgin Community College, a public college outside Chicago, asked Flock to cancel its contract and remove its cameras after ICE detained a student in a campus parking lot. Within a day, Flock said no, insisting it hadn't broken the contract. In December, the college offered to pay for the remaining five months just to get the cameras taken down. According to the college's president, Flock never responded. Staff ended up covering the cameras with black trash bags and zip ties, and she says workers in an unmarked vehicle, which she assumed was Flock's, kept coming back to pull the bags off. The cameras didn't come down until the contract expired this April.
Elgin isn't alone. Evanston, Illinois, terminated its contract in 2025 after a state audit found Flock had shared Illinois data with federal agencies in violation of state law. Flock then reinstalled its cameras without the city's permission, and Evanston had to cover them and send a cease-and-desist letter. Grass Valley, California, canceled and pulled its cameras down, only to find Flock had put at least two back up. Littleton, Massachusetts, cut the power to its cameras, and Flock quietly switched five of them back on.
Flock has an explanation for each one: contract terms, automated maintenance systems, miscommunication. That's exactly the point. Once the cameras go up, Flock's contract and Flock's systems decide how fast they come down. Not the city council.
๐๐ผ๐ผ๐ฑ ๐๐๐ฒ๐๐ฎ๐ฟ๐ฑ๐๐ต๐ถ๐ฝ ๐บ๐ฒ๐ฎ๐ป๐ ๐๐ฒ๐ฒ๐ถ๐ป๐ด ๐๐ต๐ฎ๐'๐ ๐ฐ๐ผ๐บ๐ถ๐ป๐ด
Anyone who has lived through hurricane season in Liberty County knows you don't wait for the storm to make landfall before you board up the windows and fill the gas tank. You watch the forecast, see where it's tracking, and get ready while you still have time and options. Stewardship of public money works the same way.
Look at what's coming down the pike. The governor has paused state funding for these cameras, and the comptroller has banned state grants for them, so future Flock costs are more likely to land on local budgets. Senators are talking about an outright ban when the Legislature meets in January. A federal appeals court is weighing whether these networks cross a constitutional line. And the vendor itself is reportedly cutting nearly one in five employees while losing customers by the dozen.
Then there's the technology itself. Every new AI feature Flock adds is another door into the same pile of data.
Now picture the next Hugging Face or Tencent incident. This summer, OpenAI's own AI agents escaped a test environment, broke into another company's production systems and grabbed login credentials along the way. The Tencent agents got past Alibaba's defenses using access keys left exposed in public code. Those agents were after test answers and directions to park entrances. The next ones might go looking for something far more valuable, like a searchable record of where millions of Americans drive every day. If one of them ever gets into Flock's system, Liberty's data is part of the haul, and as staff said Tuesday night, the liability would fall on us, not Flock.
The session and the appeal aren't speculation. They're on the calendar, and the funding cuts have already happened. The question isn't whether Liberty will have to deal with it. It's whether we deal with it on our terms or someone else's.
If we wait, we could be forced out by a new state law halfway through a contract we just paid for, trying to unwind it with a vendor that has shown it doesn't always leave quietly. Or we could be defending a lawsuit over data we collected, with the liability resting on the city. Either way, we'd be reacting.
Being proactive means making the call now, while we still control the timing, the terms and the message. That isn't anti-police and it isn't anti-technology. It's what responsible people do with other people's money and other people's privacy.
๐ช๐ต๐ฎ๐ ๐๐ถ๐ฏ๐ฒ๐ฟ๐๐ ๐๐ต๐ผ๐๐น๐ฑ ๐ฑ๐ผ
Liberty should end its contract with Flock. Not trim the retention period, not add another audit, not wait for Austin or the Fourth Circuit to decide for us. End it.
And we should do it carefully. Before we send notice, our city attorney should review exactly what our termination clause says, including any removal fees or refund terms. Then we put Flock on written notice, demand written certification that Liberty's data has been deleted, and have our own staff confirm every camera is physically gone and stays gone. The roughly $27,000 a year we save should go to tools our officers control and our residents can trust.
Technology will keep moving faster than our laws. That's exactly why a city council can't wait for the courts to catch up. We are the guardrail. Let's act like it.
๐๐ฐ๐ด๐ด ๐๐ข๐ณ๐ฅ ๐ด๐ฆ๐ณ๐ท๐ฆ๐ด ๐ฐ๐ฏ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐๐ช๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ต๐บ ๐๐ช๐ต๐บ ๐๐ฐ๐ถ๐ฏ๐ค๐ช๐ญ. ๐๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ท๐ช๐ฆ๐ธ๐ด ๐ฆ๐น๐ฑ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ด๐ด๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐ฉ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ข๐ณ๐ฆ ๐ฉ๐ช๐ด ๐ฐ๐ธ๐ฏ ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ฅ๐ฐ ๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ต ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฑ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ด๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ต ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐๐ช๐ต๐บ ๐ฐ๐ง ๐๐ช๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ต๐บ ๐ฐ๐ณ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐๐ช๐ฃ๐ฆ๐ณ๐ต๐บ ๐๐ช๐ต๐บ ๐๐ฐ๐ถ๐ฏ๐ค๐ช๐ญ.
