Longtime Cedar Rapids resident Josh Whartman was driving home from work one day when something strange caught his eye.
“I noticed this black camera, which is odd,” Whartman said. “I thought it was bizarre. Having worked for the city, I kind of had an interest in surveillance and like, ‘What’s the city doing?’ I figured it was a traffic camera.”
He had lived in the area for 30 years and worked as a public records administrator. But Whartman had never seen a camera like it before — a tiny black box connected to a single solar panel.
“They mentioned, ‘We have Flock AI cameras, and that must be the one you’re talking about,'” Whartman said. “So, I started Googling Flock ... Jesus. That’s a whole rabbit hole. I had no idea what I was getting into.”
Flock Safety’s cameras are Automated License Plate Readers (ALPR), a special type of artificial intelligence-powered camera that picks up license plate data. The cameras also collect the “vehicle fingerprint,” which includes a car’s make, model, and color.
Cedar Rapids has 75 cameras. At least 29 cities in Iowa have contracts with Flock. Those include West Des Moines, North Liberty and Davenport.
Luke Bock is a lieutenant with the Dubuque Police Department, which has 22 Flock cameras. Bock said he hopes the city will continue to grow its ALPR network.
“The cool thing about Flock is you have the ability to not just utilize our 22 cameras — we can basically share our camera information with other jurisdictions, and other jurisdictions can share their camera information with us,” Bock said.
Bock added that ALPRs help police solve crimes across multiple jurisdictions. In one instance, a person with a warrant in Illinois had fled to Dubuque, and officers arrested him there. Another time, officers in Bock’s department used Cedar Rapids’ cameras to track three suspects who fled Dubuque.
“We can basically share our camera information with other jurisdictions, and other jurisdictions can share their camera information with us.”Luke Bock, Dubuque Police lieutenant
“An ATM was broken into; tens of thousands of dollars were taken,” Bock said. “And those cameras were utilized, not only our cameras, but then Cedar Rapids' as well, and the offenders were eventually located and arrested in Cedar Rapids.”
ALPRs compare their data against national crime hotlists, like the National Crime Information Center, and notify local law enforcement when a plate is flagged.
Search audits from multiple agencies reveal that a warrant is not always the reason officers use the system. In many cases, a more vague reason is given for searching the Flock network, such as “suspect,” or “investigation.”
Some residents in cities where Flock is being installed say ALPRs generate suspicion, rather than acting as a tool for solving investigations.
Community pauses rollout as residents’ awareness grows
In Coralville, just outside Iowa City, council members are reconsidering installing Flock cameras. They earmarked $36,000 for a two-year contract with Flock in April, but stalled the rollout after residents raised concerns about the technology.
“To me, this is a solution to a nonexistent problem,” said resident Ralph Stephens. “What rampant crime do we have terrorizing residents that these cameras will prevent?”
Over the course of an hours-long debate, community members asked what would happen to the data after it is saved and how the council would make sure ALPRs are used for the right reasons.
“I want you to seriously consider this question: Are you comfortable with artificial intelligence coming up with sweeping generalizations about you based solely on where you drive, where you’re located frequently, who your car is nearby often?” said Clara Reynen, who lives in Iowa City.
Many constituents raised concerns that systemic biases in policing would be exacerbated by the use of Flock cameras.
“These tools don’t just investigate crime, they generate suspicion by using artificial intelligence to flag innocent patterns of travel,” Coralville resident Dan Waller said.
It is standard for most Flock customers to agree to have their ALPR data deleted after 30 days from the company's cloud storage, which is provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Many in the crowd supported rolling out the cameras, citing examples of the technology being used by officers to swiftly respond to dangerous situations.
“In the few months we’ve had the cameras in Cedar Rapids, I have personally witnessed the recovery of a dementia sufferer who drove two counties away from his home and was later recovered because of the cameras, as well as recovery of a child who was taken out of state by a caretaker against their parents’ wishes,” said Kent Christen, a crime intelligence analyst with the Cedar Rapids Police Department.
Proponents of the technology at the meeting addressed others’ concerns about data ownership by pointing out people already make sacrifices to their personal privacy by using cell phones.
While the city would have full ownership of the data, the contract grants Flock access to “perform all acts as necessary” for the company to provide its services.
"They [Flock] said it’s our data,” said Coralville police chief Kyle Nicholson. “We own the data, but it automatically deletes after 30 days. I’ve spoken with other agencies, and they’ve been unable to access data on day 30, at 24 hours.”
The council members asked many of the same questions as their constituents during their discussion, both recognizing the benefit of providing law enforcement with a crime-solving tool, but remaining hesitant to utilize a system the ACLU has called a violation of the Fourth Amendment.
“I trust our staff — what I don’t trust is the system itself, or the company itself,” said council member Hai Huynh. “I have questions that our mayor couldn’t answer, our staff couldn’t answer, and I am not okay moving forward before I have those questions answered.”
Mayor Meghann Foster suggested inviting a Flock representative to a future council meeting to answer their questions and decided to temporarily halt the process of installing the ALPRs.
Flock says ALPRs are designed ‘with transparency in mind’
Even though the Coralville City Council and the city’s police chief had difficulty understanding certain aspects of how Flock’s technology works, the company said it remains committed to public trust and transparency.
“Flock License Plate readers (LPRs) are designed with privacy and transparency in mind,” said Flock spokesperson Paris Lewbel. “By default, the visuals of vehicles and associated vehicle data captured by our devices are automatically deleted after 30 days.”
While Lewbel said the 30-day retention remains standard practice, he acknowledged that some customers do hold their ALPR data for longer.
“Flock does not incentivize longer retention,” he said. “In fact, the 30-day retention is core to our approach and has been adopted by the vast majority of our customers.”
As for who owns the data submitted to the national Flock database, Lewbel said that customers themselves retain control even after the data is uploaded to the AWS cloud.
“Data from Flock cameras is not automatically uploaded to the National LPR Network,” he said. “Local agencies decide if, when and with whom to share their data with, and can revoke access at any time. An agency can only share data from their own cameras.”
Lewbel added that the company logs all searches made by an agency into the Flock system, although he did not mention whether it was apparent to customers which agencies were accessing their ALPR data once it had been uploaded to the national Flock database or for what purposes.
The tracking system the company uses includes both organizational audits — searches made by the agency into their own cameras — and network audits, which are searches conducted by outside agencies with whom the data is shared.
“Audit logs are preserved permanently, allowing agencies to review how the system is being used, by whom and for what purpose,” Lewbel said.
When customers use the technology outside of its intended purposes, Lewbel said the company can act swiftly and remove access immediately if data-sharing conflicts with state or local policies.
“Our mission is to ensure communities can use life-saving technology responsibly, in alignment with their democratic values,” he said.
Open records requests appear to reveal gaps in ALPR oversight
Several open records requests made to multiple local law enforcement agencies in Iowa that utilize Flock’s technology appear to show the only entities providing oversight of Iowa’s ALPR systems are the agencies themselves and the company.
Although some agencies make recent search audits available through Flock Transparency Portals, which are accessible via Flock’s website, several customers in Iowa choose not to.
IPR News requested both network-wide and internal search audits from several local agencies with Flock contracts that weren’t previously made public and received the following response:
“You have requested information that is restricted to authorized law enforcement command staff only and is considered intelligence data used for law enforcement purposes,” responded Mayra Martinez, Storm Lake city clerk. “The reports cannot be redacted because they are entirely derived from confidential intelligence data, which the Storm Lake Police Department is prohibited from disseminating except as expressly authorized under Iowa Code.”
Martinez said Flock system audit reports are confidential under Iowa state code and are guarded under previous rulings by the Iowa Public Information Board (IPIB).
In July, in response to a complaint filed by the Office of the State Public Defender over Flock sensor data in Davenport, IPIB ruled records which contained ALPR sensor data were protected as intelligence data, although the ruling did not mention search audits specifically.
Police liaisons in Cedar Rapids and at the University of Iowa rejected open records requests from IPR News for either network or organizational audit search data on similar grounds.
“That information has already gone to the state courts, and that information in Iowa is considered investigative intelligence,” said Cedar Rapids Public Safety Communications Specialist Mike Battien.
The Marshalltown Police Department provided a spreadsheet of its officers who accessed Flock, but did not include their reasons for doing so, also citing confidentiality.
Residents say more state regulation is needed
Hendrik van Pelt is a software developer from the Netherlands, now living in Guttenberg in northeast Iowa.
The Iowa Public Information Board dismissed a complaint van Pelt filed in 2023 regarding access to ALPR sensor data, the same case that was cited in Storm Lake's refusal to release its Flock search audits.
In an interview, van Pelt said since law enforcement agencies classify ALPR search audits as intelligence data, Flock’s systems must be monitored by the Iowa Department of Public Safety (DPS) under Iowa law.
“They’re supposed to audit all systems that process intelligence data regularly, and have regulations and processes in place for them,” van Pelt said. “I have reached out a couple times to them and received no response, and they seem to have no interest in doing anything in relation to those systems.”
If the data is intelligence data, as multiple law enforcement agencies have stated, then it must receive state oversight under Iowa Code.
“The [public safety] department shall adopt rules designed to assure the security and confidentiality of all systems established for the exchange of criminal history data and intelligence data between criminal or juvenile justice agencies,” Iowa Code Chapter 692 states.
Spokespeople from multiple police departments, including Cedar Rapids, West Des Moines and Urbandale said they have had no inquiries or contact with Iowa DPS in regard to their Flock cameras.
Iowa DPS did not say, after several requests, whether the agency has mechanisms in place for auditing Flock ALPR systems around the state.
Whartman, who first noticed the cameras in Cedar Rapids, said the state should have a way of more tightly regulating ALPRs.
“This should be coming from an oversight agency in Iowa or something like that, or nationally,” he said. “The fact that this is a third party doing all of this is just insane to me.”
Despite little regulation of Flock’s ever-changing technology, the number of cities in Iowa contracting with the company has continued to rise.
