The Boulder Police Department will renew its contract with Flock, an automatic license plate reader company that has faced increased pushback over privacy concerns and data sharing with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Over 40 AI-powered Flock cameras in the city track each time a car passes, recording identifying information like bike racks, car color and bumper stickers in addition to license plate numbers. For several years, Boulder’s data was automatically available for warrantless search by thousands of law enforcement agencies across the country via Flock’s national network, including U.S. Border Patrol. In recent months, reports revealed that Flock had also shared data directly with Homeland Security Investigations, the investigations arm of ICE, after claiming it did not share data with federal immigration agencies.
In June, following pushback from local privacy advocates, Boulder removed itself from the national Flock network. It continues to share data on a network of Colorado police departments, at least one of which granted federal agents access to its Flock account this year for ICE-related searches, according to 9News…