Police Told to Be 'as Vague as Permissible' About Why They Use Flock
Source: 404 Media
Police officers are being told to “be as vague as permissible” about why they are using the Flock surveillance system in order to not leak sensitive information via public records requests, according to records obtained using a public records request. The warning originated from a Houston-area police intelligence center that includes members of the FBI and ICE and suggests without evidence that people are using a website called HaveIBeenFlocked.com to “potentially retaliate against law enforcement.”
The warnings were shared with 404 Media by researchers from Southerners Against Surveillance Systems and Infrastructure and Lucy Parsons Lab after our article about police unwittingly leaking the details of millions of surveillance targets nationwide due to public records redaction errors made by several Flock automated license plate reader system customers. This data was aggregated into a searchable tool called HaveIBeenFlocked.
Rather than looking at this incident as a huge operational security failure associated with using a massive commercial surveillance system, police see this as something that puts their officers directly in harm’s way. The data released by police departments includes the agency doing a search, the officer’s name, time of search, the license plate searched, and a “reason” field, which is the justification for doing a specific search.
In an “Officer Safety Situational Awareness Bulletin,” the Houston Investigative Support Center, an intelligence apparatus consisting of members of Houston-area police departments, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations told members that HaveIBeenFlocked “poses a significant officer safety risk to law enforcement personnel because suspects can determine if they are the target of an investigation and potentially retaliate against law enforcement and/or those cooperating with law enforcement.”
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Read more: https://www.404media.co/police-told-to-be-as-vague-as-permissible-about-why-they-use-flock/
That bulletin recommended that police just write "investigation" as the reason they're searching.
NEW: Police officers are being told to “be as vague as permissible†about why they are using the Flock surveillance system in order to not leak sensitive information via public records requests, according to records obtained using a public records request.
— 404 Media (@404media.co) 2026-01-27T14:46:28.430Z
= new reply since forum marked as read
