DE FLOCK SCOTTSDALE
DE FLOCK SCOTTSDALE
The Issue
PETITION TO REMOVE FLOCK SAFETY SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS FROM SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA
To the Scottsdale Mayor, City Council, and Scottsdale Police Department:
We are asking you to protect Scottsdale’s greatest asset: the privacy and freedom of the people who live here.
We, the undersigned residents, property owners, workers, and members of the Scottsdale community, respectfully demand that the City of Scottsdale remove its Flock Safety automated license-plate reader cameras and discontinue the City’s use of the Flock surveillance system.
This is not a request to make Scottsdale less safe.
It is a request to recognize that Scottsdale is already one of America’s safest communities, and that public safety should never require the government to maintain a detailed historical record of where ordinary people drive.
Scottsdale’s own government proudly describes the city as one of the nation’s safest communities. In 2025, Scottsdale was recognized as being among the top 15 safest cities in the United States for cities with populations over 100,000, placing it in the top five percent of approximately 300 cities evaluated. (ScottsdaleAZ website)
So we must ask a simple question:
How much surveillance is enough?
85 cameras (and counting). 185 days of our movements.
Scottsdale currently operates 85 Flock license-plate-reader cameras. Scottsdale Police confirmed that non-evidentiary images and data collected by these cameras are retained for 185 days before automatic deletion. (unFlock Scottsdale website)
That means that when an ordinary Scottsdale resident drives to work, goes to the gym, visits a friend, goes shopping, attends church, visits a doctor’s office, goes on a date, travels to another part of the Valley, or simply drives home, their vehicle can become another entry in a government-controlled database containing:
the vehicle’s license plate
an image of the vehicle
the date and time
the location of the camera
vehicle characteristics and identifying attributes
and potentially enough repeated observations to reconstruct patterns of where that vehicle regularly appears.
Flock itself acknowledges that its technology captures license plates, vehicle characteristics, timestamps, and camera-location information. (Flock Safety website)
And Scottsdale’s retention period is not merely a few days. It is six months.
A person should not have to become a suspect, be arrested, or even be accused of a crime before the government begins accumulating a historical record of their movements. This is bigger than a license plate. Flock repeatedly describes its technology as being about vehicles rather than people.
But in the real world, vehicles are operated by people.
A vehicle’s repeated presence at an address, workplace, business, religious institution, medical facility, social gathering, or another person’s home can reveal extraordinarily intimate information about a person’s life without ever taking a photograph of their face.
The question is therefore not simply: “Can the camera read my license plate?”
The more important question is: “Should the government be permitted to retain and search a six-month history of where my vehicle has been?”
That distinction matters.
The Fourth Amendment deserves more than a technical loophole.
The Fourth Amendment protects Americans against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The United States Supreme Court has recognized that Americans do not automatically surrender all Fourth Amendment privacy interests simply because they travel through public places.
In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court specifically recognized a legitimate expectation of privacy in the record of a person’s physical movements, explaining that the fact that information is held by a third party does not automatically eliminate Fourth Amendment protection. (Legal Information Institute website)
Flock argues that its cameras do not necessarily violate the Fourth Amendment and points to cases upholding various forms of license-plate-reader evidence. (Flock Safety website)
But that does not end the conversation.
Scottsdale is not required to use every surveillance technology that might be legally permissible.
Constitutional minimums are not the standard Scottsdale should aspire to.
Scottsdale should aspire to something higher: A government that protects its residents’ safety without unnecessarily monitoring their lives.
Who has access and where does the information go?
Flock states that its customers can determine how data is shared and that law-enforcement agencies can establish sharing arrangements with other agencies. Flock also acknowledges that agencies can share camera access through various networks, including geographically broader networks. (Flock Safety website)
This is precisely why residents deserve transparency.
The issue is not whether Flock employees are personally looking through photographs of Scottsdale residents.
The issue is whether a government surveillance system exists that allows authorized users to search historical vehicle information without the individual being notified and without that individual ever having been suspected of a crime.
Flock’s own system is designed to make searches extraordinarily easy. Its interface permits searches using information such as date, time, vehicle color, vehicle type, license-plate information, and vehicle characteristics. (Flock Safety website)
That capability deserves extraordinary scrutiny. We should not normalize surveillance simply because we have nothing to hide. Privacy is not something that should belong only to innocent people who have something embarrassing to conceal.
Privacy belongs to everyone.
A woman should be able to drive to a friend’s house without creating a government record of the visit.
A man should be able to attend a religious service without worrying that his vehicle’s repeated presence can later be reconstructed.
A family should be able to take their children across town without unknowingly contributing another data point to a six-month historical record.
A Scottsdale resident should be able to leave their home without wondering:
Who can see where I’ve been?
Who can search it?
What happens if the information is misused?
What happens if the database is breached?
What happens if government policy changes years from now?
And perhaps most importantly:
Why should this information exist in the first place when Scottsdale is already one of America’s safest cities?
Safety and liberty are not mutually exclusive.
We absolutely support legitimate police work.
We support recovering stolen vehicles.
We support locating missing people.
We support solving violent crimes.
We support Scottsdale Police officers having the tools necessary to protect residents.
But there is a fundamental difference between investigating a specific crime and creating a persistent surveillance infrastructure capable of searching the movements of an entire population.
Technology should assist law enforcement when there is a legitimate investigative need. It should not quietly transform every resident into a permanent source of location intelligence.
Scottsdale has spent decades building a reputation as a safe, desirable, world-class community.
We should not have to sacrifice the privacy that makes this community worth living in simply because technology makes mass collection possible.
Other Arizona communities have already begun reconsidering Flock.
In February 2026, South Tucson voted 5–1 to terminate its Flock Safety contract, with privacy and data-sharing concerns among the issues discussed. (Arizona Daily Star website) and Scottsdale officials themselves are now publicly questioning whether Flock’s surveillance system is appropriate for the city. Recent reporting indicates that Scottsdale has faced growing concerns about the cameras and that council members have called for reconsideration of the program. (Axios website)
This is no longer a fringe concern. It is a legitimate public-policy question being debated throughout Arizona and across the country.
OUR DEMAND
We respectfully ask the Scottsdale City Council and Scottsdale Police Department to:
Terminate Scottsdale’s use of Flock Safety automated license-plate-reader cameras.
Remove the City’s 85 Flock cameras from Scottsdale streets.
Immediately suspend the collection of new Flock vehicle-location data while the program is being reconsidered.
Conduct a complete independent audit of all existing Flock data, including who has accessed it, when it was accessed, why it was accessed, and whether any data has been shared with outside agencies.
Disclose every law-enforcement agency or other governmental entity currently capable of accessing Scottsdale Flock data.
Disclose the complete retention, sharing, search, and access policies governing Scottsdale’s Flock data.
Hold a public hearing before any future automated license-plate-reader system is installed, renewed, expanded, or replaced.
Adopt a clear policy requiring individualized legal justification before government agencies can obtain or search historical location information capable of revealing a person’s movements over time.
A FINAL MESSAGE TO OUR CITY LEADERS
We are not asking Scottsdale to choose between safety and freedom.
We are asking you to remember that freedom is part of safety. A city can have excellent police officers, fast emergency response, strong neighborhoods, effective investigations, and still respect the fundamental privacy of innocent people.
Scottsdale has earned its reputation as one of America’s safest cities. Let us also make Scottsdale one of America’s most privacy-respecting cities.
Do not wait until surveillance technology is abused before establishing boundaries.
Do not wait until a database is breached.
Do not wait until someone’s movements are wrongly interpreted.
Do not wait until the technology becomes so deeply embedded in government infrastructure that removing it becomes politically impossible.
The time to protect privacy is before it is lost.
We ask the Scottsdale City Council to stand with the people who elected it.
We ask our police department to protect us.. not merely from criminals, but from unnecessary government intrusion.
And we ask our elected representatives to remember the principle that has protected Americans for generations:
The government should have a reason to watch you.
You should not have to have a reason to be left alone.
SIGN THE PETITION
By signing below, I am asking the City of Scottsdale to terminate its use of Flock Safety automated license-plate-reader technology, remove the City’s Flock cameras, conduct a complete audit of existing data and access, and establish stronger privacy protections for Scottsdale residents.
186
The Issue
PETITION TO REMOVE FLOCK SAFETY SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS FROM SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA
To the Scottsdale Mayor, City Council, and Scottsdale Police Department:
We are asking you to protect Scottsdale’s greatest asset: the privacy and freedom of the people who live here.
We, the undersigned residents, property owners, workers, and members of the Scottsdale community, respectfully demand that the City of Scottsdale remove its Flock Safety automated license-plate reader cameras and discontinue the City’s use of the Flock surveillance system.
This is not a request to make Scottsdale less safe.
It is a request to recognize that Scottsdale is already one of America’s safest communities, and that public safety should never require the government to maintain a detailed historical record of where ordinary people drive.
Scottsdale’s own government proudly describes the city as one of the nation’s safest communities. In 2025, Scottsdale was recognized as being among the top 15 safest cities in the United States for cities with populations over 100,000, placing it in the top five percent of approximately 300 cities evaluated. (ScottsdaleAZ website)
So we must ask a simple question:
How much surveillance is enough?
85 cameras (and counting). 185 days of our movements.
Scottsdale currently operates 85 Flock license-plate-reader cameras. Scottsdale Police confirmed that non-evidentiary images and data collected by these cameras are retained for 185 days before automatic deletion. (unFlock Scottsdale website)
That means that when an ordinary Scottsdale resident drives to work, goes to the gym, visits a friend, goes shopping, attends church, visits a doctor’s office, goes on a date, travels to another part of the Valley, or simply drives home, their vehicle can become another entry in a government-controlled database containing:
the vehicle’s license plate
an image of the vehicle
the date and time
the location of the camera
vehicle characteristics and identifying attributes
and potentially enough repeated observations to reconstruct patterns of where that vehicle regularly appears.
Flock itself acknowledges that its technology captures license plates, vehicle characteristics, timestamps, and camera-location information. (Flock Safety website)
And Scottsdale’s retention period is not merely a few days. It is six months.
A person should not have to become a suspect, be arrested, or even be accused of a crime before the government begins accumulating a historical record of their movements. This is bigger than a license plate. Flock repeatedly describes its technology as being about vehicles rather than people.
But in the real world, vehicles are operated by people.
A vehicle’s repeated presence at an address, workplace, business, religious institution, medical facility, social gathering, or another person’s home can reveal extraordinarily intimate information about a person’s life without ever taking a photograph of their face.
The question is therefore not simply: “Can the camera read my license plate?”
The more important question is: “Should the government be permitted to retain and search a six-month history of where my vehicle has been?”
That distinction matters.
The Fourth Amendment deserves more than a technical loophole.
The Fourth Amendment protects Americans against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The United States Supreme Court has recognized that Americans do not automatically surrender all Fourth Amendment privacy interests simply because they travel through public places.
In Carpenter v. United States, the Supreme Court specifically recognized a legitimate expectation of privacy in the record of a person’s physical movements, explaining that the fact that information is held by a third party does not automatically eliminate Fourth Amendment protection. (Legal Information Institute website)
Flock argues that its cameras do not necessarily violate the Fourth Amendment and points to cases upholding various forms of license-plate-reader evidence. (Flock Safety website)
But that does not end the conversation.
Scottsdale is not required to use every surveillance technology that might be legally permissible.
Constitutional minimums are not the standard Scottsdale should aspire to.
Scottsdale should aspire to something higher: A government that protects its residents’ safety without unnecessarily monitoring their lives.
Who has access and where does the information go?
Flock states that its customers can determine how data is shared and that law-enforcement agencies can establish sharing arrangements with other agencies. Flock also acknowledges that agencies can share camera access through various networks, including geographically broader networks. (Flock Safety website)
This is precisely why residents deserve transparency.
The issue is not whether Flock employees are personally looking through photographs of Scottsdale residents.
The issue is whether a government surveillance system exists that allows authorized users to search historical vehicle information without the individual being notified and without that individual ever having been suspected of a crime.
Flock’s own system is designed to make searches extraordinarily easy. Its interface permits searches using information such as date, time, vehicle color, vehicle type, license-plate information, and vehicle characteristics. (Flock Safety website)
That capability deserves extraordinary scrutiny. We should not normalize surveillance simply because we have nothing to hide. Privacy is not something that should belong only to innocent people who have something embarrassing to conceal.
Privacy belongs to everyone.
A woman should be able to drive to a friend’s house without creating a government record of the visit.
A man should be able to attend a religious service without worrying that his vehicle’s repeated presence can later be reconstructed.
A family should be able to take their children across town without unknowingly contributing another data point to a six-month historical record.
A Scottsdale resident should be able to leave their home without wondering:
Who can see where I’ve been?
Who can search it?
What happens if the information is misused?
What happens if the database is breached?
What happens if government policy changes years from now?
And perhaps most importantly:
Why should this information exist in the first place when Scottsdale is already one of America’s safest cities?
Safety and liberty are not mutually exclusive.
We absolutely support legitimate police work.
We support recovering stolen vehicles.
We support locating missing people.
We support solving violent crimes.
We support Scottsdale Police officers having the tools necessary to protect residents.
But there is a fundamental difference between investigating a specific crime and creating a persistent surveillance infrastructure capable of searching the movements of an entire population.
Technology should assist law enforcement when there is a legitimate investigative need. It should not quietly transform every resident into a permanent source of location intelligence.
Scottsdale has spent decades building a reputation as a safe, desirable, world-class community.
We should not have to sacrifice the privacy that makes this community worth living in simply because technology makes mass collection possible.
Other Arizona communities have already begun reconsidering Flock.
In February 2026, South Tucson voted 5–1 to terminate its Flock Safety contract, with privacy and data-sharing concerns among the issues discussed. (Arizona Daily Star website) and Scottsdale officials themselves are now publicly questioning whether Flock’s surveillance system is appropriate for the city. Recent reporting indicates that Scottsdale has faced growing concerns about the cameras and that council members have called for reconsideration of the program. (Axios website)
This is no longer a fringe concern. It is a legitimate public-policy question being debated throughout Arizona and across the country.
OUR DEMAND
We respectfully ask the Scottsdale City Council and Scottsdale Police Department to:
Terminate Scottsdale’s use of Flock Safety automated license-plate-reader cameras.
Remove the City’s 85 Flock cameras from Scottsdale streets.
Immediately suspend the collection of new Flock vehicle-location data while the program is being reconsidered.
Conduct a complete independent audit of all existing Flock data, including who has accessed it, when it was accessed, why it was accessed, and whether any data has been shared with outside agencies.
Disclose every law-enforcement agency or other governmental entity currently capable of accessing Scottsdale Flock data.
Disclose the complete retention, sharing, search, and access policies governing Scottsdale’s Flock data.
Hold a public hearing before any future automated license-plate-reader system is installed, renewed, expanded, or replaced.
Adopt a clear policy requiring individualized legal justification before government agencies can obtain or search historical location information capable of revealing a person’s movements over time.
A FINAL MESSAGE TO OUR CITY LEADERS
We are not asking Scottsdale to choose between safety and freedom.
We are asking you to remember that freedom is part of safety. A city can have excellent police officers, fast emergency response, strong neighborhoods, effective investigations, and still respect the fundamental privacy of innocent people.
Scottsdale has earned its reputation as one of America’s safest cities. Let us also make Scottsdale one of America’s most privacy-respecting cities.
Do not wait until surveillance technology is abused before establishing boundaries.
Do not wait until a database is breached.
Do not wait until someone’s movements are wrongly interpreted.
Do not wait until the technology becomes so deeply embedded in government infrastructure that removing it becomes politically impossible.
The time to protect privacy is before it is lost.
We ask the Scottsdale City Council to stand with the people who elected it.
We ask our police department to protect us.. not merely from criminals, but from unnecessary government intrusion.
And we ask our elected representatives to remember the principle that has protected Americans for generations:
The government should have a reason to watch you.
You should not have to have a reason to be left alone.
SIGN THE PETITION
By signing below, I am asking the City of Scottsdale to terminate its use of Flock Safety automated license-plate-reader technology, remove the City’s Flock cameras, conduct a complete audit of existing data and access, and establish stronger privacy protections for Scottsdale residents.
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Petition created on August 24, 2026