Flock will be on the Auburn city council agenda Monday 10/12 at 6pm.
https://www.auburn.ca.gov/129/Agendas-Minutes
https://www.auburn.ca.gov/169/Information
I cross referenced their staff report with my research (including their ALPR policy and Flock contract) to see if there were any errors or holes:
1. Two different cost figures, a factor of two apart. Staff’s report to Council states the Flock contract costs “approximately $30,000 per year.” The actual signed Order Form shows a $15,000 recurring annual total. Unresolved discrepancy, worth a direct question.
2. A math error in the headline effectiveness claim. The “Why Auburn Uses ALPR” slide claims 230 expedited case investigations, then lists a category breakdown that sums to 92 (29 stolen vehicles + 14 burglary + 11 hit-and-run + 11 missing persons + 27 violent crimes). 138 cases are unaccounted for.
3. Auburn’s written retention policy doesn’t match what’s actually happening. Department Policy 471.5 requires ALPR data be stored “for a minimum of one year.” Every town hall slide and the Q&A document states 30-day retention. The department’s own written policy and its own public presentation contradict each other by a factor of twelve.
4. A required safeguard the department says doesn’t apply. Policy 471.4(f) requires officers to verify an ALPR alert through CLETS before taking enforcement action based on it. Q11 in the town hall answers states Flock doesn’t integrate with CLETS and that “there are no CLETS compliancy requirements.” The written safeguard appears to have become inoperative without the policy being updated to reflect that.
5. The written data-sharing procedure doesn’t match the actual system. Policy 471.7 describes case-by-case sharing: another agency submits a written request naming who’s asking and why, a commander reviews and approves it individually, the approval is filed. The October 8 Q&A shows Auburn automatically sharing with 274 agencies and receiving from 197 through Flock’s network architecture, standing, bulk access, not individually requested and approved. This is the single clearest gap between what the policy says happens and what the system actually does.
6. “Homeland security” and “electronic surveillance” are explicitly authorized uses in writing. Policy 471.3 lists these by name alongside stolen vehicles and missing persons, broader than the “primarily an investigative tool” framing presented to the public.
7. Auburn cannot measure its own system’s accuracy. Asked directly for the false-positive/misidentification rate, staff’s written answer: “there is not an efficient mechanism within the Flock platform... to capture and quantify” it. Roseville is cited as the only comparison city able to produce this number, because it pays staff to track it by hand. Auburn does not.
8. A feature that could make the error rate look better without fixing it. The same answer reveals Flock has a function to suppress a plate that repeatedly misreads. Staff says they’re “evaluating” using it, a tool that hides recurring errors from future review rather than correcting them.
9. Internally contradictory answers on how misuse is even caught. Q9 says misuse is detected only when an administrator happens to check the “Organization Audit” tab. Q10, two questions later, describes an automated feature that actively “detects and notifies” administrators of abnormal activity. Passive or automatic, the document says both.
10. Two direct resident questions were not actually answered. Asked whether Chief Morrison would unilaterally decline to renew, the way an Arizona sheriff recently did over Fourth Amendment concerns, the response discusses process, not the question asked. Asked how residents can be confident about undisclosed capabilities given Sheboygan’s cancellation over exactly that issue, the answer is “I believe this information could be captured” through internal audits, no commitment, no mechanism, no timeline.
11. A cited court case is not settled law. The Fourth Amendment slide cites Schmidt v. Norfolk as supporting ALPR’s constitutionality. I confirmed directly with the ACLU’s own case page: this is an active Fourth Circuit appeal, filed specifically because the ACLU and EFF argue the district court ruling Auburn is relying on was wrongly decided. The slide presents this as settled precedent without noting it’s currently being challenged.
12. A sharing-scope question the documents don’t resolve. The October 8 Q&A states zero out-of-state or federal agencies have direct access. The same document describes Auburn’s data flowing to NCRIC, a regional fusion center explicitly citing 9/11 as justification for broader, cross-jurisdictional reach. Whether the “zero” figure accounts for what NCRIC does with the data afterward is unclear and worth asking directly.
13. No City Council vote has ever approved Auburn’s ALPR policy. Unlike Cupertino (passed by recorded Council resolution) or San Clemente (Council-approved), Auburn’s policy is a department-level document. Monday is the first time it comes before Council at all.
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Help others learn about ALPR systems by sharing our research document:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LL6C35ifPVJr61sia_OAAY_zNtBu7ZIO0Gc2OhFJLdI/edit?usp=drivesdk