Renton City Council is set to review a contract with Flock Safety regarding AI-powered license plate cameras that are already installed across our city. We have done our own review: this contract is awful and should be canceled immediately.

Here's what's actually in the contract:

1. Our data can be kept and used indefinitely, including to train AI. Flock's license to use resident data is described as "perpetual" and "irrevocable," with no clear limit on how it's used. Recordings of you become company property forever, to be used as they see fit.
2. Flock can hold our data for 30 days: longer than the law allows! State law (SB 6002) sets a 21-day retention limit, and this contract puts no limit at all on how long the city itself can keep downloaded data.
3. Flock, not the city, controls where cameras go and who can see the footage, with minimal oversight. The ACLU has found that Flock has repeatedly misrepresented its data-sharing practices to city councils and the public across the country. For example, in Mountain View, CA, hundreds of outside agencies queried the city's database for over a year without local approval after a setting was silently enabled.

This isn't a small group of residents raising a small concern. Renton residents shouldn't have to accept a private company recording our daily movements with almost no limits.

 There are 24 cameras currently installed in Renton, and they have already caused harm:

• Renton Police Chief Jon Schuldt said he only recently learned that immigration agents at Border Patrol and ICE had accessed his department's data through other law enforcement agencies, including Michigan State Police and Florida Highway Patrol. He called it "absolutely unauthorized".
• UW Center for Human Rights found that a Renton Police Department Flock Network Audit showed two searches by "US Border Patrol [Federal]" on June 23, 2025, despite Renton's own Network Sharing report showing it had not explicitly authorized sharing with Border Patrol.

In Washington: That same UW Center for Human Rights research found that Flock cameras enabled it. At the very least...

• Border Patrol and ICE had access to Flock data from 18 of the 31 Washington law enforcement agencies studied.
• Eight Washington law enforcement agencies enabled direct sharing with Border Patrol.
• 10 agencies had apparent "back door" access Border Patrol could use without explicit authorization.
• 17 Washington agencies (including Renton!) had been used in searches by Border Patrol.

Now SB 6002 prohibits ALPR use for immigration enforcement, but Renton's Flock contract does not enforce it!

We're asking the City Council and Mayor to cancel and not renew the contract with Flock. 

The contract fails to protect our data, fails to comply with state law, fails to protect Renton taxpayers from liability, and fails to implement meaningful oversight.

Add your name if you agree that Renton deserves better.