Council probe sends Flock crashing following misleading statements, lies

On the nineteenth day of August, Chamber attendees were shocked to see a man dressed as the Star Wars villain Darth Vader appear before San Diego City Council in defense of the city's Flock camera ALPR system. The black robed figure continuously alluded to the George Lucas movie series, saying of the technology, “This is what the emperor needs.” This occurrence is one of many creative protests which have emerged over the past few months as public opinion on Flock and surveillance technology have taken a nosedive. There is perhaps no better case study for the evolution of opinion on ALPR cameras, silly costumes aside, than the debate debacle found in Oshkosh, one that has repeated in council chambers across the country. 

Recently, the name Flock Safety has “gone the way of Kleenex,” becoming nearly synonymous with the product it represents in a process of genericization, however Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) have existed for over 50 years. According to Police Chief Magazine, the first license plate readers were incorporated in the United Kingdom in the late 70s to combat terrorism and eventually migrated to the US in the 2000s for border security. They only became popular in American cities around 2020, when the now notorious company Flock shifted its business models to public municipalities and police partnerships. 

The fundamental function of Flock and other ALPR systems is to record license plates and other identifying information about cars that pass by in order to help police solve crimes. However, depending on the specific company and implementation, other features can include creating a pattern of life for passersby, sharing and collaboration with other communities and even internet and social media trawling. 

Oshkosh put up its first Flock cameras in 2023 and continued to expand its arsenal until April of 2026, when a vote came before Oshkosh Common Council to renew the contract for another pair of years. Mehlia Hauxwell, a local journalism student and former Air Force Intelligence Analyst had been reporting on US involvement in the Middle East and the progression of mass surveillance when Flock became a hot-button issue too close to home.

“I was on Facebook and I saw that there was a vote taking place regarding Flock cameras in our community, and that horrified me to my core,” she said. 

Hauxwell stated that her background and experience gave her the perspective to see the lines that this technology could cross.

“When I was trained by Peter Thiel and his cronies, we were explicitly told that we can only use surveillance technology on America’s adversaries,” she said, “and that it could never be used on American citizens because that was a violation of the Fourth Amendment.” 

To her, this is an issue with the potential to undermine core American principles.

“I swore an oath to the Constitution to protect and defend it and people, and just because I’m not enlisted doesn’t mean I stopped caring,” she said.

Hauxwell is not the only citizen with these concerns, as legal battles are currently being played out across the country to determine the constitutionality of ALPR surveillance. 

In the case of Schmidt v. City of Norfolk, citizens sued the Virginia municipality, arguing that their Fourth Amendment rights were violated by the Flock cameras posted on roadways. NBC reported that a federal judge ruled in favor of Norfolk; however, the decision was appealed to a Federal circuit court and has yet to be resolved. It seems likely, given the scope and impact that these rulings will have, these legal battles will continue to make their way up the ladder until the Supreme Court has the final word.

The most prominent code presiding over this case and the many others across the nation is the aforementioned Fourth Amendment, which provides the people a right to protection from “unreasonable search and seizure” by the government, although it is often construed, as in the landmark case Griswold v Connecticut, as the right to privacy. 

Hauxwell says, “Our forefathers explicitly wrote into the constitution, in the Fourth Amendment, we have essentially the right to privacy.” 

The sticking point in Flock’s favor is the precedent that privacy rights are generally forfeited on public property like roads. However, because this technology, and data safety as a whole, is so new, there is little basis for what to expect in the courts.

Perhaps the more pressing concern is the fact that Flock cameras can be accessed by officers without a warrant for seemingly any reason. Oshkosh based cybersecurity expert Jake Wesenberg, with over 20 years in the industry, set out to solve this problem.

“I worked with people in the community from a lot of different backgrounds, legal, political, software security, infrastructure security,” he said. “We pulled together a community-authored ordinance that would hold very strict standards at a technical level. We showed how you could get all the benefits without insecurity and abuse.” 

Wesenberg’s ordinance sought to ensure that all records older than 24 hours would require a warrant to be accessed. 

“That's founded on existing legislation that if you are going to look at people’s tracking data more than 24 hours in the past, that's a search and you need a warrant for that,” he said.

Coming from a corporate background, Wesenberg recognizes the harm that this technology poses in a public setting if unchecked.

“When this technology enters public spaces, I look for how it is being governed. Is it being governed to the same standards that we have? Preferably a lot stricter because it’s public,” he said.

Despite his hope for restrictions and guardrails, he found that Flock wasn’t interested in slowing down progress.

“When a lot of new technology comes on the scene, it works first and they secure it second. So I followed along waiting for the security part to show up, and it really never did,” he said. 

And although his ordinance was met with much support throughout the city, he found that the infrastructure to implement the technical restrictions was absent. 

“What really quickly became evident after we worked through that policy was there are no resources within the city and county governments to actually implement all of those controls and properly administrate them,” he said. 

All of this puts Oshkosh in a similar position as other Flock-infested cities with police searches at any time for any reason. An investigation by the Electronic Frontier Foundation revealed that search logs throughout the country, which were supposed to catalogue the reason for accessing Flock data, were filled with nonsensical justifications including acronyms like “LMAO,” “LOL,” “IDK” and even less savory blurbs like “sexy.”

Meanwhile, officers continue to misuse their access. The Institute of Justice created a database which includes over 100 documented cases of alleged abuse, while they warn that this represents only a fraction of the true number. Now infamous cases include several instances of officers stalking ex-partners and their children. In one, an officer was found to be stalking an ex-partner, while the supervisor tasked with investigating him was accused of the very same behavior. Another major community concern was the possibility of Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) collaboration with Flock. While there is no official partnership between Flock and ICE, as Flock primarily focuses on local governments, Flock footage has been used in ICE investigations, as police departments are free to share the footage.

Council member Brad Spanbauer says the policymakers were acutely aware of these risks going into the April renewal vote. 

“Among the group of counselors, if we found an article that we thought was helpful, we would share it. At the time there was also a lot coming out about the abuses,” he said.

This was, in part, the reason that the Common Council initially voted 4-3 to postpone the contract renewal for a few weeks in order to allow for community comment and further investigation. 

While community members coming to speak before council were almost entirely against the renewal, there were several prominent voices advocating for Flock cameras which worked to sway the council.

“To me there were way more concerns against Flock, but there were also, at the time, people who said they felt safer with it,” Spanbauer said. 

Of the most prominent voices supporting Flock were the Oshkosh Police Captain Dean Smith and City Manager Rebecca Grill, who both declined to comment. Grill and Smith are not alone, according to a Reuters survey published on Sept. 11, 2026, as 38% of Americans are in support of Flock cameras, with the numbers increasing drastically amongst older and Republican citizens. 

Their support is not unfounded either. According to company data, Flock has helped recover over 10,000 missing persons in the last year while the total number of cases utilizing Flock reaches 1,000,000. In communities which utilize the technology, over 20% of all solved cases employed the cameras for various purposes. Wesenberg, while opposed to the technology, can see the usefulness.

“A massive amount of data, that’s well organized and easily searchable, absolutely helps to resolve a critical issue quicker,” he said.

Similarly, Spanbauer was swayed by OPD’s arguments.

“Being a city council member you have to see all the sides and understand the police’s view of wanting to use them,” he said. 

These factors eventually led to the renewal of contract (albeit shortened to one year) approval in a 5-2 vote on April 22. The sigh of relief at Flock headquarters wouldn’t last long though, as the very next day a 7-0 revote immediately rescinded the contract after it was found that Flock employees had misrepresented the capabilities of the cameras on the previous night’s meeting. On the fateful day when the contract was approved, multiple Flock spokespeople attended in order to answer any questions council members may have. It was Spanbauer who probed as to whether or not the cameras were capable of creating a heat map, otherwise known as a pattern of life on citizens, to which the spokesperson answered they could not. Spanbauer immediately knew something was wrong, 

“I asked the question about heatmaps which I had seen in the use of the technology, and she lied about it,” he said. “Thinking about what to do next, my intention was to follow up with the Chief of Police, but the next morning they had already done that. They knew as soon as I knew that [Flock] had misrepresented the truth.”

The follow-up that he was referring to came in the form of a statement from Chief Smith.

“Because of this misrepresentation, specifically to a question asked by a council member, I can no longer recommend Flock,” he said.

Wesenberg pointed to Flock’s for-profit nature as the cause for this mistake.

“It’s very advanced, complex technology, and a salesperson’s job is to make a sale, not make sure the person fully understands what they are buying,” he said.

In the several months since the vote, communities all across the nation have slashed their agreements with Flock. The organization DeFlock tracks the cancellation and banning of ALPRs, reporting 104 cities that have rejected Flock across the nation, many citing Oshkosh as the example to follow.

“Oshkosh has been quoted in chambers across the nation because of what we did against Flock,” Hauxwell said. 

Going forward, citizens of Winnebago county are unlikely to have to worry about the return of ALPRs, 

“At this point it would be hard to support it if it were to come back in the future,” Spanbauer says, “Once we knew that they were lying, that more or less sealed it for me, not just for the company in particular but as a technology, I don’t think I can trust this”

by Isaac Considine-Buelow

Published October 5, 2026

Oshkosh West Index Volume 123 Issue 1