Just a few months ago, the smart home device company Ring paid millions of dollars to run a seemingly innocuous Super Bowl advertisement about finding lost dogs. Using the app’s now-defunct “Search Party” function, the ad showed how users could share a picture of their lost dog with Ring, which would access customer camera feeds and use artificial intelligence to locate their pet. Ring’s marketing team probably thought the ad would be heartwarming and well received. Instead, they almost immediately faced backlash from viewers concerned about the wide-reaching implications of home surveillance and data-sharing with police.
That renewed suspicion isn’t limited to doorbells and home security cameras. For years, people of all political persuasions have debated the constitutionality of the indiscriminate use of surveillance tools in the name of stopping crime, whether it be red light cameras, phone location tracking, or, increasingly, automated license plate readers (ALPRs).
ALPRs are cameras that capture and store license plate information in a database, which can then be accessed by law enforcement. With coverage in 49 states across a network of over 90,000 cameras, Flock Safety is one of the most prolific ALPR companies in the country. Flock not only provides the equipment but also the software and database that law enforcement agencies can run license plates against. Each time a law enforcement agency runs a search, it should be logged and tagged with the reason for the search, but the company’s lax policies mean that doesn’t always happen.
Recent investigative reporting has found all kinds of dubious justifications unrelated to crime prevention, from No Kings protest attendance to out-of-state travel by a Texas woman seeking abortion care and immigration enforcement. Here in Texas, our state police were early adopters of Flock and other surveillance technology for immigration enforcement purposes as part of Texas’s abusive, deadly, and now-defunct mass deportation apparatus, Operation Lone Star.
Recent reporting has also revealed troubling lapses in data security after a number of police departments revealed their logs, publicly identifying millions of surveillance targets. You can check to see if you are one of them at HaveIBeenFlocked.com, a website Flock has fervently tried to take down. After months of bad publicity, many Flock customers decided they’d had enough. Even Ring chose to end its Flock partnership after the disastrous, out-of-touch Super Bowl ad.
Last June, my colleagues and I on the San Marcos City Council did the same, voting to let our Flock contract lapse in December 2025. So why did we make that decision, and how were we able to overcome the pushback in the name of public safety?
While the world witnessed mass immigration sweeps and blatant law enforcement collaboration with ICE in large cities throughout 2025, the situation in San Marcos was different but still not entirely insulated from the national landscape of horror. My community was afraid that the violence we saw on our screens could soon be replicated here. The council decided to be proactive and look for tangible ways to deprive the mass deportation machine of the local infrastructure on which it so heavily relies.
Nothing happens on our city council without first hearing from the community. When we started probing the contract renewal, we heard from both supporters and opponents. The supporters shared our concerns about the indiscriminate collection of personal data that could be accessed by law enforcement nationwide, Flock’s shoddy business practices, the erosion of probable cause and due process, and, of course, Flock’s collaboration with ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
We also heard from our local police department with concerns about how they would keep residents and businesses safe without Flock. Flock was viewed as just one tool in the department’s toolbox, and they asked us to trust that they would protect our data, when even the company could not provide those guarantees. However, the community’s concern was not just with the local departments’ use of the Flock system but more broadly with Flock’s historically poor management of the data with which it is entrusted.
It should go without saying that everyone wants our community to be a safe place to build a life. We carefully considered all of this feedback on the council and ultimately decided to end the contract. Critically, Flock had been in the news for months, receiving almost exclusively bad press thanks to the dogged efforts of investigative journalists across the country. That coverage and other communities’ persistent fight against Flock turned what our critics falsely called hyperbole into reality. Responding to the horrors already taking place with this software allowed us to reframe the issue around our residents’ due process and privacy rights, speaking to concerns beyond Flock’s collaboration with ICE or the potential misuse of the system.
In short, our motivations may have varied, but the council ultimately coalesced around a belief that renewing the Flock contract was not in our city’s best interest.
It’s difficult to condense all of the work done by our community into a few hundred words without making it sound easier than it was. The pro-Flock crowd was relentless and had heavy backing from local law enforcement and their advocacy groups. It took significant work to combat bad faith criticism and overcome how normalized state surveillance has become in this country. But terminating our Flock contract was possible, and other local governments can do it too.
The best advice I can give other local officials is to listen to the material concerns underpinning your opposition. While I consistently invoke the label of “surveillance tech” to describe Flock, that wasn’t initially how it was viewed by the San Marcos community or the council. We began by looking at the concept of “safety.” What is it that makes someone feel safe? Most communities can identify what that means for them, whether it’s investing tax dollars in healthcare, food security, stable jobs, or economic development. When our neighbors don’t experience these types of safety, that’s a policy decision. The more we made the case that investing in surveillance tech like Flock diverts resources from what actually makes our community safer, the more folks with hesitations and even outright opposition came around.
Ultimately, the chaos and horror of mass deportation in our country cannot be done without the help of local, county, and state governments alike. Local elected officials must use every tool and pull every lever available to us to protect our communities. We must learn from each other and lean on each other as partners and experts to defend our constituents’ rights.
We are the leaders who can either build or dismantle the networks that ICE and CBP need to terrorize our communities. We are the ones who can reframe public safety around meeting our neighbors’ needs. The fight against Flock is hopefully the catalyst for a larger rejection of surveillance technology. We must demand more from our government, and that starts by demanding more from your city and county leaders.
Amanda Rodriguez currently serves on the San Marcos City Council in Place 6.
The post Why My Texas Town Took Action Against Flock Cameras appeared first on The Texas Observer.
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