A class action lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court accuses Flock Safety of violating California’s ALPR Privacy Act (Cal. Civ. Code § 1798.90.5 et seq.) by allowing federal and out-of-state agencies to query license plate data collected from California drivers.
According to reporting from Courthouse News Service, the suit alleges that between mid-2024 and early 2025, out-of-state and federal agencies — including the FBI, ICE, CBP, the DEA, and others — queried San Francisco’s Flock database more than 1.6 million times over roughly seven months, despite California’s sanctuary-state law (SB 54) explicitly barring data sharing for immigration enforcement.
The plaintiffs are seeking statutory damages of $2,500 per violation, which at the reported volume of queries would put potential exposure in the billions of dollars. Flock Safety has said it intends to vigorously defend itself and takes privacy and legal compliance seriously.
The case is ongoing. It’s one of several legal challenges nationally testing how state ALPR privacy statutes interact with Flock’s opt-in national lookup network, which lets participating agencies search plate data collected by any other participating agency regardless of state lines. Read more about how that network is structured in our article on how Flock Safety’s camera network works.
This is a developing story. Read the original reporting at Courthouse News Service.