Flock cameras out in fort Collins. Fort Collins City Council has voted to immediately cancel its contract with Flock Safety, ending the city's participation in the company's automated license plate reader system. The 6-1 vote during a June 16 council meeting follows six months of public pushback on the use of the system. The Coloradoan reports council passed several directives impacting the operation, including immediate cessation of Flock data collection, expeditious removal of all cameras and a halt on seeking new bids for similar technology until a comprehensive citywide surveillance policy is established.

Amazon sued over Ring facial recognition technology. admin June 2, 2026 SouthernWorldwide.com - A lawsuit has been filed against Amazon, alleging privacy violations due to the facial recognition capabilities of its Ring video doorbell software. The plaintiff, Charles Sigwalt, a resident of Virginia, claims that Ring's "Familiar Faces" feature, which utilizes facial recognition technology, captures and stores images of individuals without their explicit consent. Sigwalt filed the lawsuit in a Seattle federal court, asserting that the "Familiar Faces" feature scans anyone passing by the Ring camera. It then employs artificial intelligence to categorize these individuals. According to the complaint, the system creates a "face print" that enables re-identification of the person. The lawsuit is seeking class-action status. "When plaintiffs and class members entered the homes and businesses of places which had Ring cameras that deployed Familiar Faces, they did not consent to have their privacy rights violated at the entrance way," the suit states. Sigwalt contends that Ring collected his facial recognition data without any prior warning, specifically while he was visiting friends and family members. He believes that Amazon continues to retain his biometric data. Amazon has not provided any comment regarding the lawsuit. The "Familiar Faces" feature was introduced by Ring in September 2025. It was marketed as a tool to provide Ring doorbell camera owners with more personalized alerts, such as identifying specific individuals like "John at Front Door" instead of a generic "Person at Front Door" notification. Ring's website states that the camera learns to recognize frequent visitors, including friends and family, over time. Users have the option to enable or disable this feature, according to Ring. Organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation have voiced strong opposition to the "Familiar Faces" feature, arguing that it infringes upon personal privacy. The group has warned that the collected biometric data could be exploited for mass surveillance or be compromised in the event of a data breach. Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts has also been a vocal critic of the "Familiar Faces" technology. He has highlighted concerns that the feature could be used to record biometric data of individuals who have not consented to have their faces scanned. Amazon has faced previous legal challenges concerning its Ring product. In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission initiated a lawsuit alleging that Amazon provided employees and contractors with access to customer videos recorded by Ring. The FTC also claimed that the company failed to adequately secure customer data, which led to instances of hackers threatening or making sexual propositions to Ring owners. Amazon reached a settlement in that case, agreeing to pay $5.8 million. More recently, Amazon terminated a partnership with the security technology company Flock Safety. This decision followed public backlash over a Ring commercial aired during the Super Bowl, which raised concerns about potential unwanted surveillance. Amazon acquired Ring, the video doorbell company, in 2018 for $1 billion. Post Views: 19

Re: perry-garcía Amendment to ban Flock automatic license plate readers. by Demand Progress on May 21, 2026 RootsAction is a signer of this letter to The Honorable Sam Graves The Honorable Rick Larsen, Chairman and Ranking Member, Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure Dear Chairman Graves and Ranking Member Larsen: Rootsaction urge the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure to support Rep. Scott Perry and Rep. Chuy García's amendment to the Highway Bill that would restrict the use of automatic license plate readers except for tolling purposes. The rapid growth of this surveillance technology in recent years, led in large part by the company Flock Safety, poses a serious threat to the privacy, civil liberties, and constitutional rights of Americans. Americans' concerns about government surveillance reach back to the Founding itself. The Founders were well aware of the powers and risks of an almighty government with unrestricted surveillance powers. That is why they formulated the Fourth Amendment to protect Rootsaction from unreasonable searches, and modern courts have found that automated license plate recognition (ALPR) technology can be unreasonable. Surveillance infrastructure like this does not stay within the uses its architects intend, and when it expands, it is people of faith, political minorities, and communities already subject to over-policing who bear the consequences first. In this 250th year since the Founding, Rootsaction must put freedom first. Today, Flock Safety contracts with more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies and operates over 80,000 AI-powered cameras across 49 states. These cameras photograph every vehicle that passes, regardless of any suspicion of wrongdoing. All the data collected - license plate data, vehicle descriptions, location, and time - are stored, and a majority of that data is in a centralized, searchable national database that is accessible to law enforcement on demand without court approval. And while Flock is the largest and most aggressive operator, these concerns apply to ALPR technology industry wide as any system that photographs every passing vehicle, stores that data, and makes it searchable by law enforcement without court approval poses the same fundamental threats to privacy and civil liberties. Flock Safety's automatic license plate reader technology has expanded in recent years to become a mass domestic surveillance tool. Flock introduced AI analytics products that shift the company from providing tools for officials to use in existing investigations to proactively generating suspicion that rises to the level of warranting an investigation. Flock technology scans the movement patterns of all vehicles in its national dataset and alerts law enforcement if it perceives movements as suspicious or criminal. The "Convoy Search" feature allows police to track vehicles frequently seen together, enabling the surveillance of Americans' free associations even without existing suspicion of criminal activity. Flock also launched live video feeds on its cameras, a significant expansion beyond the still-image capture that was used to justify the technology to communities when they considered adopting it in the first place. Flock's data-sharing practices have also raised local concerns. Town officials in Hillsborough, North Carolina canceled their contract with Flock, citing concerns about data privacy. The contract included language that could be interpreted as allowing Flock to disclose data to any government entity or third party based on a "good faith belief" of a need to do so. In California, the state attorney general sued the City of El Cajon after discovering that Flock's system had facilitated data sharing with agencies in hundreds of outside jurisdictions, in violation of state privacy law. A Colorado resident who was investigated without cause using Flock surveillance footage was told by the law enforcement official, "You can't get a breath of fresh air in or out without us knowing." The system's security vulnerabilities present additional serious privacy concerns. In 2025, at least 60 of Flock's AI-powered surveillance cameras were found exposed online without password protection, allowing anyone with a link to watch live feeds and access up to 30 days of archived video, including footage of unattended children on a playground, which shows that Flock is no longer just about road traffic. Flock cameras can be physically compromised in seconds with exposed USB ports, hardcoded Wi-Fi network names, unencrypted image storage, and no two-factor authentication required for the police portal used to access sensitive data. In November, Sen. Wyden and Rep. Krishnamoorthi urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Flock for failing to implement adequate cybersecurity protections. At least 53 cities across 20 states have terminated or rejected Flock camera usage, with many citing privacy concerns and the risks of a system over which they have little meaningful control. As the FBI prepares to spend $36 million on a nationwide license plate reader system capable of tracking any vehicle in "near real time," it is more critical than ever that Congress shields Americans from being subjected to warrantless, suspicionless tracking of their everyday lives. Reps. Perry and Garcia's amendment offers a direct solution to invasive surveillance practices: restricting the use of automatic license plate readers except for the purpose of tolling. Rootsaction urge Members of the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure to support this critical step in protecting the privacy rights of all Americans. Sincerely, 18 MILLION RISING Access Now Advocacy for Principled Action in Government American Civil Liberties Union Americans For Prosperity Amnesty International USA Asian Americans Advancing Justice | AAJC Black Voters Matter Fund Common Cause Consumer Choice Center Consumer Federation of America Defending Rights & Dissent Deflock Olympia Demand Progress Due Process Institute Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Fight for the Future Free Press Action Holy Spirit Missionary Sisters, USA-JPIC Japanese American Citizens League Libertas Institute Long Beach Alliance for Clean Energy Lucy Parsons Labs Make the Road States Mass 50501 Muslims for Just Futures National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers National Association of Voice Actors (NAVA) National Tongan American Society Northwest Indivisible Oakland Privacy PFLAG Skagit Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability Restore the Fourth RootsAction Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF) Thai Community Development Center (Thai CDC) The Alliance for Secure AI The Nexus of Privacy The Workers Circle Wisconsin Muslim Civic Alliance UnidosUS cc: Members of the Committee on Transportation & Infrastructure