Security1 publisher2 min readPublished
Flock ran a 19,000-camera plate search for a deputy whose stated reason was 'LMAO'
EFF pulled Flock's own audit logs through public records requests and found officers logging jokes, insults and keyboard mash as their reason for license plate searches run between 2023 and late 2025.
The Watch · Security desk
What happened
- EFF's analysis of Flock's audit logs, shared with 404 Media, found dozens of officers entering jokes, insults or keyboard mash, and thousands more entering 'investigation', 'test', or nothing at all.
- The searches came from departments across the country between 2023 and late 2025, when Flock replaced the free-text reason field with a drop-down of prepopulated reasons.
- Departments told EFF that officers who wrote 'hehe' and 'idk' were counseled, that the officer who wrote 'idiot' was time-barred by a 90-day union contract window, and that several other cases would be investigated.
Compiled by The WatchSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- capability One local account reaches plate sightings from cameras in more than a thousand other jurisdictions, and the justification text never blocked a query, so the only control on that reach was review after the fact.
- exposure Drivers in the 1,558 towns feeding that index can be looked up by a department in another state on a reason nobody checked when the search ran.
- constraint Even a perfect log runs into contract clocks: when a department learns of a search after 90 days, the union agreement forecloses the internal investigation.
- precedent With officers already coached to be 'as vague as permissible' and free text replaced by a menu, the next batch of released logs will be thinner evidence than the ones EFF read.
The reason box was a text field. Whatever an officer typed was stored next to the query, and the query ran. The Lake County search shows the order of operations: the deputy entered "LMAO" and Flock returned plate hits from more than 19,000 cameras in 1,558 cities and towns [1][18]. EFF also found an entry reading "robbery I don't remember the case number leave me alone", so at least some officers knew a case number was the expected content [5].
Those cameras sit across 1,558 municipalities, an average of about 12 per town [17]. Flock's index combines many small local deployments, which is why a single sheriff's department console reaches other agencies' cameras nationwide [1].
"Police are routinely searching the Flock database without providing any legitimate justification, making a mockery of our civil liberties by logging reasons like 'LOL,' 'LMAO,' 'sexy,' and 'idk' to access sensitive ALPR location data," the EFF wrote in a blog post about its findings [8]. In the same post EFF wrote that police and vendors "trumpet the technology, which is often provided by private companies like Flock Safety, Motorola Solutions, or Axon, as an essential tool for solving high-stakes crimes, such as car jacking, kidnapping, or murder" [7].
The analysis was possible because Flock saves a record of every search and those records can be obtained through government records requests; the logs released so far cover hundreds of thousands of searches [9]. The same logs let 404 Media and other outlets show police searching for undocumented immigrants on behalf of ICE, a Texas woman who had an abortion, and protesters [10]. After that reporting, government surveillance centers warned officers to be "as vague as permissible" about their stated reasons [11].
Flock then replaced the typed field with a drop-down list of prepopulated reasons, a change EFF called "a loss for transparency" [12]. 404 Media places that change in late 2025 in one passage and "late last year" in another [20]. As described, it changes what an officer can enter, not what Flock verifies [21].
EFF contacted the departments whose officers ran the joke searches, and many of them did nothing about it [13]. Officers who wrote "hehe" and "idk" were "counseled" [14]. The officer who wrote "idiot" faced no internal investigation, because by the time the department learned of the search the 90-day window his union contract allows had passed [15]. Several other departments said they would investigate [16].
What to watch
- Whether any of the departments that told EFF they would investigate publishes an outcome or a discipline record.
- Whether post-change logs, now built from Flock's prepopulated reasons, are specific enough for records requesters to spot misuse.
- Whether any city council responds to the EFF logs by adding a warrant requirement or audit terms to its Flock contract.