Washington Court Rules That Data Captured on Flock Safety Cameras Are Public Records | Electronic Frontier Foundation

Created 11/18/2025 at 9:56:30 PMEdited 11/18/2025 at 9:58:12 PM

The cities’ move to exempt the records from disclosure was a dangerous attempt to deny transparency and reflects another problem with the massive amount of data that police departments collect through Flock cameras and store on Flock servers: the wiggle room cities seek when public data is hosted on a private company’s server.

If a government agency is conducting mass surveillance, EFF supports individuals’ access to data collected specifically on them, at the very least. And to address legitimate privacy concerns, governments can and should redact personal information in these records while still disclosing information about how the systems work and the data that they capture.

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