What happens after a town de-Flocks

Demonstrators hold a banner against Flock security cameras during a protest outside the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026. Photographer: Cornell Watson/Bloomberg via Getty Images | Bloomberg via Getty Images

From Florida to Washington state, local governments across the country are canceling their contracts with Flock, the company behind the controversial AI-enabled license plate readers, in response to public outcry. But ending the contracts doesn’t necessarily mean the cameras will come down immediately – or that the information they’ve gathered will be deleted anytime soon.

Even as state and local governments decide to rein in their surveillance capabilities, uncertainty remains about what Flock can and will do with data that has already been collected. Each jurisdiction’s contract is different, but many of them let Flock retain data long af …

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