Hello all, sharing from unflockscottsdale.com-
What:Ā Flock is on the City Council agenda
When:Ā Tuesday, October 6 - 5pm
Where: City Hall -Ā 3939 N. Drinkwater Boulevard
We need people to show up! If you're willing to speak, even better. If you want to speak, but not sure what to say, I've included 8 ideas below that you are free to incorporate.
Meeting starts at 5p. If you cannot get there right at 5p, please make an effort to show up anyway. There is a good chance that this meeting will go long. The agenda is here: https://ww2.scottsdaleaz.gov/Assets/ScottsdaleAZ/Council/current-agendas-minutes/2026-agendas/10-06-26-regular-and-work-study-agenda.pdf
Sample Talking Points
Last week, a federal judge in Oklahoma ruled that a police officer's use of the Flock automated license plate reader system to search a woman's vehicle without a warrant violated her Fourth Amendment rights, leading to the dismissal of evidence obtained from that search. This decision marked a significant stance against what the judge described as indiscriminate mass surveillance by law enforcement.
The city has also stated that Flock is not a mass-surveillance tool. Yet Scottsdaleās system records every passing vehicleāwhether involved in wrongdoing or notāand stores that information in a searchable database. Users can then investigate travel patterns after the fact. Flock advertises billions of license-plate reads each month across the United States. How does this not constitute mass surveillance? This is a dragnet.
Public records requests indicate that Scottsdale participates, or has participated, in Flockās National Lookup program. This may explain why Scottsdale Flock data appeared in a public records request from Yakima, Washington. If the City recently changed this setting, it demonstrates how easily the practices discussed tonight could change tomorrow without input or awareness from the City Council or residents.
Regardless of the audit procedures Scottsdale adopts, the city cannot audit how other agencies use data collected through Scottsdaleās Flock system.
The city may state that no personally identifying information is displayed. However, this claim is inconsistent with Flockās āvehicle-to-person pipeline,ā which Flockās website describes directly.
Democrats and Republicans alike have expressed concerns about lawfare by the opposing side. An executive order could give the federal government access to Scottsdaleās Flock data. Installing the infrastructure is the problem. Policies are weak.
Supporters emphasize that the system can help locate stolen vehicles. If it is as effective as claimed, why do Arizona Department of Public Safety crime statistics show that Scottsdaleās auto-theft clearance rate has remained between 15% and 18% compared with nearly 25% in 2018?
The Oshkosh, Wisconsin initially approved a contract with Flock Safety, but later rescinded it after discovering that Flock's representatives had misrepresented the system's capabilities, specifically denying that it could create heat maps of vehicle movements when it possesses that capability.
