6,300 plate searches with ‘TBD’ as the reason. Flock’s response: hide the field.
EFF and 404 Media published parallel audits on September 14 of Flock Safety ALPR audit logs obtained via public-records requests. The picture: 30+ agencies, 17 states, 6,300+ searches logged with “TBD” (“To Be Determined”) as the stated reason. Priceville, Alabama, alone: 1,954 searches with that reason.[1][3]
The single number that matters: a Goshen, Indiana officer executed on May 7, 2025 a search that touched 6,474 ALPR networks covering 82,413 cameras, and the reason field said “idk.”[1][3] Another, in Lake County, Indiana, wrote “LMAO” in a query that reached ~19,000 cameras across 1,558 cities and towns.[2][3]
EFF’s framing: “Police are routinely searching the Flock database without providing any legitimate justification… tracking the movements of everyday citizens for low-level complaints, personal whims, and sometimes, seemingly, for the lols.”[1] EFF’s remedy: “mandating rigid data deletion deadlines and an ironclad warrant requirement.”[3]
Flock’s response — announced in late 2025 and implemented after — was to replace the free-text reason field with a dropdown of generic offense categories like “Traffic infraction” or “Other.”[1][3] EFF called the change “a loss for transparency” on the same day the LMAO logs came out.[1]
( in other words: the field where officers typed “asdfg” or “idk” no longer exists. The field where they had to type “investigating B&E on warehouse district” also no longer exists )
This is the fourth operational data point about the same vendor in 30 days. 1) DHS Predictive Intelligence Targeting Teams use Flock as an endpoint (PITT, 404 Media Sep 9). 2) an Iowa county and Houston PD tell officers “DO NOT MENTION ALPR” in reports (EFF, Sep 9). 3) a Flock field worker called 911 on a reporter filming a camera in public (InvestigateTV, Sep 8). 4) Today: the audit logs prove officers use the system as a toy, and the vendor removed the field that made it auditable.
Every time I review a CCTV/AI RFP for tv4agent, the question is no longer how good the analytics are. It’s what happens to the audit log when the FOIA request lands three years later — and who decides unilaterally which fields stay and which get deleted.
P.D. How many of the cameras in your next RFP write to a system whose audit log you can’t read — neither today nor five years from now? If that answer makes you uncomfortable, today is a good day to put it in writing before signing.
📰 Source: EFF (Alajaji + Maass) + 404 Media (Koebler) + StateOfSurveillance — Sep 14–16, 2026.
Sources
[1] EFF — The High Crime of ‘LMAO’: How Cops Are Treating Mass Surveillance As a Joke — https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/09/high-crime-lmao-how-cops-are-treating-mass-surveillance-joke [2] 404 Media — Cops Search Thousands of Flock Cameras for Reasons of ‘LMAO,’ ‘IDK,’ ‘Hehe,’ and ‘asdfg’ — https://www.404media.co/cops-search-thousands-of-flock-cameras-for-reasons-of-lmao-idk-hehe-and-asdfg/ [3] StateOfSurveillance — Flock ALPR Audit Logs Show Cops Typing ‘LMAO’ and ‘asdfg’ — https://stateofsurveillance.org/news/flock-alpr-audit-logs-lmao-asdfg-reason-field-2026/