Flock cameras in Arlington County still stand, but they are shut off. Soon, some of them will be gone entirely.
Last week, Arlington County’s board chose not to renew its contract with Flock and has stopped using its automated license plate readers.
“Twenty-four-seven government surveillance is creepy,” said Eric Lotke, who spoke at Arlington County’s board meeting over the weekend and applauded the county for ending its use of Flock.
But Flock is one of several vendors that make similar cameras, and he doesn’t want Arlington to swap Flock for another, similar vendor.
“Clarifying, no more ALPRs by any other name,” Lotke told News4. “No Flock, nor any other company.”
Tuesday, Arlington County Board Chair Matt de Ferranti and the board will begin a broader conversation about the future of this technology in the county.
De Ferranti says there’s support for speed cameras in school zones or red light cameras, but he has no intention of looking into different automated license plate readers powered by AI, like Flock.
“We want our kids to be safe, we want our community to be safe, so we have to get our whole community and the board fully up to speed on those, but there are no plans to do other named actions without a full dialogue with our community,” he said.
It’s a dialogue happening in communities throughout Northern Virginia.
Last week, Fairfax County paused expanding its existing Flock program, pending a review.
News4 obtained a copy of a letter sent by Fairfax County’s Board chairman to Flock asking several questions, including information about who can access the county’s Flock data and to what extent Flock is using AI and how and when that changes. The county wants answers ahead of a meeting next month to discuss next steps with Flock.
“We need answers from Flock before I think we want to continue moving forward using this technology,” said Supervisor James Bierman Jr. “And, I’ll be blunt, I certainly think this is probably the beginning of the end for Flock.”
While local governments are taking action on the publicly-owned and operated Flock cameras, they can’t do anything about the cameras that are owned privately by shopping centers, businesses and homeowners associations. In fact, in Fairfax County, leaders said the private sector owns and operates four to five times as many Flock cameras as the police department does.
De Ferranti said taking action on private Flock cameras would require a change at the state level.
“We don’t have the legal authority to prevent these types of cameras in private property like that, but we do have serious concerns,” he said. “And I think there’s a fair question as to whether we should go to Richmond and say this is also not the type of invasive surveillance that we want in public settings.”
There is already bipartisan support from state lawmakers to ban Flock cameras statewide, and the issue will be taken up in the 2027 General Assembly Session.
News4 has repeatedly reached out to Flock over the last few weeks for comments on these changes, and the company has not responded.
In the past, the company has said, in part, “We support thoughtful legislation and strong privacy, transparency, and accountability guardrails that ensure technology is used responsibly while preserving law enforcement’s ability to keep communities safe.”
