In yet another case of law enforcement personnel sharing Flock data with federal agencies, in violation of state laws explicitly prohibiting it, the San Francisco Standard on July 14, 2025, revealed that officers in Oakland and San Francisco had been performing Flock lookups on behalf of federal agencies ^{(archive link)}, including ICE.

This is a different case from the one published last month about multiple law enforcement agencies in southern California doing the same thing.

This reporting once again is the result of a public records request that examines the “search reason” field that is provided with most Flock searches. Law enforcement users may enter any terms for their “search reason”, and sometimes leave it entirely blank. The most commonly-supplied search reason by far is “investigation” (and various misspellings thereof).

Law enforcement agencies can — and will — continue to share Flock data with federal agencies in violation of state and local laws, but they will gradually learn to use search terms that don’t reveal that sharing.