Eyes Off Eugene Statement – September 9, 2025

Eugene gave an unequivocal rejection of mass surveillance at our City Council meeting last night, September 8th. The mayor and city councilors heard moving, passionate testimony that spoke to our community’s values—human rights, civil liberties, and caring for our neighbors.

An analysis of Flock’s actual capabilities and who can access the data Flock collects demonstrate this is a dangerous system that will cost the communities of Eugene and Springfield dearly.

Claims that Flock only captures certain vehicles or only license plates are incorrect. Flock’s software captures far more than that, including categorizing the make and model of cars, as well as identifying trailers, bicycles, cats and dogs, and even people. The last point is very controversial, but the company‘s own advertising material brags that Flock is able to make a searchable database of individuals based on build and clothing. EPD’s data portal shares that 506,974 unique vehicles have been tracked over the past 30 days.

Timestamped images that document where we have been are not meaningless information. Flock cameras, by their very nature, are always recording where people are going and what they are doing. For instance, the Springfield Police Department plans to erect Flock cameras near the PeaceHealth Sacred Heart Medical Center, capturing those on their way to and from medical appointments. Even if the Springfield police choose not to run a search for vehicles entering and exiting the facility, Flock cameras are recording that footage and saving it in a searchable database accessible beyond Springfield. To be clear, the system captures, stores, and shares data from every vehicle, bicycle, and other AI-determined ‘object of interest’ that passes a Flock device.

That brings us to the most terrifying aspect of the Flock system: how the data is accessed, and by whom. Both the EPD and SPD have data-sharing agreements with dozens of other police departments across the state and nation, who are not bound by our departments’ rules; in turn, those departments have data-sharing agreements with other departments, who are able to access our local data across the connections of this web. The policies of our local police can’t stop the system from being abused by other departments, or even the Federal government.

There is a broad pattern of harmful data sharing, misuse of data, and other adverse outcomes—these are not hypotheticals. Flock has made repeated promises that local police departments control data sharing, and that the company wasn’t sharing access with the federal government. Only last month Flock revealed that this was a lie by announcing it was pausing a previously unknown data-sharing program with US Customs and Border Protection. Cities in Illinois are canceling their Flock contracts due to this illegal sharing. California has repeatedly failed to safeguard ALPR data. Police in Texas used 83,000 Flock cameras across the country to track a woman who allegedly self-administered an abortion. Denver, CO and Austin, TX are among major cities deciding that Flock surveillance is not safe. Officers have shared passwords with federal agents, used the system to stalk estranged partners, and boasted about using custom hotlists to harrass people they don’t like. The system has brought about numerous dangerous traffic stops based on bad information. The evidence is clear: harm and risk are not hypothetical with Flock.

There are supposed to be limitations about how Flock data can be accessed by out-of-state and federal agencies. But the text of Eugene’s contract with Flock gives Flock the ability to share the data with any third party if they believe it will “address” a security, privacy, or technical issue, without a warrant and without consulting the Eugene Police Department. The contract also allows Flock to retain data indefinitely to train its own software database.

To return to the earlier example: the Springfield Police Department may not be keeping track of who is coming and going from Sacred Heart, but other departments and even the federal government can, and Flock’s assurances in this regard are undercut by its own advertising material, the language of its contracts, and its lies. Federal agents could keep track of the movements of women seeking reproductive care, trans people obtaining gender-affirming medicine, or immigrants going to work and to school. Again, this is not a hypothetical: Springfield shares directly with the Missouri Information Analysis Center, a fusion center where data is shared between local, state, and federal agencies. And if it comes to light that Eugene or Springfield’s cameras are being used by Federal agencies in deportation efforts, it would be a stark violation of Oregon’s sanctuary laws, one that could leave our cities legally and civilly liable.

Flock Safety is not in the business of preventing harm in our communities. It’s a data-collection company that tracks where people go and what they do. The information Flock captures far exceeds what the police have access to, and contractually that data can be shared with anyone without a warrant or even a notice. The Trump administration has made it clear it will use every weapon in its arsenal to roll back our civil rights and deprive us of liberties. Why are our cities signing a contract with a corporation eager to support those efforts?