Culver City is bringing a leading critic of mass surveillance into its review of Flock Safety. Next door in Los Angeles, mounting concerns about Flock recently led to a renegotiated agreement with providers, but the cameras never stopped collecting data. Culver City’s review gives residents a chance to go much further than LA’s tinkering-around-the-edges contract talks and confront this dangerous technology head on, by asking whether the surveillance should exist at all.
At the September 14 City Council meeting, staff announced that the City Manager’s office had met with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and invited the organization to participate in a future council meeting. EFF has indicated it is willing to attend, alongside Culver City police and representatives from Flock.
The city is separately pursuing an independent, vendor-neutral assessment of its automated license plate reader (ALPR) system. Staff said the assessment would examine cybersecurity, privacy, data governance and contractual risks, as well as the broader market and alternative deployment models. The City is reviewing proposals from multiple consultants, but has yet to select one to perform the assessment. No date was announced for the council’s broader discussion, but the city published a summary of the update.
Culver City’s reckoning with mass surveillance comes amid a national backlash against Flock and other ALPR systems. Communities including Austin, Evanston and Eugene have canceled or declined to renew Flock contracts following local organizing campaigns. EFF has helped drive that pushback by investigating how police use the systems and supporting residents who challenge them in their own communities.
Closer to home, Councilmember Traci Park has been a vocal supporter of Flock in Council District 11, committing $450,000 in district funds to the cameras and related costs. She has promoted the technology as a way to fight crime amid police staffing shortages, saying, “This is how we get ahead of crime instead of chasing it after the fact.”
But some of the documented uses bear little resemblance to the stolen-car investigations used to market the cameras. In Texas, deputies searched more than 83,000 Flock cameras nationwide while investigating a woman’s self-managed abortion. The search justification read “had an abortion, search for female.” Flock and the sheriff described it as a missing-person search, but records obtained by EFF showed deputies collected evidence about the abortion and consulted prosecutors about possible charges. No abortion charges were filed against the woman.
EFF has also documented hundreds of searches connected to political demonstrations, including No Kings protests, and searches by more than 80 agencies using terms associated with Romani people, often without identifying a suspected crime. Its research shows how a system sold as a tool for finding particular vehicles can become a means of monitoring political activity and targeting entire communities.
Immigration risks can persist even when an agency publicly prohibits immigration enforcement. EFF found that police in Sparks, Nevada had enabled an ICE-maintained “Immigration Violator” alert list despite listing immigration enforcement as a prohibited use. That setting alerts local police when their cameras spot a vehicle ICE is seeking.
These findings help explain why EFF’s position goes beyond demanding a better Flock contract. The organization argues that continuously collecting and storing everyone’s vehicle location data creates risks that cannot be eliminated through new settings or a different vendor. It supports ending ALPR mass surveillance while seeking enforceable restrictions on systems that remain in use. Culver City is therefore inviting an organization prepared to challenge the premise of the program, not simply suggest improvements to its paperwork.
There is precedent for cities seeking that perspective. In September, the Richmond City Council voted to request an EFF presentation and further analysis of its ALPR data before deciding whether to replace Flock with Axon. Council members wanted better evidence of effectiveness and privacy risks before committing more money.
EFF has also directly helped shape municipal surveillance policy. In Boston in 2020, its staff testified before the council about facial recognition, and the council adopted all three improvements EFF recommended for its ban. One closed a loophole that could have allowed police to obtain face recognition evidence through third parties. he technology was different, but the lesson applies here: outside expertise can help turn a stated commitment to civil liberties into enforceable policy.
Culver City has already taken a step against unrestricted sharing. In July 2025, its council voted to suspend sharing Flock data with outside agencies and require recurring reports. The new review should establish whether those restrictions work in practice and ask the larger question of whether collecting the data is justified in the first place.
Los Angeles shows how easily a surveillance controversy can be watered down into a contract negotiation. As MVV reported in July, LAPD let its Flock agreement expire after serious gaps in data governance came to light. The cameras kept collecting information while the department negotiated a replacement deal. The proposed protections addressed ownership and access, but left the underlying collection system intact.
More recently, Knock LA reported that Axon is pursuing a proposed three-month LAPD pilot for its Lightpost system, which would attach license plate reader technology to streetlights. The agreement was still a proposal as of Knock LA’s September 25 report, but it illustrates why scrutinizing one company is insufficient. Surveillance can easily continue under a different vendor or expand through a supposedly temporary trial.
Culver City’s progressive majority, which includes Mayor Freddy Puza, Vice Mayor Bubba Fish and Councilmember Yasmine-Imani McMorrin, has an opportunity to do better. Fish and McMorrin also serve on the city’s Public Safety Subcommittee. They should insist on a review that tests police and vendor claims, makes its findings public and keeps ending the program on the table. A review limited to choosing a supplier or adjusting contract language would leave the central political decision untouched.
Want to learn more or weigh in on this debate? A community town hall on surveillance is planned for Monday, October 19, at 6:30 p.m. at Village Well. The event is separate from the city’s future council discussion, and the speaker lineup is still being finalized. The gathering offers residents a chance to ask what the independent assessment should investigate, what evidence would justify ending the program and how the city will prevent a review from becoming an endorsement of decisions already made.