Data redaction is the process of automatically identifying and removing sensitive personal information from audit records before they are displayed. This helps protect individuals' privacy while maintaining transparency about surveillance activities.

We attempt to redact Social Security numbers, last names, birth dates, phone numbers, driver's license numbers, and specific street addresses. Whenever we redact information, you will see a notice and a placeholder in the text.

Redaction relies on pre-defined search terms and patterns ("regular expressions") to identify common data formats. It is supplemented with machine learning (transformer-based named-entity recognition). While this system is effective and largely errs on the side of over-redacting, no system is perfect; we may manually redact information that is not caught by the automated system.

The original audit logs often contain unredacted sensitive personal information. It is a common occurrence for police operators to enter these details into the "search reason" field of the software.

Further exposing individuals' SSNs, birth dates, and addresses serves no useful purpose for the public interest, so we attempt to redact them. We do this with the knowledge that it is an imperfect process.

We don't control the original source data. It has been permanently and irrevocably placed in the public record by Flock and its customers.

We recognize that making this information more easily accessible is an ethical choice that not everyone will agree with. In coming to the decision to publish, we carefully weighed the societal harm of mass surveillance and improper governmental data practices against the additional impact of making existing public data more accessible to those it affects.

The reality is that the information made accessible through this website has been "out there" for months or years, accessible to Flock, its customers, and anyone with sufficient technical knowledge. This problem is not new or unforeseeable. Government officials across the country are aware, but have chosen not to act.

We hope to be able to shut this website down sooner rather than later.

If sensitive (PII) information is not redacted, please reach out immediately to humans@haveibeenflocked.com.

We will evaluate how to proceed on a case-by-case basis. If we can algorithmically detect the sensitive information, we may update the automated detection process. If we can't, we may choose to manually redact the information.

Important Reality Check: Removing the information from this website does not remove it from the world. The source information will still exist and remain accessible to anyone who requests the raw logs from the police.