Earlier this week, I wrote about Flock’s new anti-transparency push, and its efforts to combat what it calls “the burden of compliance.” Flock has doubled down by removing device counts from public audit logs, blocking external transparency tools, and disabling archival of its pages on archive.org’s Wayback Machine.
Through incorporation by reference of its website, Flock maintains a significant part of its customer contract in a place that only it can modify:
The reinstall fee schedule contains prices for things like “Camera replacement as a result of vandalism, theft, or damage” and “Replacement Cable(s).”
It’s worth noting that Flock maintains full ownership and control of the cameras. The reinstall fee schedule is essentially an insurance policy, underwritten by the customer, for which Flock can set the terms and coverage schedule on its website.
I have written on modifying “attachments” to the contract before in a legal brief:[1][2]
Adding, changing, or removing an entry in the Deployment Plan creates significant contractual obligations for [Flock’s customer], including, without limitation, providing electrical power and permits, ensuring legal compliance, paying all applicable taxes, and “any other services performed [by] Flock in connection with the installation of the Hardware.”
…
The Agreement, Deployment Plan, and Reinstall Fee Schedule combined create an instrument expressing offer, acceptance, consideration, and assent, representing significant governmental interest and functional ownership, expressly incorporated into the main agreement document.
It is clearly wildly irresponsible for governments to agree to contractual terms that can be unilaterally modified, without notice, by its vendor; including when those terms are published on a vendor-managed website.
But they do. En masse.
Even worse, governments have argued[2:1] that by storing a contract on a vendor’s website in this way, it becomes exempt from open records laws:
When customers don’t save the terms of the contracts they sign, the only way for them, and the public, to access the terms at the time of signing is through tools like the Wayback Machine.
When they are incorporated by reference into government contracts, vendor websites become part of the public record. Altering, destroying, or removing items in the public record is a crime in many jurisdictions.[3]
And, even more importantly: secret contracts run counter to just about every principle of transparency in government. They are a path leading directly to corruption and violations of rights.
Hiding contracts is one prong of Flock’s three-step assault. It has banned EyesOnFlock from accessing transparency portal information. Like this site, EyesOnFlock downloads log files from public transparency portals to aggregate information and offer it to the public in an easy-to-consume, and, above all, immutable[4] format.
The portals are publicly posted on the internet, where there is no expectation of privacy; as such, one would expect that private entities gathering and distributing portal information in bulk would not be a concern for the company.
But, even when able to access the portals, the audit logs posted there[5] contain severely limited information.
In school, we are taught the 5 W’s that are needed to tell a story or describe an event. This is what that looks like for Flock:
- “Who?” This is answered with a UUID (e.g.
f3af60c5-f4e1-4c50-af64-cb1bbdbf5acf). - “When?” A time, without a timezone, is Flock’s answer.
- “What?” No search terms (license plate, text prompt, or filters) are ever included.
- “Where?” No search type is included. The device count has now been set to 0. It is impossible to infer if the search was local, statewide, or nationwide.
- “Why?” With Flock’s new feature rollout, agencies can, and do, redact reasons and case numbers.
And, finally, Flock’s blocking of the Wayback Machine is not limited to portals and contract terms. It also blocks its prior statements:
That in itself is evidence enough that the company wants to revise history and control the narrative.
The company actively develops features to remove information from public logs, and pro-actively works to remove its statements, logs, and even contractual terms from public view.
By actively concealing information about government contracts and activities from the public, the company is not only plausibly violating the law, it prevents the residents who are being watched by its cameras and judged by its AI algorithms from participating in the local decision-making process that it (implausibly) claims to value.
Flock is not the passive agent operating in the shadow of government that it claims to be.
It actively manufactures the shadows.
Back when the contract explictly incorporated the Deployment Plan, before Flock changed it to the vague “attachment.” ↩︎
The Iowa Public Information Board agrees that vendor-maintained contracts should be secret, and is currently defending that position before the Iowa Court of Appeals (case 24-2039). ↩︎ ↩︎
In Arizona, for example, “conceal[ing], remov[ing] or otherwise impair[ing] the availability of any public record” is a class 6 felony that can result in prison sentences of over five years. [Correction 3/12/2026: presumptive sentence of 1 year, maximum of 2 years; 5.75 years with prior felonies under aggravated sentencing]. Ariz. Rev. Stat. Ann. § 13-2407 (2024) ↩︎
By Flock. ↩︎
By, as far as we know, less than 300 (around 5%) of active agencies. ↩︎