Op Ed: Local Organizers Make Effort to Have Flock Cameras Removed in Bishop

In August 2024, Bishop approved a $187,000 contract with Flock, a company founded and funded by billionaires that sells AI-enabled surveillance cameras nationwide. Bishop Police Department staff met with and made proposals to city council members on multiple occasions about Flock prior to the camera installation that began in December 2024. The implementation of this technology was well-intentioned, with the hope of maintaining a “modern police force” per Chief Derr. Although the abuses of Flock were not widely known at the time of the system’s adoption in Bishop, the private company has come under fire legally in the past year, with over 50 cities and towns cancelling their contracts due to the gravity of human rights abuses, breaches of civil liberties, and the shift of financial responsibility for Flock’s misconduct onto towns and taxpayers. Flock cameras are not typical Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) but instead collect identifying vehicle fingerprint data, including bumper stickers, broken windows, items present on the car dashboard, etc. Flock sells a product marketed as a public safety tool under the guise of preventing crime, but in reality, they seek profit by selling access to our sensitive data as the product.

Flock has created a network of over 90,000 cameras with a “National Lookup Tool.” This gives police the ability to share data across agencies, and Bishop’s data was shared with 373 other agencies across California, according to data that we gathered via a FOIA public record request. On average, 379,570 warrantless searches were performed each month by these outside agencies who accessed Bishop’s data, and only 0.03% of total accesses to our data were performed by BPD (~104 monthly). Despite trust in our local police, the citizens distrust the widespread sharing of this data with outside agencies, as we are unable to truly audit the purpose and results of these searches. There are consistent cases of abusing access to the system, with around 20% of network searches nationwide using terms as vague as “investigation/invest/inv” as the reason for access. There are cases of abuse of the system such as accessing footage from a children’s gymnasium over 1,000 times, tracking a woman who sought healthcare across state lines, and over a dozen cases of police repeatedly stalking an ex or person connection. Furthermore, section 5.3 of Bishop’s contract allowed Flock to share data with third parties and agencies with only a “good faith belief” that it was necessary. Flock has been documented repeatedly to use this clause to illegally share data with federal agencies. This breaks CA state law and was discovered through audits in places such as Santa Cruz and Mountain View CA as recently as early 2026. Additional legal concerns include Flock’s recent changes to their Terms and Conditions, including a “perpetual license” to keep a town’s data even after cancellation of a contract in order to continue to train their AI models.

Bishop had 6 ALPRs (in three locations, on East Line, West Line, and 395) and 4 live-view cameras in public areas (park, Tesla lot, fire station, and Academy Street). The citizens felt that the privacy and safety of Bishop residents were jeopardized by the release of our data without warrants or consent. We organized together to ask city council members to cancel the contract with Flock and establish a city ordinance around surveillance technology prior to seeking alternative, closed-circuit cameras as a next step. After the formation of a “citizens group” per recommendation from the city council, the citizens met formally on June 10 with Bishop’s police chief Nate Derr and multiple city council members to discuss concerns and alternatives. Multiple other meetings were held between BPD and organizers to analyze data and Bishop’s Flock system settings, discuss alternatives, and consider the future of surveillance technology in Bishop.

At the city council meeting on June 22, Chief Derr presented his current stance on the Flock system, stating that it has helped with solving crime and decreasing the staff time necessary to do so. He also noted that after productive discussion with concerned citizens and learning more about Flock, he had recently become “more open” to seeking alternatives. Around a dozen citizens gave public comment, citing cases of privacy breaches from around the nation and data from Bishop’s public records of camera usage in order to ask city council to cancel the contract. This was the fourth city council meeting since February where members of the public provided comment against Flock. No members of the public provided comment in favor of keeping the Flock cameras during the June 22 meeting or at any previous city council meetings.

During discussion, city council members appeared to be majority in favor of cancelling the contract, and the question of timeline was the most difficult decision. City council members discussed keeping the cameras until alternatives were in place; however, council members’ concern about Flock’s frequent misusage of data ultimately prompted them to vote in favor of immediate cancellation. Jose Garcia, Karen Schwartz, and mayor Stephen Muchovej voted in favor of cancelling the contract, resulting in a 3-2 vote to cancel. City council discussed their plan for next steps: first, prompt establishment of policies around surveillance technology, and then implementation of alternative closed circuit cameras in areas such as the park, where vandalism has been costly for the town in the past. Bishop Police Department has sufficient resources for public safety, receiving around 50% of the city’s funding, and given that BPD effectively solved crime prior to the Flock camera installation in 2024, the citizens trust that public safety in Bishop will not be impacted during the search for alternatives.

Bishop City Council’s decision aligns with the decisions of all cities/towns in California that have cancelled their Flock contracts in 2026 (including Santa Cruz, Santa Clara County, Campbell, South Pasadena, Mountain View, and Los Altos Hills) as well as small towns with similar populations to Bishop (including Pittsboro NC and Verona WI). All have terminated their contracts with Flock prior to the establishment of alternatives due to the urgency of legal concerns with Flock. The citizens have been in touch with representatives and police departments in these other areas to help inform next steps as BPD seeks more reliable alternatives that ensure public safety. With the plan for creating a city policy on surveillance technology, our council members have also followed the precedent set by other towns such as Fort Collins CO, who voted to ban alternatives to Flock prior to the establishment of an ordinance to provide guidelines for evaluation and approval of AI surveillance technologies.

The citizens of Bishop are very grateful for local leaders and law enforcement officials who were willing to listen and engage in dialogue throughout this process. We look forward to a future in Bishop that prioritizes privacy rights and transparency around public data-collection technologies.

Lastly, here is a map of the organizations that Bishop shared Flock data with: https://rpubs.com/jomega/bpdflockmap

— Alison Eddins

News Staff