Local governments across the United States, from Florida to Washington state, are cancelling contracts with Flock Safety, the company behind AI-enabled licence plate readers, following mounting public pressure over privacy and surveillance concerns. However, ending a contract does not necessarily mean the cameras come down immediately or that previously collected data is deleted, leaving significant uncertainty about how long information remains searchable and accessible to third parties, including law enforcement.

Flock, founded in 2017, has installed more than 120,000 cameras across the US, and opposition has grown bipartisan amid reports of data misuse. In Sheboygan, Wisconsin, lawmakers unanimously ended their contract after learning Flock had reportedly tried to sell anonymised local data back to the city, while Stevens Point's mayor covered up ten cameras after cancelling its deal. In Bridgewater, Virginia, a town of fewer than 7,000 people, data-sharing agreements meant local camera data was searched seven million times by law enforcement in just 12 months, prompting the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which is also suing San Jose over its use of Flock cameras, to argue such arrangements breach Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search.