As someone who takes privacy and the 4th Amendment seriously, I have grave misgivings about the surveillance contract Lynnwood has with Flock. In what LPD claims was a misconfiguration, they exposed this surveillance database to outside agencies, which used it for immigration-related searches. This is contrary to explicit promises made to the Lynnwood City Council. As a Systems Engineer, I find this excuse highly concerning. A ‘checkbox error’ that violates state law and civil rights isn’t a glitch; it’s a failure of governance and architecture.
Flock operates a ‘digital dragnet’, creating a database of where every person travels, regardless of whether they have committed a crime. Your daily patterns are being logged, stored, and shared. No warrant is required to access this database, and as public records requests have shown, neither a valid justification nor a case number is required to track your history.
Flock states that our network is ‘encrypted’ so that only LPD and authorized agencies can access it; however, the City does not hold the encryption keys. Flock does. In the IT world, this is a critical security failure. It means the City cannot guarantee the safety of the data because we do not hold the master key. If Flock is compelled by a federal agency or breached by hackers, Lynnwood is powerless to stop the data exfiltration. Similar ALPR networks to those operated by Flock have been hacked in the past, resulting in the entire database being publicly released. What happens if Flock gets hacked? That is a bell you can’t un-ring once your travel patterns are released onto the internet for all to see.
In the 2012 case ‘United States v. Jones’, the Supreme Court ruled that a warrant is required to place a GPS tracking device on a car, as otherwise doing so would violate the 4th Amendment. In the 2019 case ‘Carpenter v. United States’, the Supreme Court ruled that a warrant is required to access historical cellphone location information, recognizing that tracking movements is an invasive act that violates reasonable expectations of privacy. There are currently 4th Amendment lawsuits in progress against Flock and similar ALPR (automated license plate reader) technologies, which have not yet reached the Supreme Court but are well underway.
The argument Flock makes is that, as these cameras record people in public, residents have no reasonable expectations of privacy. It is true that if a stranger took a photo of you in public, they would be within their legal rights. However, if said stranger started following you around the city, taking photographs on a regular basis, and building a history of where you travel, that quickly crosses the line into stalking and harassment. Cameras being in public locations should not grant limitless rights to build a database of where people travel.
A recent ruling from the Skagit County Superior Court has found that all data from Flock is subject to public records requests. Anyone can request dumps of an entire city’s network for broad periods of time. Ironically, law enforcement leaders have publicly worried that this transparency could enable stalking. This is absolutely correct, as evidenced by the many cases where law enforcement officers have been proven to use this network to stalk their partners. This technology is simply too ripe for abuse and has already established a clear pattern of being abused in the real world.
The Berkeley Police Accountability Board found that ALPR’s “…did not result in a reduction of crime generally or auto theft specifically, during the period measured”. And yet, the city of Lynnwood has entered into a 2-year, $171,153.50 contract to surveil law-abiding citizens. The primary purpose of an ALPR network is to detect and track stolen vehicles; however, consider the trends of auto thefts over time. In 2023, thefts peaked during the ‘Kia Boyz’ social media phenomenon. According to the Washington Auto Theft Prevention Authority, thefts statewide dropped by 31% in 2024, long before Lynnwood’s cameras were installed. Furthermore, data from the National Insurance Crime Bureau shows that auto thefts in Washington state dropped by another 42% in the first half of 2025. We are on track for historic lows without this surveillance. The drop is primarily due to software updates and steering wheel locks on previously vulnerable Kia vehicles, not a camera network that didn’t even go live until June 29, 2025.
In conditions of low visibility, such as the rain and fog we enjoy for much of the year, these camera systems have reduced read accuracy. This increases the risk of inaccurately flagging a vehicle for police intervention. Families have been pulled over at gunpoint due to such misreads, resulting in 7-figure settlements in other cities, the likes of which Lynnwood’s budget cannot afford. Our weather conditions put us at risk of a potentially dangerous interaction with the police.
Our city is currently experiencing a budget crisis. Is it fiscally responsible to enter into a $171k contract that exposes the city to liability while undermining our fundamental right to privacy? That money is better spent on community programs, housing, or human-based policing, not an automated system that erodes public trust.
For more information, please visit DeFlockLynnwood.com, where you will find sources for the above claims, the records requests, and contact information to urge the Lynnwood City Council to expand their current pause of the network into a full cancellation of the contract.
The next Lynnwood City Council meeting is Monday, the 24th, 6pm at City Hall. Please come and have your voice heard to restore privacy to our city.
Quinn Van Order, Lynnwood
COMMENTARY DISCLAIMER: The views and comments expressed are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the Lynnwood Times nor any of its affiliates.
Author: Lynnwood Times Staff
4 Responses
Lol you Dems put the cameras in without a second thought and now are crying the sky is falling… You create the problem with your lack of foresight and now want to be the solution to the problem you created.
This is why you can’t govern.
Thank you Quinn. Some of the hardware security issues recently revealed with the cameras are deeply concerning. These devices can easily be hacked. I’ll be addressing the council on this issue on Monday evening.
Thank you! Infosec people like Benn Jordan and Gainsec have been revealing a lot lately about how incredibly insecure these devices are, and how much control Flock has over them compared to actual local authorities. The evidence is clear at this point – they are not just ineffective, but outright dangerous. They have to go.
It’s Lynnwood. What would you expect?? All the cameras should be outlawed including so called automated traffic safety cameras. These are a revenue generator plain and simple and do not affect traffic safety in the slightest. It’s a tax. As voters none of us should ever vote for tax increase s, levy lifts, or any additional financial burdens because municipal government is grossly inflated and always falls short of promised deliverables.