Region 9 260804-1800z

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MAGNET S2 INTELLIGENCE REPORT — Flock Safety ALPR Deployment, Region 9 — 260804-1800Z
MAGNET S2
Intelligence Report
Flock Safety ALPR Deployment and Federal Data-Sharing Exposure — Region 9
DTG: 260804-1800Z  |  Geographic Focus: Region 9  |  Precedence: IRR – ROUTINE
www.magnethf.com
Report Identification
Subject Flock Safety ALPR Deployment and Federal Data-Sharing Exposure — Region 9
Purpose Provide intelligence assessment of automated license plate reader (ALPR) surveillance infrastructure, federal data-sharing exposure, and regulatory posture across Region 9
DTG 260804-1800Z
Reporting Period 01 Jan – 04 Aug 2026
Geographic Focus Region 9 — Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Pacific Insular Areas
Precedence IRR – ROUTINE
MagCon Status 3 – ELEVATED (NO CHANGE)
Sources Multiple source reporting from Local, National, and International platforms. See source list at the bottom of this report.
Summary (BLUF)

California anchors the largest concentrated ALPR camera footprint in Region 9 and in the United States (18,612 mapped units), and independent audits confirm that federal agencies — including ICE, CBP, FBI, ATF, and DEA — have repeatedly obtained access to Region 9 plate-read data through pathways that state privacy and sanctuary statutes were written to prohibit.

A San Francisco class action alleges 1.6 million-plus federal/out-of-state queries against a single city’s Flock database in seven months, and comparable unauthorized-access incidents are documented in Mountain View and Ventura County, California.

Municipal opposition is accelerating in California and Arizona, producing contract cancellations in at least six cities, while Nevada and Hawaii remain functionally unregulated and the Navajo Nation has begun a 27,000-square-mile tribal-jurisdiction deployment that expands, not contracts, the region’s overall footprint.

No independent open-source reporting on ALPR deployment in Guam, American Samoa, or the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands was identified; this is assessed as an intelligence gap.

Background

Flock Safety (Flock Group Inc., Atlanta, GA; founded 2017) manufactures and operates solar-powered, pole-mounted automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras that capture plate numbers, vehicle make/model/color, and identifying features (e.g., bumper stickers, damage) for every passing vehicle, storing the data in a cloud-based, searchable network accessible to subscribing law enforcement agencies. Flock does not employ facial recognition. Standard data retention is approximately 30 days absent an active investigative hold, though retention policy varies by agency.

Region 9, for the purposes of this report, comprises Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, the Pacific insular areas (Guam, American Samoa, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands), and applicable tribal nations whose territory falls within these states. Nationally, independent volunteer mapping (DeFlock/OpenStreetMap) has documented between approximately 95,900 and 122,000 ALPR units, of which roughly 83 percent are Flock-branded hardware; Flock’s own unverified claim is 120,000+ units across 49 states.

Situation
Deployment Density

California: 18,612 mapped units, the highest of any U.S. state, concentrated in Los Angeles County and the Bay Area; San Francisco County ranks third nationally in camera density per road mile.

Arizona: 2,459 mapped units; Flock maintains partnerships with more than 60 Arizona law enforcement agencies; Maricopa County accounts for 1,286 units and Pima County for 347.

Nevada: 780 mapped units; Clark County reports at least 200 cameras and Washoe County at least 180.

Hawaii: 48 mapped units across 23 towns, concentrated on Maui (Wailea, Waikapu, Lahaina, Kahului, Kihei) and Hawaii Island (Hilo).

Pacific Insular Areas: no independent OSINT reporting on ALPR deployment in Guam, American Samoa, or the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands was located.

Federal Data-Sharing Incidents

A class action filed 26 February 2026 in San Francisco Superior Court (Gibbs Mura/Milberg PLLC) alleges federal and out-of-state agencies queried SFPD’s Flock database more than 1.6 million times over seven months, with agency search-reason fields in some logs reading only “ICE” or “CBP.” Named querying agencies include the FBI, ICE, CBP, ATF, DEA, U.S. Postal Inspection Service, and VA Police.

Mountain View, California disabled its entire camera network after identifying approximately 600,000 unauthorized searches by more than 250 agencies with no data-sharing agreement on file.

Ventura County, California recorded more than 364,000 outside queries after a vendor-side error silently re-enabled a nationwide lookup feature the county had deliberately disabled in 2023.

Flock Safety has publicly stated it holds no standing contractual relationship with Department of Homeland Security components, that prior CBP/HSI pilot programs have been paused, and that federal users are barred from future statewide or nationwide lookup enrollment.

Regulatory and Municipal Posture

California is the only Region 9 state with a dedicated ALPR privacy statute (the ALPR Privacy Act) and an explicit sanctuary-law bar on immigration-related data sharing (SB 54). Arizona, Nevada, and Hawaii have no ALPR-specific statute in force; an Arizona bill establishing statewide standards was killed in the state Senate on 4 March 2026, and Nevada — one of 34 states with zero ALPR legislation — saw no bill introduced in its 2025 session.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s Flock contract was funded through an approximately $6.3 million private donation to a foundation (“Friends of Metro”), which then gifted the resulting agreement to LVMPD without a city council vote or public disclosure process.

Six or more Region 9 municipalities have cancelled or allowed Flock contracts to lapse to date: Los Angeles (LAPD, 11 July 2026), El Cerrito, Santa Cruz, and South Pasadena, California; and Flagstaff, Sedona, and South Tucson, Arizona. Tempe, Arizona is conducting a 60-day trial of an Axon alternative.

The Navajo Nation announced on 30 July 2026 a new Flock Safety partnership to deploy cameras across approximately 27,000 square miles of tribal jurisdiction spanning Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah — the largest single territorial expansion identified in this reporting period.

Timeline of Key Events
Date Jurisdiction Event
26 Feb 2026 San Francisco, CA Class action filed (Gibbs Mura/Milberg) alleging 1.6M+ federal/out-of-state queries against SFPD Flock data over 7 months.
Mar 2026 Mountain View, CA City disables entire Flock network after discovering ~600,000 unauthorized searches by 250+ non-agreement agencies; contract later terminated.
04 Mar 2026 Arizona (statewide) Statewide ALPR standards bill (Sen. Kevin Payne) killed in state Senate.
17 Feb 2026 South Tucson, AZ City Council votes 5-1-1 to cancel Flock contract, 3rd AZ city to do so.
Mar 2026 Nevada (statewide) Nevada Independent reports zero state ALPR legislation; no bill introduced in 2025 session.
Apr 2026 Tempe, AZ City Council approves 60-day trial of Axon ALPR alternative amid Flock backlash.
May 2026 El Cerrito, CA City Council votes 3-2 not to renew Flock contract; cameras deactivated 07 Jun 2026.
11 Jul 2026 Los Angeles, CA LAPD’s 3-year Flock operating agreement (138 cameras) expires, not renewed as of reporting date.
30 Jul 2026 Navajo Nation (AZ/NM/UT) Navajo Nation announces new Flock partnership across ~27,000 sq mi of tribal jurisdiction.
Comments / Assessment

MAGNET S2 assesses that the documented “front door,” “back door,” and “side door” federal access pathways indicate a persistent gap between vendor-stated policy and operational practice, and that this gap is unlikely to close quickly given the number of active, unresolved legal proceedings across the region.

Municipal-level contract cancellations in California and Arizona likely reflect genuine local policy shifts, but MAGNET S2 assesses these actions produce fragmented rather than regional coverage reduction: county-level networks and adjacent jurisdictions typically remain active even where an individual city cancels, and the Navajo Nation’s concurrent large-scale expansion suggests the region’s aggregate camera count is likely to continue growing net of cancellations.

The absence of any state-level ALPR statute in Arizona, Nevada, and Hawaii suggests these three states will remain more exposed to undisclosed federal and out-of-state data access than California for the foreseeable future, absent new legislation. Nevada’s LVMPD procurement pathway — private funding routed around a public council vote — indicates a possible template for expanding ALPR deployment in other Region 9 jurisdictions without triggering the public-comment processes that have driven cancellations elsewhere.

Probability Assessment
Judgment Probability Basis
Region 9 aggregate ALPR camera count continues to grow over the next reporting cycle despite municipal cancellations LIKELY Tribal/rural expansion (Navajo Nation) and continued AZ/NV adoption outpace CA/AZ cancellations
Additional California jurisdictions terminate or decline to renew Flock contracts LIKELY Active litigation, AG scrutiny, and precedent set by LAPD, El Cerrito, Mountain View, Santa Cruz
A Nevada or Hawaii ALPR-specific statute is enacted within the next legislative cycle UNLIKELY No bill introduced in NV in 2025; no comparable HI activity identified in open sources
Federal agencies continue to obtain Region 9 ALPR data access despite vendor policy changes ALMOST CERTAIN Documented back-door/side-door access continued after Flock’s stated federal-access restrictions took effect
Pacific insular area ALPR deployment is confirmed via open sources within the next reporting cycle UNKNOWN No independent reporting located; classified as an intelligence gap, not a negative finding
Intelligence Gaps
  • No independent OSINT confirmation of ALPR presence, vendor, or camera count in Guam, American Samoa, or the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
  • No verified, agency-independent audit of the total number of Region 9 agencies with National Lookup or equivalent nationwide-sharing features currently enabled.
  • Limited visibility into Hawaii’s low reported camera count — unclear whether this reflects genuinely limited deployment or under-mapping by volunteer contributors.
  • No confirmed figure for the total volume of federal queries against Arizona or Nevada ALPR data comparable to the California-specific figures cited in this report.
Mitigation Recommendations
  • Preparedness groups operating or transiting through the Los Angeles Basin, the Bay Area, Phoenix/Maricopa County, or the Tucson metro area should plan on dense, largely continuous ALPR coverage on arterial roads.
  • Do not assume a jurisdiction’s stated sanctuary or privacy policy reliably prevents federal query access to local plate-read data at any given time; documented back-door and side-door incidents indicate policy and practice have diverged repeatedly in this region.
  • Where operationally significant, corroborate crowdsourced camera-location data (e.g., DeFlock) with direct route reconnaissance, particularly in rural Arizona, Nevada, and the Hawaiian islands, where the crowdsourced dataset is likely incomplete.
  • Members and affiliates operating on tribal lands within the Navajo Nation (AZ/NM/UT) should account for the newly announced Flock deployment when assessing route exposure across that jurisdiction.
  • Track the outcome of the pending San Francisco class action and related California litigation as a leading indicator of potential nationwide shifts in vendor federal-access policy.
  • Reduce overall digital footprint, including migrating primary mobile devices used for MAGNET-related activity to de-googled builds (e.g., GrapheneOS-class operating systems) that do not run default Google Mobile Services, or equivalent de-Appled configurations, to limit continuous background location reporting to platform infrastructure.
  • Do not use cell phones for purchases, including tap-to-pay/mobile wallet transactions. Mobile payment activity exposes real-time location and can be correlated to any Google or Apple account signed in on the device, regardless of whether that account is the one used for the transaction.
  • Use offline-capable, login-free navigation applications such as Magic Earth in place of Google Maps or Apple Maps. Magic Earth does not require an account login to operate, reducing the number of platforms that receive continuous route and destination data during MAGNET-related travel.
  • Where feasible, disable or restrict background location permissions for all non-essential applications on devices used for MAGNET activity, and periodically audit which applications retain ‘always allow’ location access.
MAGNET Guidance

This report does not identify an imminent operational threat requiring a change in communications posture; standard PACE planning applies. Primary: established VHF/UHF net check-ins and internet-based situational-awareness channels. Alternate: HF voice/digital nets per group SOP. Contingency: Winlink/ARDOP or FLAMP/MFSK32 traffic where internet and repeater infrastructure are degraded. Emergency: analog HF voice net-control fallback.

Operators disseminating this product over HF digital modes should use the FLAMP/MFSK32-formatted condensed summary distributed separately per standard MAGNET S2 practice, given this product’s length.

Route ALPR-related observations (new camera installations, confirmed federal query activity, new contract cancellations or awards) back to MAGNET S2 through established situational awareness channels for inclusion in the next revision.

Source List
Submit reports through established MAGNET situational awareness channels.
To Learn More About MAGNET, Visit www.MAGNETHF.COM