Texas city demands $2M for public records on Flock usage

A North Richland Hills, Texas, public-records request for communications about Flock automated license-plate readers (ALPRs) was met with a $2.3 million fee the city justified by estimating it would take about 14 years of labor at $15/hour to search roughly a terabyte of data. The request, filed under a pseudonym by an anti-surveillance group, typifies a growing pattern where municipalities either levy eye-popping charges or deny records requests outright to limit scrutiny of Flock use. Responses vary wildly: some agencies released hundreds of thousands of pages for free, others charged modest fees, and some quoted sums as high as $121,000; the Texas Department of Public Safety has even sought legal advice to withhold its entire Flock dataset.

The push for transparency is driven by documented abuses and legal challenges: officers have used Flock to stalk individuals, prompting audits, arrests, and changes in agency practices; an ex-officer in Texas pled guilty to 100 felonies tied to Flock misuse, spurring the governor to halt funding and permits. A recent federal judge in Oklahoma described Flock’s network as large-scale dragnet surveillance and ruled a search unconstitutional, highlighting reports of hundreds of thousands of warrantless searches monthly. Flock offers optional public portals, but few agencies opt in and fewer publish meaningful data. Privacy lawyers warn that without stronger oversight or warrant requirements, AI-driven tools could automate problematic alerts and make intrusive tracking harder to detect or control.