LAPD renegotiating deal with Flock Safety to access company's license plate readers

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Set us as preferred Less than a week after the Los Angeles Police Department announced it had halted its relationship with Flock Safety over concerns about how the company shares data collected from automated license plate readers around the city, police officials said they are in the process of hammering out a new agreement — this time with more protections in place.Flock has been criticized for sharing its data with state and federal law enforcement agencies, which detractors say helps fuel the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown by giving authorities the ability to track the movements of undocumented immigrants.The Atlanta-based firm is one of three vendors used by the city for automated license plate readers.

The devices scan the plates of passing vehicles, which police say enables them to locate vehicles reported stolen or linked to criminal suspects.Flock operates 138 pole-mounted cameras on city property, along with potentially hundreds more that are privately-owned.

Cmdr.Randy Goddard, who runs the LAPD’s information technology bureau, told the Police Commission on Tuesday that department employees no longer had regular access to data that is collected by the company, but that information is being stored in the cloud and could be obtained by LAPD investigators in the future if a new contract is finalized.Goddard said the department let its previous operating agreement with Flock lapse last week due to lingering questions over who owns the data collected by the company’s plate readers and who has access to it.

Under the language in the department’s proposed new contract with Flock, the LAPD would retain ownership of “every image, every record, all metadata” from data captured on the cameras.Goddard said Flock would not be allowed to “sell, publish, disclose or share” any of the data to ...