Flock Safety announced a revamp of its privacy and security protocols today following growing consumer backlash and reports of law enforcement abuse.
As backlash to the company’s automated license plate recognition continues to build, the company introduced a novel set of reforms that includes heightened data protection, stronger control for local law enforcement offices and strengthened oversight.
In light of the major development, Flock is lowering its standard data retention window from 30 days to seven. Notably, all data captured by one of the companies weighed more than 119,000 cameras globally was deleted after the 30-day window.
The current announcement clarified that data will only live on Flock servers for one week. The company announced that the ability for agencies to divide what felonies they want to share data about with other municipalities is another privacy protection concern.
Flock has come under intense scrutiny from privacy advocates and concerned citizens who voiced worry that Flock will be storing data on servers.
The backlash has been triggered by ongoing reports abusing the technology to stalk romantic partners. Flock’s current series of reforms also intend to prevent abusive technologies.
The company underlined that Flock is making it standard for every law enforcement customer so when a system detects any unusual activity, the user is locked out in real time.
In this connection Flock told Fox Business, “A search without a reason is a search that should not happen in the first place and now Flock’s system automatically treats it that way.”
Flock underscores the company’s success in assisting people to locate missing people, adding that out of the 1 million investigations involving Flock’s technology last year, roughly 100,000 missing people were successfully located.
