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Residents press Michigan City on federal access and retention as Flock Safety tools are discussed
Summary
At a public workshop, residents questioned whether federal agencies or downstream sharing could give the federal government broad access to local Flock data despite vendor assurances of 30‑day deletion and agency‑controlled sharing; Flock staff described permission controls and audit logs but residents cited subpoenas and data‑aggregation risks.
Residents at Michigan City’s June 29 workshop pressed Flock Safety representatives and police officials about whether local license‑plate reader (LPR) images and other sensor data could end up in federal or third‑party databases.
One attendee said media reports had suggested Border Patrol and other federal actors had used LPR data in other jurisdictions and asked how federal agencies could access Michigan City images. A resident later warned that third‑party aggregators could “download a shitload of data” and cited examples of data being used in immigration enforcement and other cross‑state investigations.
Jaylen Johnson, Flock Safety external affairs manager, and Andrew Blanchett, the company representative at the workshop, described a three‑step permission process for interagency requests: the local agency must enable discoverability, the federal partner must request access, and the local agency must grant it. Johnson told the meeting that the company had removed federal statewide or nationwide lookup options and added additional friction to federal sharing after high‑profile reports.
Flock staff also emphasized audit logs and an internal AI audit assistant that flags unusual search behavior, and they said the company has contractual limits on vendor access to law‑enforcement data. "We have strict federal limitations on how federal agencies can even ask for access," Blanchett said. He added that Michigan City must download and preserve images in its own evidence management system if it wants to retain them beyond the vendor’s 30‑day default retention.
Several residents pushed back that those controls do not preclude legal processes such as subpoenas or state‑level mandates that could compel local agencies to release images to federal authorities. One attendee said state attorneys general or federal requests could still result in bulk access in practice, and urged the council to consider shorter retention windows and stronger local policy constraints.
Police officials acknowledged the limits of vendor contractual promises and said the city’s policy choices will govern sharing. Officials committed to posting presentation materials and crime‑data summaries online and to continuing public discussion before any expansion or new contracts are approved.
