Call to Action: Protect Ventura’s Privacy – Demand the Cancellation of Flock Surveillance Cameras

To all local organizations, community leaders, and concerned residents of Ventura: We need your immediate help to protect our civil liberties and privacy from unaccountable mass surveillance.

To be entirely clear, this is not an attack on or a lack of trust in the Ventura Police Department. Rather, this is about a systemic lack of trust in a private, venture-backed surveillance corporation and the unconstitutional access avenues it provides to the federal government and out-of-state entities. Our public safety should not be outsourced to insecure, third-party code.

The City of Ventura currently deploys 23 Flock Safety automated mass-surveillance cameras across our community. Flock Safety has proven to be an insecure, deceptive, and fundamentally bad partner, and these cameras pose a persistent threat to our constitutional rights.

Originally approved quietly on a 2020 consent calendar (Item 8E) as a small, temporary 6-camera trial, this system has experienced massive “surveillance creep” with a nearly 4x increase in deployment, absent of robust public debate.

Why We Must Act Now: The Case Against Flock Safety

Recent exposes and audits have revealed a disturbing pattern of privacy violations, security flaws, and corporate deception:

Severe Data Breaches: Regional data security failures earlier this year proved that out-of-state and federal agencies successfully bypassed California protections to query local data hundreds of thousands of times. This breach was so severe that the Oxnard Police Department completely suspended their contract.
Unregulated Federal “Backdoor” Channels: Investigations by the University of Washington and the ACLU found that federal immigration authorities (ICE, DHS, CBP) exploit the platform to bypass local police firewalls, contradicting the company’s direct assurances to city councils.
Invasive AI Tracking (People, Not Just Cars): A landmark expose by 404 Media revealed police are using Flock’s “FreeForm” AI to run natural-language searches for
physical human characteristics, clothing, and descriptors—making it a tool for tracking individuals, not just license plates.
Critical Cybersecurity Flaws: Independent security researchers have documented Flock units operating on outdated, unpatched operating systems, leaving images unencrypted and even broadcasting raw, unauthenticated video streams over the open internet.
Our Core Demands to the Ventura City Council
We must pivot away from outsourcing public safety to insecure, third-parties. We are asking all community members to demand the following structured approach from the City Council:
Cancel the Flock Cameras Immediately: Terminate the existing Flock Safety contract and dismantle the apparatus. Our constitutional rights are too important to risk on an unreliable vendor.
Gather Actionable Statistics: Compile localized statistics strictly on missing persons and stolen vehicles to define the actual scope of the problem including how often surveillance cameras were effective.
Bring the Discussion to the People: Future mass surveillance technology must never be passed quietly on a consent calendar. We demand robust, transparent public debate on any prospective surveillance tools.
Consider Different Options Only After Oversight: Only once these statistics are vetted and the public has weighed in should the city consider evaluating different camera systems, though we maintain strong opposition to mass surveillance on our streets.

Maybe not as limited to “outside” surveillance as we thought!

On September 30, 2025, a Flock vice president allegedly logged into the Dunwoody Police Department’s Flock system and looked at a camera in the kids’ gymnastics room of a private community center. It was that easy.

The community center had shared its cameras with the police department ‘solely for real-time critical incident response.’ Instead, Flock and local officials claim it was used in a ‘sales demo,’ saying it was authorized under the city’s ‘demo partner agreement.’ The problem? There’s no proof that the agreement even exists.

Now, residents are wondering what kind of sales demo would require looking at one camera in a children’s gymnastics room, and why a police department would have third-party camera integration in a gymnastics room for kids. And incidents like this aren’t a one-off.

Reporting shows Flock surveillance data being accessed in ways cities didn’t approve, including by the federal government and other states. Law enforcement officers have also misused the system to do things like stalk exes or partners. It’s a system ripe for abuse, enabling mass tracking with little oversight. That’s why cities are cancelling their contracts with Flock all across the country, and residents keep destroying the cameras.

Take Action Today

Please email the Ventura City Council immediately to demand the termination of the Flock contract. You can copy the provided email addresses below and use the template message provided.

Official / Title	Email Address
Jeannette Sanchez-Palacios, Mayor	jpalacios@cityofventura.ca.gov
Douglas Halter, Councilmember	dhalter@cityofventura.ca.gov
Liz Campos, Councilmember	lcampos@cityofventura.ca.gov
Jim Duran, Councilmember	jim.duran@cityofventura.ca.gov
Alex Mangone, Councilmember	amangone@cityofventura.ca.gov
R. Schumacher, Councilmember	rschumacher@cityofventura.ca.gov
B. McReynolds, Councilmember	bmcreynolds@cityofventura.ca.gov
Ventura City Clerk	cityclerk@cityofventura.ca.gov

Email Template for Residents

Copy and paste the text below into your email client. Feel free to personalize it with your own neighborhood or additional thoughts.

Subject: Terminate the Flock Safety Contract Immediately

Dear Mayor and Members of the Ventura City Council,

I am writing to you today as a local resident to strongly urge the immediate cancellation of the City’s contract with Flock Safety and the removal of all 23 automated surveillance cameras from our streets.

To be entirely clear: this is not an attack on or a lack of trust in the Ventura Police Department. Rather, this is about a systemic lack of trust in a private, venture-backed surveillance corporation and the unconstitutional access avenues it provides to the federal government and out-of-state entities. Our public safety should not be outsourced to insecure, third-party code.

Flock has proven itself to be an insecure and wholly untrustworthy partner. From catastrophic data breaches allowing unauthorized out-of-state and federal access, to fundamental cybersecurity flaws and unapproved AI tracking of human visual descriptors, this company has repeatedly violated public trust.

I am asking the Council to commit to a more responsible path forward:
1. Cancel the Flock cameras immediately.
2. Gather accurate statistics on missing persons and stolen vehicles, and have this data include surveillance camera effectiveness.
3. Bring all discussions regarding public surveillance to the people—these items must never again be hidden on a consent calendar.
4. Only after these steps are complete should the city consider evaluating different camera systems, though I strongly believe we must move away from mass surveillance entirely.

Major jurisdictions, including our neighbors in Los Angeles, have already walked away from this vendor. Please protect our community’s privacy, data, and civil liberties, and end this contract now.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]
[Your Address/Neighborhood]