Santa Barbara City ends contract with Flock, A.S. condemns local use
October 9, 2026 at 12:00 pm
The Santa Barbara City Council voted to end their contract with Flock Safety, a manufacturer of automated license plate readers, on Aug. 23.
Flock Safety is a private manufacturer of security software, including automated license plate readers. Automated License Plate Recognition systems take photos of passing cars and store the license plates of all passing cars, regardless of whether the driver is actively being investigated.
Flock cameras have been widely criticized for their contribution to “mass surveillance,” especially with high concentrations of the cameras in neighborhoods with large undocumented populations. Local immigration advocates have highlighted that five cameras are located in the Westside neighborhood of Santa Barbara, which has a larger percentage of undocumented people, roughly 28%, compared to the broader Santa Barbara County, (SBC) which is about 15%.
According to the Santa Barbara Police Department’s contract with Flock, the data collected by these cameras is not given to federal enforcement agencies.
Flock has stated that it does not directly share information with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (I.C.E.). However, civil liberties groups have found that local law enforcement agencies in California have informally conducted license plate searches for I.C.E. and Border Patrol. Santa Barbara law enforcement entities were not named in the 2024 lawsuit.
Following the city council’s decision to cut ties with Flock Safety, the Santa Barbara Police Department planned to install Verkada license plate recognition cameras as an alternative, upon city council approval. However, the Santa Barbara City Council has decided to delay implementation of replacement cameras in order to get community feedback.
A Flock camera has been in use in front of UCSB’s Santa Catalina Residence Hall for over a year and several cameras are in use around Goleta. The University has told the Daily Nexus that it does not have access to the data from the camera.
At a recent meeting, the Associated Students Senate passed a resolution condemning the use of Flock cameras in the area. The resolution calls on SBC to hold a public hearing on the use of Flock cameras in the county, restrict further cameras from being installed by SBC law enforcement agencies without approval and prohibit the spread of data collected by the cameras to other law enforcement agencies without a warrant.
A version of this article appeared on p. 5 of the Oct. 8, 2026 edition of the Daily Nexus
