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To: Logan County Board of Commissioners, Logan County, Nebraska

Stop Flock Surveillance Cameras in Logan County, Nebraska

De-Flock Nebraska
We, the residents and concerned citizens of Logan County, Nebraska, call on the Logan County Board of Commissioners to discontinue the use of Flock Safety automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras in our community.

"Recently my colleagues at the ACLU of Massachusetts carried out a broad statewide open-records project, and among their findings is that Flock’s default agreement with police departments gives the company the right to share data with federal and local agencies for “investigative purposes” even if a local department chooses to restrict data to its own officers."

            ~ Jay Stanley, a Senior Policy Analyst with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. 

• It comes from his ACLU article “Flock Can Share Driver-Surveillance Data Even When Police Departments Opt Out, And Other Flock Developments,” published October 24, 2025

These cameras do more than simply photograph vehicles involved in crimes. They collect and store information about vehicles traveling through our community, creating records that can be searched and potentially accessed through law-enforcement data-sharing networks.

Public safety is important, but so are privacy, transparency, accountability, and the constitutional rights of law-abiding citizens. Residents should not have their movements routinely recorded simply because they drive on public roads.

Before taxpayer money is used to maintain or expand this surveillance system, Logan County residents deserve clear answers about how the technology is being used, how often it has actually assisted local criminal investigations, what information is retained, who can access that information, and which outside agencies have access to Logan County's Flock network.

We therefore ask the Logan County Board of Commissioners to terminate the county's use of Flock Safety cameras and refrain from renewing or expanding the program.

At minimum, we ask that the program be suspended until its costs, effectiveness, privacy implications, data-sharing practices, and actual local law-enforcement use can be fully disclosed and reviewed in a public meeting.

Public safety should not require giving up public accountability or the privacy of an entire community.

Why is this important?

This issue is not about being against law enforcement or being against public safety. It is about deciding how much surveillance we are willing to accept in our community and ensuring that powerful technology is subject to transparency and public oversight.

Flock Safety cameras are automated license plate readers. They photograph passing vehicles and record information associated with those vehicle sightings. That means the system doesn't only collect information about suspected criminals—it collects information about ordinary people going to work, taking their children to school, visiting friends, attending church, going to the doctor, or simply driving through town.

That information can become searchable by law enforcement, and Flock operates a large network through which agencies can share access to vehicle data. Logan County residents deserve to know exactly who can access information collected here and what safeguards prevent that information from being misused.

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August 12, 2026

The IJ Database of ALPR Abuse

The Institute for Justice has cataloged more than 100 incidents of ALPR abuse, including romantic stalking, wrongful stops and detentions, non-law enforcement use, and other types of misconduct.

Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) were sold to American communities as a targeted tool for catching car thieves and finding missing people. What they actually purchased has grown into something far broader and more frightening: an AI-powered network of cameras that photograph and log the movement of every driver who passes, whether or not they are suspected of any crime.  

Companies like Flock Safety have now blanketed thousands of communities with ALPRs, quietly assembling powerful mass surveillance systems that can reconstruct where people have been, when, and how often, all without a warrant. 

This dragnet surveillance threatens the freedoms the Fourth Amendment was adopted to protect. These concerns aren’t just abstractions: every day, innocent people are harmed by officials’ abuse and misuse of these ALPRs. Here are just a few examples:

• In Florida, a woman was stalked and pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy who saw her at a TV shoot. 

• In Texas, a sheriff’s deputy used 83,000 Flock ALPRs to find a woman who had allegedly had a medication abortion, at the behest of her abusive partner. 

• In Georgia, a police chief tracked his ex-girlfriend and her teenage daughter roughly 600 times.

All told, the Institute for Justice (IJ) has identified well over 100 incidents of ALPR abuse, including romantic stalking, wrongful stops and detentions, non-law enforcement use, and other types of misconduct.

Although this is the most comprehensive list publicly available, it may be just the tip of the iceberg. Officers rarely enter specific reasons when they search ALPR databases, and the volume of searches is so large that it would be impossible to figure out whether officers’ vague justifications are actually true.  

For instance, in litigation against Norfolk, Virginia, IJ discovered that the top three search reasons (“cj,” “stolen,” and “inv”) accounted for nearly one third of 230,000 searches over two years. One officer repeatedly wrote “la la la la,” and nobody noticed.

When the government can track the everyday movements of ordinary people—to their jobs, their churches, their doctors, their protests—it holds a kind of power over private life that the Constitution does not allow. 

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There is also a basic question of effectiveness. If taxpayers are paying for a surveillance system that records thousands of innocent motorists, the public deserves evidence showing what benefit Logan County is actually receiving. How many crimes has it helped solve here? How many arrests or stolen-vehicle recoveries has it produced? How frequently is the system searched? Who has access?

These are reasonable questions, and citizens should be able to ask them without being dismissed or treated with hostility.

Technology that gives the government greater ability to monitor people's movements deserves greater oversight—not less.

We can support law enforcement while also demanding privacy, accountability and transparency from our government. Those principles are not mutually exclusive.

Please sign this petition if you believe Logan County residents deserve a meaningful voice in whether this type of surveillance continues in our community.

Updates

2026-09-29 13:36:14 -0400

Flock Safety has issued a legal demand seeking the removal of a public map showing the locations of approximately 300,000 of its surveillance devices across the United States.

What legitimacy does Flock have to demand their tracking devices used on the public, stop being tracked BY the public.

2026-09-29 13:30:43 -0400

FLOCK CEO GARRETT LANGLEY
" value my privacy... But what we're talking about is safety as well. What we have to prioritize as a country is
compromise."

Flocks CEO has admitted that this is an intrusion of OUR privacy, but that we should "compromise" our privacy.

2026-09-29 13:16:15 -0400

Ladavious McNair, an Army veteran and Clark Atlanta PhD student, spent 30 days in Fulton County Jail after investigators used Flock data to place his car near a 2023 road-rage incident. He was in class. Charges were dismissed. He is suing the city.

2026-09-27 16:28:40 -0400

A Hancock County sheriff’s deputy faces 441 charges for allegedly misusing Flock cameras to track his wife, a man she once knew, and a former girlfriend’s family. James Heneghan, 33, faces 220 fraud counts, 220 official-misconduct counts and one intimidation count.

Investigators say Heneghan conducted 6,196 Flock searches from December 2024 to March 2026, about 65% while off duty, on PTO or using comp time. He allegedly searched his wife’s acquaintance 922 times and his wife’s vehicle 901 times, often falsely labeling the searches as a DUI traffic study. Authorities found no related investigations.

He also allegedly searched vehicles belonging to a former girlfriend and her husband 226 times, despite no contact for 11 years, and searched their daughter’s vehicle nine times before stopping her for speeding. The intimidation charge stems from a text saying a relative’s children “will suffer.” Heneghan is on unpaid leave pending termination proceedings and is due in court tomorrow.

2026-09-27 16:21:21 -0400

In Milton, Georgia, a Flock installer called 911 after InvestigateTV/Atlanta News First reporter Brendan Keefe filmed him upgrading a camera on a public street. The worker said he was being followed and cited privacy and safety. Three police cars stopped Keefe; officers released him after about 17 minutes with no charges.

Surveillance for thee, but not for me.

2026-09-17 19:27:55 -0400

50 signatures reached

2026-09-16 22:06:59 -0400

We submitted a public-records request to the Logan County Sheriff’s Office so residents could learn how Flock is funded, operated, accessed, shared, and controlled. Multiple requests were denied under Neb. Rev. Stat. § 60-3209(1), which protects “captured plate data.”
But § 60-3202(3) defines captured plate data as GPS coordinates, dates, times, photographs, license-plate numbers. We requested none of that. We sought records about the government’s administration and oversight of Flock.
This blanket denial raises serious legal concerns. Section 84-712.06 requires every reasonably segregable public portion of a record to be released after protected information is removed. Section 84-712.04 also requires specific records and portions to be matched to specific legal grounds for denial. The law permits redaction of protected plate data, not wholesale concealment of public records. Redact what is protected and release the rest.

2026-09-09 14:34:48 -0400

Racine County, Wisconsin ordered every Flock camera operated by the Sheriff’s Office REMOVED immediately.

Why?

The Sheriff’s Office says it signed up believing its Flock data would be kept for 30 days and used for public safety.

Then it says it learned Flock was creating a SEPARATE aggregated dataset from camera information…

Keeping that data for up to FIVE YEARS…

And marketing it to government AND private customers through a product called Traffic Analytics.

Five years.

Apparently the “30-day retention policy” came with an extended warranty nobody remembers purchasing.

Sheriff Christopher Schmaling wasn’t exactly thrilled.

He said:

“This is not what we agreed to, and it is not what the public was led to believe.”

He went even further, raising concerns about “mass surveillance” and the “collection and monetization of information about innocent people.”

2026-08-21 17:25:26 -0400

25 signatures reached

2026-08-20 09:10:20 -0400

10 signatures reached

2026-08-20 00:11:10 -0400

Pasadena, TX
Date: May 2026
Type: Stalking
Flock
Pasadena Sargeant Michael Palitz resigned while under investigation for allegedly misusing the department’s Flock camera system. Officials told news outlet KPRC 2 that Palitz was using the cameras to “track and stalk a female officer.”
______________
Midgeville, GA
Date: June 2026
Type: Non Law-Enforcement Use
Flock
Major Brandon Sellers was fired and criminally charged for misusing Flock camera data.
______________
Springville, AL
Date: June 2026
Type: Non Law-Enforcement Use
Flock
An unnamed Springville officer resigned after an audit found that they looked up a family member’s vehicle.
______________
Reynoldsburg, OH
Date: January 2026
Type: Stalking
Flock
Reynoldsburg officer Mark Nichols resigned after an investigation found he searched for the license plates of a former domestic partner.

2026-08-19 23:58:15 -0400

August 12, 2026

The IJ Database of ALPR Abuse

The Institute for Justice has cataloged more than 100 incidents of ALPR abuse, including romantic stalking, wrongful stops and detentions, non-law enforcement use, and other types of misconduct.

• In Florida, a woman was stalked and pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy who saw her at a TV shoot.

• In Texas, a sheriff’s deputy used 83,000 Flock ALPRs to find a woman who had allegedly had a medication abortion, at the behest of her abusive partner.

• In Georgia, a police chief tracked his ex-girlfriend and her teenage daughter roughly 600 times.

2026-08-19 23:44:56 -0400

Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley apologized after labeling activists and groups critical of his automated surveillance network—specifically crowdsourced mapping projects like Deflock—as "terroristic" or "domestic terrorists". He later acknowledged that his remarks were a mistake and that critics hold valid concerns regarding public privacy and safety.

~By Thomas Brewster, Forbes Staff.

• Published Jul 17, 2026, 01:51pm EDT

2026-08-19 23:10:49 -0400

Recently my colleagues at the ACLU of Massachusetts carried out a broad statewide open-records project, and among their findings is that Flock’s default agreement with police departments gives the company the right to share data with federal and local agencies for “investigative purposes” even if a local department chooses to restrict data to its own officers.

Jay Stanley, a Senior Policy Analyst with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.

It comes from his ACLU article “Flock Can Share Driver-Surveillance Data Even When Police Departments Opt Out, And Other Flock Developments,” published October 24, 2025