May 19, 2026
Chandler Residents To Show Up En Masse to Pressure City Council To Break Contract With Flock
Chandler, Arizona – Community members are expected to show up en masse on Thursday night at the Chandler City Hall to urge the city council to vote no on renewing the city’s contract with Flock, and the company’s ALPR cameras.
After mass public pressure caused the council to unanimously reject an AI Data Center in December, making national headlines, organizations such as East Valley Unite are similarly mobilizing public opposition to Flock, in order to push the council to break its contract with the surveillance company.
Flock and other Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) cameras take and analyze pictures of all passing vehicles, identifying information such as a location, date, and time, and details such as a car’s make, model, color, dents and other imperfections, stickers, etc., creating “searchable data points”.
“This means Flock documents millions of cars under the guise of fighting crime, without a warrant,” said Nathan Taylortaft, co-director of East Valley Unite. “A key part of our concern is this mass surveillance of the public without consent.”
Flock is also notorious for not having good security. 404 Media has reported that “a security researcher found Flock accounts for sale on a Russian cybercrime forum”. Additionally, “using a commercial search engine” someone “very easily found the administration interfaces for dozens of Flock Safety cameras… None of the data or video footage was encrypted. There was no username or password required.” This is not a secure way for police to track crime. It’s a mass surveillance system that has been and will be accessed by the wrong people.
Billionaire Peter Thiel co-founded Palantir, and a venture capital firm he founded has also invested in Flock. Flock integrates with Palantir, and both are powered by AI, which is notoriously unpopular for a number of reasons, including in Chandler, where in December the council rejected an AI data center. And because these are companies backed by billionaires, they are incentivized to prioritize the bidding of their investors over the privacy of the people.
In a special study session on Monday, councilmember OD Harris said he believed the situation was a public trust issue, and what really matters is whether the community feels safe with Flock. “We’re showing up on Thursday to make it known we are not”, said Taylortaft. “Not only are we opposed to mass surveillance and security issues, but the locations of the cameras themselves are problematic too. The city currently has forty Flock cameras. Nine of those are within one square mile, which also happens to be the only area of Chandler where over 60% of the population is Hispanic, based on data from census tracts. One of those is pointed directly at Galveston Elementary School.”
On Thursday the Chandler City Council is expected to vote on whether to renew their contract with Flock. The meeting will take place at the Chandler City Hall at 6pm.