East Hampton Village has a Flock problem. Local pushback on surveillance cameras is growing here amid a national outcry over privacy rights and misuse of data. In the 12-month period between March 2025 and the end of February, local, state, and federal officials from around the country queried East Hampton Village Flock data more than five million times. There are several options that village officials could select to reassure the public. So far, they have refused to budge.
Flock Safety’s massive, interlocking network of automatic license plate recognition, or A.L.P.R., systems can do far more than just read plate numbers, including see bumper stickers, vehicle color, even dents. Flock’s “Safety Network” checkbox shares locally collected camera data with every other agency in the system. Earlier this year, the East Hampton Village Board voted not to share any information collected by the cameras with immigration authorities unless under a court order, but this was just window dressing. National Flock data has repeatedly been searched by local police on behalf of federal agents.
Abuse of Flock data has been on the rise. Police, sheriff, and other law enforcement personnel have been increasingly caught spying for unauthorized reasons. For example, a sheriff’s employee in Louisiana was fired on Aug. 18 after admitting to searching for the license plate number of his former fiancee “several thousand times over several years.” In Massachusetts, a town police officer faces termination for allegedly using Flock data to track an apparent rival. Also this month, a Florida officer was discovered allegedly searching the Flock camera database more than 700 times to track his estranged wife’s vehicle.
At its darker extreme, Flock and other camera records could enable government intrusion into the day-to-day lives of millions of Americans. It is not far-fetched to think that the systems could be used in efforts to sow confusion surrounding elections or even try to overturn results. Legal experts are also concerned that surveillance could chill political participation if officials track who attends a campaign rally, canvassing effort, or protest. East Hampton Mayor Jerry Larsen does not seem concerned; during a village board meeting on Friday he said he was comfortable with the way the system was set up.
In contrast to East Hampton, Sag Harbor Village takes a more moderate approach. Instead of allowing camera data collected within the village to be shared across Flock’s entire national network, it reportedly restricts lookups to its own police. While this does not preclude the possibility of abuse by someone on its force, it does wall off information about the whereabouts of residents and visitors from outside agencies.
If East Hampton Village is not willing to turn off its cameras altogether, at a minimum it should follow Sag Harbor’s lead and stop sharing data with anyone on the Flock network who asks.