08/24/2026
Today I learned something that fundamentally changes Pflugerville’s debate over Flock Safety.
Pflugerville resident Sammer Aly obtained the City’s Flock records through a Texas Public Information Act request and did the painstaking work of digging through the data and identifying what it showed. I reviewed the raw audit exports and confirmed his findings.
For months, the public discussion has focused on roughly 80 organizations listed as having access to Pflugerville’s Flock Cameras. My stance has always been that that is way too many, and that we need actual agreements with any 3rd party who has access to City data.
Staff has repeatedly said that Pflugerville is not participating in statewide or nationwide sharing.
The City’s own Flock network-audit records tell a very different story.
After removing duplicate records from overlapping exports, the data identifies 459 outside organizations conducting nearly 1.6 million searches that included Pflugerville’s camera network over the last six months. The organizations include agencies hundreds of miles away and outside Texas.
Whatever Flock calls the setting, this is broad network access to data collected in Pflugerville.
I do not yet know whether the discrepancy resulted from misrepresentation, a misunderstanding of how Flock’s platform operates, inadequate oversight, or some combination of the three. I sincerely hope no one knowingly provided inaccurate information.
But after months of scrutiny, direct questions, and public assurances, not understanding access on this scale represents a profound failure of oversight.
If these agencies could not search Pflugerville data, Flock and the City need to explain why their searches appear in an audit generated for Pflugerville. If they could, the public deserves to know what access was enabled, who authorized it, and why Council and residents were repeatedly told that broader sharing was not turned on.
Effective immediately, I am calling for the City to:
- Suspend the entire Flock system, including its license-plate readers, video cameras, supporting infrastructure, outside access, and integrations.
- Suspend Clearview AI until its configuration and usage have been independently audited.
- Preserve all records, audit logs, settings, access histories, and data needed for the reviews.
- Begin a technical audit of how these systems are configured, where their data goes, who can access it, and whether their operation complies with City policy and law.
- Produce a complete public inventory of every high-risk surveillance device, product, account, integration, and data-sharing arrangement operated by the City.
- Report the findings publicly before any system returns to operation.
I am not claiming tonight that every component of Flock or Clearview AI has been misused; I hope they have not. I am saying that the City has lost the factual foundation needed to justify continuing their operation.
We cannot govern technology we have not accurately inventoried. We cannot protect data flows we have not independently verified. And we should not continue operating high-risk surveillance systems first and ask how they work later.
This also makes it even more important for Council to act tomorrow evening on my high-risk technology governance and oversight proposal. The need for binding rules, complete inventories, independent audits, public transparency, and meaningful Council oversight could not be clearer.
We must establish those safeguards before allowing any of these systems to return to operation, if at all.
Shut the systems down. Verify everything. Report the truth publicly.
Monday evening update: As soon as this data came to light, I immediately contacted the city manager, chief of police, and city attorney, who mobilized to figure out what is going on. They also reached out to Flock for answers. I'm sure it will take some time to figure out what exactly happened and how, but it is currently being investigated.
