Key keywords: Flock Safety cameras, Boulder Police Department, illegal surveillance lawsuit, Colorado privacy regulations, automatic license plate readers, public privacy rights, First Amendment protections, protest activity monitoring A new civil lawsuit filed this week by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Colorado alongside three Boulder residents accuses the Boulder Police Department (BPD) of violating state and local privacy laws by misusing Flock Safety’s automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) cameras to conduct widespread, unregulated surveillance of local residents and visitors. First installed across Boulder in 2021 following a city council vote framed as a measure to combat auto theft and locate violent fugitives, the more than 70 Flock cameras scattered across major city intersections, residential neighborhood entrances, and commercial corridors capture and store millions of license plate scans every month, alongside timestamped location data and images of vehicle occupants. The lawsuit alleges that BPD has violated Boulder’s 2021 ALPR ordinance, which explicitly requires all license plate scan data to be deleted after 30 days unless it is directly tied to an active criminal investigation. Internal records obtained by the ACLU show that BPD has been retaining up to 18 months of scan data, sharing unsorted data with at least 12 external law enforcement agencies across Colorado and Wyoming without prior judicial approval, and using the Flock database to track the travel patterns of participants in peaceful public protests held between 2022 and 2024, including climate action rallies, affordable housing protests, and police accountability demonstrations. Plaintiffs argue that this unrestricted monitoring violates Colorado’s Consumer Protection Act as well as First Amendment rights to free assembly, by creating a chilling effect that discourages residents from participating in protected political activity for fear of being tracked and targeted by law enforcement. Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based company that manufactures the cameras and hosts the data platform, has issued a separate statement noting that it sets default data retention limits for clients but does not control how individual law enforcement agencies choose to adjust those settings or use the collected data. As of press time, BPD has not issued a formal response to the lawsuit, though a department spokesperson told local media that the agency “follows all applicable laws and policies governing the use of ALPR technology” and will review the complaint thoroughly. The lawsuit marks the first major legal challenge to Flock camera usage in Colorado, and privacy advocates across the U.S. are watching the case closely, as a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs could set precedent for tighter restrictions on ALPR deployment in dozens of cities that have adopted the technology in recent years.