Mass Surveillance in Boulder
What’s Happening?
Since early 2022, Boulder has been recording our movements and sharing it nationwide. When Boulder PD first signed a contract with Flock Group, a surveillance company, they started collecting data on every vehicle traveling through Boulder using automated license plate readers (ALPRs). These devices capture just about every identifying feature of your vehicle (e.g. bumper stickers, dents, racks, vehicle type, color, etc.) and store them in a massive national database, which organizations nationwide can search for any reason. The agencies conducting these searches don’t need a warrant, probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion in order to search our cameras. All that’s required is a text field called “reason”.
There are over of these 40 cameras in Boulder, strategically placed to record the movements of just about everyone traveling through our city, and the same is true about neighboring cities such as Longmont, Lafayette, Louisville, Superior, and even rural Boulder County.
Is this Constitutional?
This is a deliberate violation of the 4th Amendment, as found in the very similar case of Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle v. Baltimore Police Department, in which the police department used drones for aerial surveillance. In the Baltimore case, the no expectation of privacy in public doctrine did not apply because Baltimore PD’s surveillance program was found to “[record] the movements of a city,” which could “reveal where individuals come and go over an extended period,” allowing “police to deduce from the whole of individuals’ movements” (Chief Judge Roger Gregory).
Likewise, these Flock cameras are currently being challenged in federal court on the same grounds, and it’s been given the green light to proceed, citing the same precendent under which the Baltimore case was heard, Carpenter v. United States. Because this case is still pending, both Flock and Boulder PD are taking advantage of the perceived grey area to continue using this mass surveillance tech.
Are they being Abused?
Yes, the biggest example is Boulder’s policy not to use it for immigration enforcement. Despite this policy, our cameras have been used over 4,000 times for search reasons like “ICE” and “immigration”. To be clear, these weren’t searches performed by the Boulder Police Department. They were searches performed by out-of-state and federal agencies who had persistent access to our cameras.
Our cameras have also been used to search for a Texas woman who had an abortion, as reported by 404 Media.
Confusing Nature of Data Sharing
It appears that Flock intentionally makes their data sharing features difficult to understand. Let’s start with their “transparency portal”, a deceptive webpage designed to give people a false sense of security.
First of all, Flock allows agencies to cherry-pick which fields are shown on their transparancy portal. Until a few months ago, Boulder deliberately chose to disable the section External organizations with access. It took several months of petitioning our city manager, who eventually ordered our police chief to enable that section. We believe this was a deliberate attempt to hide how this camera system works, and you’ll see more examples of this below.
Let’s take a look at Boulder’s Transparency Portal now. It will list around 91 agencies with access to our cameras, all of which are in Colorado. However, from a public records request made in July 2025, we found that Boulder was on the national network, meaning over 4,000 agencies actually have direct access to search our cameras, both in-state, out-of-state, and federal. Why doesn’t Boulder’s transparency portal list the 4,000 agencies, or at least a count of them? We believe that’s part of Flock’s strategy to provide misinformation and to encourage police departments to do the same.
Confronting the City of Boulder
I gave a short speech during the public comment period of a city council meeting back in January 2025, raising concerns about this mass surveillance and potential misuse, long before ICE started using it for deportation efforts. Several council members expressed concern, and the mayor requested a report from our police chief, Stephen Redfearn. If his name sounds familiar, it’s probably because of his bad reputation at Aurora PD, where he was allegedly invovled in a cover-up of the death of Elijah McClain. This will not be the first cover-up, as you’ll see below.
Redfearn lied to all of city council, the mayor, and the city manager about how this system worked. He compared exposing our cameras nationwide to sharing arrest records, and he even made the claim that any agency wanting to search our cameras had to file a formal request which a supervisor had to approve.
This must have come from his imagination, as no such feature exists on Flock’s search tool. Even if it did, the national network is searched thousands of times per day, and that number is only growing. Even if Boulder PD did implement such a policy, one that’s not possible using our current Flock system, we’d have to have a team large enough to review tens of thousands of requests, checking them for legitimacy and relevance to Boulder.
If you’d like to read more of these emails or dig through the records yourself to see just how often our cameras are searched, you can download them below.
Flock’s Response
Flock has gotten a lot of bad press lately, mostly relating to their cameras being used for mass deportation efforts. In the CEO’s response Setting the Record Straight, he places the blame on individual police departments rather than their own flawed system. Flock has been allowing agencies to break state laws by giving them a checkbox (see screenshot below) to exfiltrate all their license plate data nationwide, prohibited in many states such as Illinois, Virginia, and California. The CEO makes a bunch of promises intended to ease our worries, but you can read how they’re essentially useless.
Let’s say we take ourselves off the national network by unchecking that checkbox. Is there any way federal agencies could still access our cameras? Yes, and it’s quite common.
Loveland Police Department admitted recently to sharing their account with the ATF, who in turn performed searches on behalf of ICE. Similarly, Denver PD has several FBI employees with logins on its Flock system, according to Denver council member Sarah Parady.
Additonally, remaining in the state network allows agencies like the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office (you can find them listed in our transparency portal), who have confirmed their commitment to working with ICE, to conduct immigration-related searches on our cameras.
Even if we opt out of the national network, we’re still relying on around 90 agencies in Colorado to: (1) have the same policies as us, (2) ensure all employees follow those policies, (3) practice perfect operational security, and (4) don’t do “favors” for other agencies. We believe this is an unrealistic expectation, and taking police departments’ word for it isn’t enough. There are no checks and balances here, and there will never be so long as they don’t need a warrant.
A Denver council member recently caught Denver PD sneaking in a Flock contract and has been doing a deep dive on Flock ever since. You can hear her concerns in the video below, many of which also apply to us here in Boulder.
Exposing Redfearn’s Lies
I made a public records request to Boulder Police Department in early July 2025. I requested a piece of information which would prove that we were, in fact, on the national network, despite that information not being included in our transparency portal. The records I requested are called Network Audits, a feature in Flock designed to allow the auditing of searches performed by their users. Network Audits are different than Organization Audits in that they show other agencies searching your cameras, rather than your users searching your cameras.
After paying for the records request, they fulfilled it with extreme redactions. Luckily, the Org Name column remained. After looking through the audit logs, thousands of out-of-state agencies were logged performing searches on our camera network. In the most recent spreadsheet, however, all agencies listed were in Colorado, making it seem like they just recently opted us out of the national network, perhaps in response to my public records requests, something Denver also did immediately after they were questioned by city council.
It may also be a decision to prevent auditing their searches, as most of the data provided thus far has come from states such as Washington and Illinois. Any further audits would have to come from Boulder PD or another agency within the state, both of which are unlikely.
By analyzing searches in the responsive record Boulder CO PD_Network_Audit_6-1-2025_7-15-2025 - Redacted.xlsx, the last official out-of-state search was performed June 20, 2025, just a few days after I scheduled a meeting with Nuria, our City Manager and long after Redfearn made the claim that only agencies in Colorado could access our cameras.
Followed by this last out-of-state search was a flood of Northern Colorado Intelligence Unit searches, likely agency assists to bypass the out-of-state restrictions.
What Next?
If this bothers you, what can you do? The most important thing it to share your concerns with city council. They’re the ones who vote on these contracts, often with misinformation from the police department.
1. Complain to the City Manager
Chief Redfearn, the man who has been misinforming city council, the mayor, and even his own boss, reports directly to Nuria, our City Manager. You can email her and express your concern about him as our police chief, asking her to take corrective action.
2. Email City Council
You can email the Boulder City Council and the mayor to express any concerns you have about these devices, since they were misinformed when they approved the contract.
3. Speak at Public Comment
Addressing our city leaders in-person is the most effective way for them to hear your concerns and take them seriously. If possible, you can sign up before the next City Council meeting for an Open Comment slot.
Most people who speak during public comment are not professional speakers, so you don’t need much prepared other than your concerns. There is a 2-3 minute time limit, so keep your comments brief.
4. Contact the Police Oversight Panel
Boulder has a Police Oversight Panel, whose job it is to “increase community involvement in police oversight.” While they do not have direct control over the police department’s policies, they can make sure our concerns are heard. Email the Police Oversight Panel.
Links & Downloads
- Last 3,600 searches performed by Boulder PD on the national network: Download CSV
- Map of ALPRs in Boulder: Visit Site
- Public records request showing Boulder was on the national network: Visit Site
- Recent emails regarding Flock misuse from Chief Redfearn: View Emails
- Boulder PD Pseudo-transparency Portal: Visit Site