Resources for De-Flocking Berkeley

All Out to the City Council Thursday March 24!

On Tuesday March 24, the Berkeley City Council will vote on expanding their contracts with Flock Safety to include drones and a home-based surveillance network.

If you’re against mass surveillance, or you’re concerned about Flock Safety turning over people’s images to ICE, you have only a few days to stop Berkeley from heading down this dangerous path. Please help pack the Council meeting room — both physical and via Zoom — to show your concern.

Tuesday March 24, 6PM

Berkeley City Council votes to expand surveillance, and contracts with “Flock Safety,”

which violate our state and city Sanctuary laws.

Here are some talking points to consider making to Council. These are only suggestions; please use your own words.

• Community input on the Flock contracts at the Public Safety Committee has been universally negative. The Police Accountability Board has asked you not to rush to judgment. The Peace and Justice Commission has asked you to cancel all Flock contracts, by a vote of 11-1 with two abstentions.

• The omnibus package of surveillance-related items before you is not a simple contract extension, but adds the following systems: the Flock Condor PTZ, an AI-powered camera; Drones as a First Responder; Community Video Streams; Flock Nova, AI-powered, unified intelligence platform to consolidate data into a single platform; and to renew the Flock ALPR (Automated License Plate Reader) contract.

• These changes are too much for the community to digest at one sitting. They amount to an entire new ecosystem of surveillance. They represent a move away from community policing to a tech-based system reminiscent of RoboCop. Berkeley deserves a full airing of this direction, with civil liberties advocates at the center of the discussion.

• Flock Safety has a history of allowing ICE to access local ALPR data through third parties such as outside police agencies. Flock has lied to you by concealing their pilot programs directly with ICE. (Under Berkeley’s Sanctuary Contracting Ordinance, this means Flock is guilty of a municipal misdemeanor and Council can terminate its contract.) Your contract with ICE will not protect our data from a judicial subpoena, and if there is a secret FISA subpoena, you likely will not even know about it. The promises made by Flock and repeated by staff give Berkeley no security.

• As the national government accelerates its militarism, mass surveillance, and contempt for the people, this is the wrong time to contract with an ICE ally to spy on our own people. At some point we will be faced with the repression that Minneapolis has experience for months. We need to know that the City of Berkeley will protect its people, and not collaborate with the predatory regime in Washington.

• Are you aware that Forbes magazine has documented that Flock is lying about their technology reducing crime, that Fortune magazine has shown Flock’s largest investor, billionaire Marc Andreesen, is a leading supporter of Trump and considers DEI and immigration “two forms of discrimination,” and that reputable tech sources have shown that Flock has corruptly hired local mayors and city council members to promote its business and get contracts signed? If you are not, you should at least postpone your decision. If you are aware, why would you entangle yourselves in this web of collaboration and corruption?

Click on these images to read the City staff proposal, and why two city commissions oppose it:

• The complex agenda item on Tuesday’s Council agenda expanding Flock’s surveillance system in Berkeley

• Police Accountability Board concerns over the proposed deals with Flock. This include three detailed letters on the dangers of the proposed Flock surveillance ecosystem, the drone system, and. Community Video Streams. Very helpful appendices show the huge drop-off in crime in Berkeley, raising the question of why these invasive technologies are needed now; and many of the cities that have cut off their relationships with Flock. Everyone should take a look at these documents for deeper insight into the problems with the proposals. See both the Press Release and the PAB’s letters.

• Peace and Justice Commission’s rejection of Berkeley Flock contracts: “Cancel Berkeley’s Flock Safety contracts for public surveillance images and video footage, due to Flock’s repeated sharing of such data with immigration authorities, and the inherent exposure of ‘cloud-based’ storage to Trump administration access.”

Then click on these images to read what community members have to say:

• Berkeley Speaks‘ article “Stop Local Collaboration with Immigration” from Fall 2025 summarizing the history of the struggle over the Flock contracts, including the city’s Sanctuary policies, Flock’s history of allowing ICE access to local data (including Berkeley’s), the drone proposal, and other local examples of collaboration with ICE.

• Kitt Saginor drills deep into the misinformation from the police that the surveillance images and videos they share with Flock are protected from the hands of ICE and other federal agencies. Berkeley’s Flock contract itself makes an exception for judicial warrants, and will turn over whatever a judge orders. And a FISA warrant (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) is even more powerful, being entirely secret. The only way to avoid ICE getting our data is to not collect it.

• Indivisible Berkeley says “Get the Flock Out!” and provides a great fact sheet, showing for example that “overwhelmingly, citizen data is not being used for local purposes;” for example, in Mountain View, over 99% of searches were done by outside agencies.

And these ground-breaking analyses:

• In a letter to the City Council, former PAB member Kitty Calavita documents the false claims that Flock reduces crime (Forbes); Flock’s corruptly hiring local officials “to promote its business, to get local policies passed and contracts signed to benefit Flock” (TechCrunch); and that Flock’s largest owner, billionaire Marc Andreesen, is a leading supporter of Trump and considers DEI and immigration “two forms of discrimination” (Fortune). As Calavita says, “it is not hard to imagine that Flock may be less than vigilant about its data ending up with the federal government and ICE.”

• Berkeley’s George Perezvelez is Vice President of NACOLE (National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement, former chair of the Berkeley Police Review Commission, and founding member of the BART Police Citizen Review Board. This letter to the city council is a valuable exploration of legal, criminological, and privacy concerns of ALPRs and Flock. The letter “requests the city postpone approval of any contract or deployment related to Flock camera systems until a fully vetted and comprehensive oversight framework is established.”

• The Berkeley Immigration Collaborative includes leaders of the East Bay Sanctuary Covenant, Social Justice Collaborative, Multicultural Institute, East Bay Community Law Center, and Oasis Legal Services. “We have fought for decades to make our community a place where immigrants are safe, supported, and valued….The Berkeley City Council has been a steadfast and committed partner in this work over the past decade, providing support and funding through two hostile federal administrations….The council should not jeopardize this track record now by starting a new contract with an untrustworthy corporation that has proven its willingness to break local and state laws to fuel the mass deportation machine.”