The governing Professional Services Agreement — the document that legally controls the entire Flock program — contains zero language about retention periods, deletion schedules, or what happens to your data when the contract ends. The "30-day deletion" promise? That's Flock's own policy, in a subordinate document Flock controls.
Read Finding 01The Third Amendment — bringing the total to $565,283 — was processed without a council vote and without city attorney review. A city employee wrote: "We never took this to council." Lt. Perez asked "Did Legal review this?" The answer: no. A $565K surveillance expansion signed the same day the question was asked.
Read Finding 08In April 2025, City Manager Jacob Ellis signed a $641,400 contract for drones, FlockOS Elite real-time crime center, and Axon Fusus integration — which unifies ALPR, drone feeds, body cams, and third-party cameras on one live map. The contract includes a 600-unit video integration license. Corona has 61 ALPR cameras. No council vote is visible in the public record.
Read Finding 09Corona has deployed Flock Safety license plate readers at every city entry and exit — logging every resident's movements into a private corporate database. No community vote. No published policy. No oversight. And nationally, this same system has already been used to give ICE backdoor access to civilian data.
Flock Safety markets itself as a crime-fighting tool. What it actually is: a private company building a permanent, city-wide record of every resident's daily movements — then monetizing access to that data.
Every Flock camera photographs passing vehicles and transmits plate numbers, timestamps, GPS locations, and travel directions to Flock's corporate cloud. That data is not stored by the Corona Police Department. It is stored by a private company, on private servers, under Flock's terms — not ours.
Residents have no rights under California public records law against a private company's database. The city handed Flock a surveillance monopoly on our streets and gave up control of what happens next.
The documented record shows exactly what happens next: federal agencies get access. Sanctuary protections get bypassed. And Flock's own CEO admitted the company enabled national federal access to cameras without the knowledge of the cities that paid for them.
| What Flock Collects | Status |
|---|---|
| License plate number | Always collected |
| Date & time of travel | Always collected |
| Camera GPS location | Always collected |
| Direction of travel | Always collected |
| Data retention limit | Not publicly disclosed |
| Federal access audit logs | Not publicly disclosed |
| Who has queried Corona's data | Not publicly disclosed |
Watch — Flock Safety Explained
"Every morning I drove my kids to school, our family was entered into a corporate database — not as suspects, just as residents going about their lives. There was no policy limiting what happens to that data, no oversight, and no way to opt out. That's when this coalition started." — Coalition Founder, Corona Resident · 20 Years IT Security Experience
Palantir Technologies is both an investor in and a primary integration partner for Flock Safety. When you understand what Palantir is — and what its CEO openly admits it is trying to do — the stakes of these cameras in our city become much clearer.
Karp also acknowledged the technology is "dangerous societally" while arguing it must be built anyway. This is the worldview of the company holding a $30 million federal contract with ICE, embedded in the Pentagon, and designed to ingest Flock's license plate data from cities like ours.
These are not neutral tools. The infrastructure connecting Corona's streets to Palantir's data fusion platform is being built by people using it as a political instrument. Our city is funding it.
Flock cameras are the data-collection layer of a broader surveillance infrastructure designed to feed into Palantir's analytics platform — which connects to federal law enforcement and immigration systems.
Palantir holds a $30 million contract with ICE to consolidate sensitive personal data — biometrics, geolocation, personal identifiers — for near real-time immigration enforcement. Flock is the front door to that system.
Oxnard PD set their Flock portal to "California only" — then discovered federal agencies had been searching their data anyway via a vendor-enabled back-end override. 5 million queries on just 19 cameras in 2025. Oxnard suspended Flock in February 2026. The "California only" setting was theater.
Where Your Data Goes
These aren't hypotheticals. Every case below is documented. If it happened in San Francisco and Mountain View, it can happen — or may already be happening — in Corona.
Logs show at least 19 searches of the SFPD Flock database for ICE fugitives and detention cases — by out-of-state agencies — despite San Francisco's sanctuary city status.
Oxnard PD set their portal to "California only" access — then discovered federal agencies searched their data anyway via a vendor-enabled override. 5 million queries on 19 cameras in 2025. OPD suspended Flock in February 2026.
At least 30 localities — including Santa Cruz, CA — have canceled Flock contracts citing unauthorized federal access and zero community oversight. Corona has taken no action.
California already operates a government-run license plate reader network — CLETS — governed by statute, enforced by felony penalties, and subject to mandatory public audits. Corona chose to contract with a private vendor instead. Here's what that tradeoff looks like.
| CLETS California Law Enforcement Telecommunications System | Flock Safety Private vendor ALPR network | |
|---|---|---|
| Who runs it |
State Agency
Managed by the California Department of Justice — a government agency accountable to the legislature, the Attorney General, and the public. |
Private Company
Managed by Flock Group Inc., a venture-backed company valued at $7.5 billion. Accountable to investors, not residents. |
| Who can access it |
Strictly Controlled
Authorized law enforcement and criminal justice personnel only, operating on a strict need-to-know / right-to-know basis defined by state law. |
Poorly Audited
203 inactive user accounts discovered by Flock's own vendor audit — not by Corona PD. No warrant required to query data. Federal access occurred in Oxnard, Ventura County, and San Francisco despite local "California only" settings. |
| Penalty for unauthorized access |
Felony Exposure
Government Code 6200 and Penal Code 11141–11143 impose felony penalties: 16 months to 3 years in state prison, fines up to $10,000, termination, and loss of professional licenses. DOJ and AG investigate misuse. |
Press Release
No criminal penalties for unauthorized access caused by vendor configuration errors. Flock "took full responsibility" for the Oxnard breach with no legal consequence. The city bears the legal risk, not the vendor. |
| Audit trail |
Mandatory and Public
Agencies must report misuse annually to the California Attorney General. Audit records are subject to public oversight. |
Exists but Hidden
Audit logs exist but Corona PD classifies monthly records as investigative documents potentially exempt from public records requests. In network audits, sensitive fields from outside agencies are masked even from the local department. |
| Federal agency access |
Controlled via Law
Access governed by California and federal statute. Unauthorized sharing is itself a criminal offense. |
Bypassed by Vendor
Ventura County Sheriff had "National Lookup" disabled since June 2023. A vendor configuration error silently re-enabled it — resulting in 364,000 out-of-state queries without the agency's knowledge. |
| Council / public oversight |
Legislative Oversight
Governed by state statute. Any changes to access rules, retention, or data sharing require legislative action or AG guidance. |
Bypassed in Corona
The Third Amendment to Corona's Flock contract was signed with no council vote and no city attorney review — confirmed in writing by Management Analyst Amanda Andrade. The $641,400 Axon Fusus/drone contract was signed by City Manager Jacob Ellis with no visible council authorization. |
| Data retention |
Defined by Statute
Retention policies set by California law, not by contract negotiation with a private vendor. |
Contract-Defined
Generally 30 days per Corona PD's FAQ, with supervisor-approved extensions. No independent verification that extensions are tracked or limited. |
| When it goes wrong |
Officers Face Prosecution
Employees have been fired, prosecuted, and forced to resign. The DOJ investigates. Criminal charges apply regardless of whether the officer profited from the misuse. |
Vendor Apologizes
Flock issues a statement, promises it won't happen again, and continues operating under the same contract. The city — and residents — absorb the risk with no contractual remedy. |
Sources: CA Govt Code 6200; Penal Code 11141–11143; Oxnard PD press release 2/27/26; Ventura County Sheriff audit findings; Corona CPRA documents C000352-032326 and C000411-040626; Amanda Andrade written admission re: Third Amendment; EFF Atlas of Surveillance; CalMatters ALPR investigation 6/25.
This coalition started when a parent — with 20 years of IT security experience — noticed Flock cameras lining the route from their home to their children's school. Every morning drop-off was logging their family into a corporate database run by a company with documented ties to federal immigration enforcement.
We are not asking for better policy around these cameras. We are asking for the cameras to come down. The documented record of Flock's behavior — lying about federal contracts, enabling unauthorized access, partnering with Palantir — shows this is not a company that can be trusted with the daily movements of Corona residents.
Short of full removal, the minimum acceptable steps are listed here. But our goal is clear: get Corona off the Flock network entirely.
This changes when enough residents show up — at meetings, at city hall, in public comment, and in conversation with their neighbors.
Join our growing coalition. We meet monthly to share updates, coordinate council appearances, and prepare records requests. No experience needed.
Public comment is the most direct path to elected officials. We go as a group with prepared talking points. The goal: make every council member unable to claim they weren't told.
California's Public Records Act lets us demand the Flock contract, federal access logs, and data-sharing agreements. We'll walk you through filing a CPRA request.
Most residents don't know these cameras exist — or that their data may already have been accessed by federal agencies. Share this page. Have the conversation.
Volunteer-run coalition of Corona residents. Whether you want to attend a meeting, file records requests, or just stay informed — we want to hear from you.
By the numbers — what's at stake for Corona residents.