Washington Court: Data Captured on Flock Safety Cameras Are Public Records (www.eff.org)

A Washington trial court (Skagit County Superior Court) ruled that images and data captured by Flock Safety automated license plate readers (ALPRs) are public records under the Washington Public Records Act — even when those images are stored on a private vendor’s cloud. The cities of Stanwood and Sedro‑Woolley had argued footage only became a “record” if a public agency extracted it from Flock’s system, and relied on contract language asserting municipal ownership of “customer data.” The court rejected those arguments, finding the cameras were created and used to further a governmental purpose and therefore their outputs are subject to public‑records disclosure. Practically, this covers continuous ALPR captures (terabytes of plate images and timestamps) that vendors store on behalf of police. The decision matters beyond Washington: it blocks a potential loophole where governments could outsource surveillance storage to avoid transparency, and it responds to documented controversial uses of ALPR feeds — sharing with federal immigration agents, cross‑jurisdictional data transfers, and an instance tied to an abortion investigation. The ruling reinforces obligations for oversight, redaction of personal details when appropriate, and auditing of vendor contracts; it also highlights risks such as agencies deleting records during litigation (the requester’s footage was purged) and the need for stronger statutory limits on third‑party data sharing and retention.