City governments have felt the heat to drop their contracts with Flock Safety. Now, retail giants are feeling it too.
As the backlash against Flock’s security products continues, critics are targeting retail stores that have known partnerships with the company.
“There is simply no need for Ulta Beauty to be one of Flock’s biggest commercial customers,” Rachel LaPointe, a content creator and Substack writer, said in a video that had 732,000 views across her TikTok and Instagram as of Friday.
LaPointe, who has a Substack newsletter focused on gendered police violence, told Business Insider that her issues with Flock stem from reported instances of the surveillance system being used to track women.
“My alarm bells started ringing,” LaPointe said, adding that she was surprised by Ulta’s partnership with Flock, considering that a majority of the retailer’s customer base is women.
An Ulta Beauty spokesperson said that Flock cameras are deployed at fewer than 1% of Ulta’s 1,500-plus locations and are used to support criminal investigations, particularly into organized retail theft.
Flock has advertised its advanced surveillance system as a tool for deterring and investigating crimes, including homicides. One of its notable products includes an automated license plate reader (ALPR) that records vehicle sightings and license plates. Flock says its ALPRs do not use facial recognition and that private customers can control how long the camera data is retained and whether it’s shared with law enforcement.
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Thousands of law enforcement agencies and communities rely on Flock’s technology, according to Flock’s website. The deployment of its AI cameras has also extended to large retail chains, including Lowe’s and Kroger, the company wrote.
Law enforcement officers told Business Insider that Flock cameras have been instrumental in solving cases.
The technology is not perfect. A Business Insider investigation published in March showed how Flock can misread license plates, leading law enforcement to pursue the wrong person. In July, Business Insider reported that Flock cameras in the city of Roseville, California, misread license plates in 71% of alerts sent to police in 2023 and 2024.
Critics of Flock’s system emerged after other publications reported law enforcement officers inappropriately using the system to track people they knew.
In Georgia, three former sheriff’s deputies were arrested this August on charges that they used Flock’s license plate data to track people with whom they had personal relationships, The New York Times reported.
404 Media reported in May that Texas deputies tapped Flock’s database during a probe involving a woman suspected of carrying out a self-administered abortion.
A Flock spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Reports of abuse of Flock’s system, along with broader anxieties about privacy and mass surveillance, have prompted city governments to reexamine their contracts with Flock and spurred individual efforts to take down the cameras or block them with trash bags.
Florida’s Department of Transportation announced on August 31 that it would ban automated license-plate readers from state roads. DeFlock, an open-source license plate reader tracking website, said that it has recorded 153 cities rejecting, canceling, or deactivating their Flock agreements.
A DeFlock spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
‘Mass Surveillance Isn’t Pretty’
Ultraviolet, a nonprofit women’s advocacy group, put out a petition on August 26, titled “Hey Ulta: Mass Surveillance Isn’t Pretty,” calling on the beauty retail giant to end its contract with Flock, which the group sees as a threat to women’s privacy and safety.
“While the majority of Flock ALPR cameras are deployed via contracts with law enforcement agencies — which is where much of the abuse we’re concerned about takes place — retailers like Ulta are also playing a key role in normalizing AI surveillance and feeding the personal data of everyday people into a vast network that could be accessed by all kinds of actors that don’t always have our best interest in mind,” Jenna Sherman, a campaign director for Ultraviolet, told Business Insider.
Sherman said that Ulta’s answer — that Flock is used to combat retail theft — doesn’t justify tracking every single inbound and outbound customer.
“As we’d say in the South, which is where I’m from, Ulta is using a shotgun to kill a fly. And we’re all getting shot,” she said. “The vast majority of people driving past these cameras aren’t criminals — we’re customers, employees, parents, and people running errands. Yet Flock and other ALPRs track our license plates and movements anyway, often without our knowledge or consent.”
Sherman said the petition received 13,650 signatures as of Friday afternoon.
Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle via Getty Images
Fight for the Future, a nonprofit that advocates for digital rights, launched a campaign called “Deflock Lowe’s” in February, providing a platform for people to organize protests and sign a petition demanding that the home-improvement retailer “drop Flock.”
Reem Suleiman, a campaign director for Fight for the Future, told Business Insider that the initiative began in part after 404 Media publicized records showing that a local Texas sheriff’s office could access Flock’s license plate readers at 173 Lowe’s locations.
“We were outraged to learn that Lowe’s was further endangering the immigrants and day laborers, who were already being targeted by ICE at stores, by participating in this surveillance network and by voluntarily sharing camera data with other law enforcement agencies,” Suleiman said.
Suleiman said there have been about 10 events organized and that the petition has received over 2,200 signatures. Lowe’s had not responded to the organization since the initiative began, Suleiman said.
A spokesperson for Lowe’s did not respond to a request for comment.
For LaPointe, there’s a bit of a personal tie to Ulta, growing up as a girl in the Midwest, where strip malls with Ulta stores were common sights. She said shopping can now be “frustrating” when a company’s practices conflict with personal values.
“Nowadays, I feel like there are so many moral conflicts with a lot of stores, and people have to navigate what it means to them to shop ethically,” she said. “And it’s definitely impacted my relationship with Ulta, having shopped there myself plenty over the years.”
