For municipal governments, canceling a contract with an automated license plate reader (ALPR) provider is becoming a common occurrence, but the physical and digital removal of the technology is rarely instantaneous. In August 2026 alone, 90 localities canceled their deals with Flock Safety, a fourfold increase over the previous month. According to a database maintained by the Institute for Justice, at least 182 jurisdictions have ended or declined to renew their surveillance contracts since early 2025.
What follows these cancellations is a “surveillance afterlife” characterized by hardware that remains in place for weeks and data rights that may persist indefinitely. Because Flock Safety generally retains ownership of the cameras and the poles they are mounted on, cities are often legally barred from removing the equipment themselves. This has led to the “trash bagging” phenomenon: in Floyd County, Virginia, and Dayton, Ohio, local law enforcement covered inactive cameras with bags to signal to the public that the system was no longer in use while waiting for the company to dispatch removal technicians.
The Perpetual License Loophole
The most significant complication of “de-Flocking” is the digital footprint. While Flock Safety updated its privacy safeguards on August 13, 2026, to reduce the default data retention period from 30 days to seven days, the contractual terms of service tell a more complex story.
Terms updated in early 2026 grant the company a “perpetual, irrevocable license” to use customer data to support and improve its products. This means that even after a city stops paying for the service, the historical data collected during the contract period may continue to train the company’s machine-learning algorithms. While the city may “own” its raw data, the rights granted to the provider allow that data to be utilized for product development long after the hardware is bagged or removed.
Hardware Deadlocks and Automated Errors
In some jurisdictions, the removal process has faced technical and bureaucratic hurdles that extend beyond simple scheduling delays. In Floyd County and Dayton, officials have noted a “hardware deadlock” where the city lacks the authority to touch the equipment, but the company has not prioritized its retrieval.
In Grass Valley, California, the afterlife of the system took a literal turn in September 2026. After the city had successfully ended its contract and seen the cameras removed, the hardware was reportedly re-installed. The company attributed this to an “automated system error” that triggered a work order for a city that was no longer a client.
These incidents highlight a growing friction between local government exit strategies and the automated deployment models used by surveillance tech firms. As more cities move to distance themselves from AI-driven monitoring—often citing civil liberties concerns—the logistics of total removal remain a primary point of contention for local administrators.
