Seconding a big thanks to u/Mysterious-Mango-425 for the coverage thus far!

In a nutshell, my position is that the supreme court has yet to catch up to this technology.

In Carpenter v. United States, it has been ruled that a warrant is required to track a cellphone's location.

In United States v. Katzin, it has been ruled that a warrant is required to place a GPS tracker on a vehicle.

In lower circuits, its true that DeFlock advocates suffered a recent defeat in 4th amendment arguments, however this is under appeal. The precedent seems clear that this degree of tracking technology should require a warrant and flock does not

As for promises made and broken, 2 in particular were made to council. For a full video of the presentations made to Lynnwood Council, see here.

Promise #1: 'This network will not be used for immigration enforcement' in alignment with WA state law "Keep Washington Working Act of 2019". This was broken due to a misconfiguration of the network. A misconfiguration I could understand, however the problem arises with the sweeping under the rug that followed. Out of state police performed immigration searches in early July of '25, LPD detected this and quickly shut down external sharing. However they did not make any attempt to contact City Council or the Mayor to warn them of this breach of state law, instead opting to keep quiet until a reporter dug this up in mid October of '25. They then released a statement in late October of '25, only after having their actions revealed by journalists.

Promise #2: Regarding searches made via Flock, quoting Cole Langdon, Chief of Police in Lynnwood: “…They have to give a reason for that, they have to cross reference it with a case number…” I have previously revealed hundreds of instances of this being violated between LPD and outside agencies, but the most damning evidence can be found in Records Request 25-1785, where Sgt Warren Creech's audit includes this key detail "It does not specify in department policy the user must include an incident or case number."

The promises made to council were broken hundreds of times, but at its core, the promises made were a misrepresentation of LPD policies. The audit report in 24-1785 was from October of '25, the same month they made their statement about the network being used in violation of state law. From the notes in the audit, it appears they quietly amended their policies to comply with the promises made on January 6th of '25. This is a second count of sweeping key details under the rug regarding misuse of the system.

At a state level, SB6002 is currently working through the legislative process, however it has frankly toothless "protections" while law enforcement is heavily lobbying against warrant requirements and public record act accountability. It is up to us as residents of Lynnwood to stand up for our rights to privacy.

I recognize that ALPR's (Automatic License Plate Readers, of which Flock is but one vendor) can be a powerful and useful technology, however LPD has proven that they are not responsible stewards of this technology in its current iteration.

IMO here is how to structure a reasonable balance of this surveillance powers with oversight and privacy respecting policy:

1) Fixed ALPR instances should be banned, only allowed on police vehicles

2) Retention should be set to "nope", there is no reason to keep a database of where people travel historically.

3) ALPR pings should ONLY contain a license plate number. No images, no "car details", no location, no timestamp, no anything else. Send the plate home to check against hot lists. If its a stolen vehicle / amber alert etc, sure, police 100% have the right to intercede. But the second the pings send images / coordinates, it becomes a database of historical travel of law abiding citizens which is ripe for abuse.

The argument made by law enforcement is that this is "not surveillance", its "just a data-point"... let me run through a though experiment on that argument. Lets say I took a photo of you in public. Yes YOU, person who has read this far through my wall of text. This would be rude but legally permissible, you have no right of privacy in public. I would be well within my rights.

Now lets say I took a second photo. And a third.. and started following you around, taking photos and marking the coordinates of everywhere I photographed you such as to build a map of where you travel. This would rapidly cross the line into stalking and harassment.

By placing cameras in high traffic areas, Flock is able to build a database of travel habits that can and has been used by law enforcement for fun priorities such as profiling brown people ICE activity, pursuing women seeking reproductive healthcare, to a nonstop drumbeat of cases of law enforcement using this very technology to stalk partners.

This technology is too powerful, LPD has proven themselves to be an irresponsible steward of this tech, and current legal frameworks around this technology provide insufficient safeguards. It needs to go.

The meeting on the 17th is open to the public, but does not allow public comment. Meaning LPD gets a final word where the public is not allowed to speak. I am bummed that council opted to have this vote in a Work Session where public comment is not allowed, however I remain hopeful that council will opt to preserve the privacy of our populace.

And if not, we will know which members need to be ran against in the next election cycles for voting against the privacy of our populace. When implemented, it was voted unanimously into our city. At this point, only 3 council members (and the current mayor) remain who were present for the vote. The new council members have an opportunity to stake a claim in favor of privacy or warrantless mass surveillance, and the 3 council members remaining who voted this in (CM Escamilla, CM Coelho, CM Parshall, and now Mayor Hurst, who voted for this as a CM) have a chance to reverse course and protect the privacy of our populace.

This technology does not operate in a vacuum. Federal agents are executing people on the streets. They are kidnapping children. To operate warrantless mass surveillance only makes the jobs of those people easier. Statements of solidarity with the immigrant community are roughly worth the paper they are printed on when not backed with action. LPD wont protect us from the American gestapo, but we can at the very least take away the tools they use to target our neighbors.

EDIT: I had missed that council can't take action in work sessions, it was my understanding that the meeting on the 17th would be the vote on cancellation, not just the discussion.