Group cites ‘striking’ Weber County data on Flock cameras as reason for lawmakers to act

SALT LAKE CITY — A Utah group is calling on lawmakers to enact tougher regulations on cameras that automatically track license plates.

Utah Civic Compact obtained public information from the Weber County Sheriff’s Office that showed since early 2022, the 10 cameras owned by the county were searched more than 5 million times, mostly by out-of-state law enforcement agencies.

Often called Flock cameras, there are hundreds of them along the Wasatch Front and in other parts of the state. Police tout them as effective in helping find suspect vehicles and investigate crimes. But opponents say they amount to government surveillance and an invasion of privacy.

“This is how it starts, a mechanism for public safety, a couple cameras just to catch criminals, the bad guys,” said Clark Dice, Utah Civic Compact communications director. “What it ends with is huge amounts of data tracking people’s movements, their behaviors and their whereabouts.”

During a news conference Thursday at the Capitol, the group urged state lawmakers to tighten Utah code to ensure that out-of-state agencies follow the rules Utah has set for accessing and using data from those cameras.

The most prolific searcher of Weber County’s cameras, according to public records obtained by Utah Civic Compact, was the Houston Police Department in Texas. Weber County Sheriff’s Lt. Colby Ryan told KSL the office conducts audits of its system each month, and those audits showed Houston’s requests were for active investigations.

“This would be a manual, officer-initiated query with a documented justification that it is being used for an active criminal investigation, outstanding warrant, missing person or stolen vehicle,” Ryan said of the process for searching for data on the cameras.

Ryan added that the sheriff’s office is “constantly reviewing and re-evaluating” all its processes. A spokesperson for the Houston Police Department told KSL he couldn’t speak to the specific records released by Weber County and pointed to the department’s internal policies on automatic license plate readers.

But Dice said while there’s no evidence these out-of-state agencies violated Utah laws, it’s impossible to know that without auditing each one individually. He called the public data released by Weber County “striking.”

“The time is now for us to set these regulations and set these guidelines in place so that this technology is not abused by outside governmental agencies outside of the state of Utah,” Dice said, “and so that the people inside of the state of Utah can know that their privacy and their data are protected.”

Utah lawmakers considered a bill in 2025 that would have further regulated automatic license plate readers. It passed the House 64-2, but it failed to clear the Senate before the session ended. Another related bill in 2026 did not receive a hearing.

Many of the automatic license plate reader cameras are owned by Flock Safety. In response to widespread privacy concerns, the company announced Thursday it will implement several changes, according to the Associated Press, which include requiring law enforcement agencies to put in place an auditing tool designed to catch any unusual search behavior.

Rep. Mike Kennedy, R-Utah, is among politicians on both sides of the aisle who are critical of the company’s cameras.

“Flock cameras have no business tracking law-abiding citizens, and I stand in clear opposition to their spread across our country,” Kennedy wrote on X last week. “We must oppose even the slightest erosion of the constitutional protections that built this Republic, and we cannot allow quiet government overreach to become the norm.”

But multiple law enforcement officials recently told the Deseret News that automatic license plate readers make their investigations more efficient and accurate. Even so, some governmental entities are taking note of the public backlash against the cameras. Salt Lake City is considering a new ordinance that would specify how those cameras can be used and who can access the information collected by them.