A software bug in Flock Safety's license plate reader system exposed Ventura County drivers' data to more than 364,000 out-of-state law enforcement searches. Camarillo council members learned at their Aug. 26 meeting they have little power to prevent it from happening again.
Sheriff's Cmdr. Eric Tennessen told the Camarillo City Council that the breach ran from Feb. 19 through March 19, 2025. The Ventura County Sheriff's Office had disabled Flock's national data-sharing feature in June 2023 to comply with a California law barring local agencies from sharing license plate data with out-of-state or federal agencies. A bug reactivated it without the department's knowledge, the Camarillo Acorn reported.
Of the 364,000-plus searches, 299 cited immigration enforcement as the justification, less than 0.1% of the total, according to the Thousand Oaks Acorn.
"All I can say definitively is that nobody from the Ventura County Sheriff's Office toggled a switch that opened up our data," Tennessen told the council.
Investigators considered three explanations: a sheriff's employee changed a setting, a Flock employee changed it, or a software bug caused the change. Tennessen said the bug was the most likely cause. Flock told the Sheriff's Office that other agencies experienced the same issue and that technical logging limitations made it impossible to pinpoint the exact trigger.
The Oxnard Police Department separately suspended its Flock cameras after an audit revealed the same national-lookup feature had been reactivated there, according to CBS News Los Angeles.
Camarillo and Moorpark have limited say
The Aug. 26 discussion exposed a governance gap for the five Ventura County cities that contract with the Sheriff's Office for policing: Camarillo, Moorpark, Thousand Oaks, Fillmore and Ojai.
Councilmember Susan Santangelo asked whether Camarillo could adopt its own restrictions on how the Sheriff's Office uses Flock. The city attorney said no. Sheriff's deputies are county employees, and Camarillo cannot impose personnel policies on the department.
Camarillo pays about $87,250 a year for 25 Flock cameras, 20 fixed and five mobile. Another 12 cameras came through a state-funded retail theft task force, bringing the city's total to 37. Moorpark authorized 15 Flock cameras in 2024 through the same countywide retail theft initiative, funded by a state grant. Neither city controls the data-sharing rules.
Audits lack a paper trail
The Sheriff's Office began auditing the Flock system daily after discovering the breach and now conducts weekly checks. But when council members asked whether audit results could be posted on the sheriff's transparency dashboard, Tennessen said they are not included. He indicated the weekly review may not produce a separate record.
The department shares license plate data with 58 California law enforcement agencies under memorandums of understanding. Those agencies do not need case-by-case permission to search Ventura County data. Users must provide a case number, criminal offense and reason for the search.
Residents push back
Camarillo resident Matt O'Neill, who said he obtained Sheriff's Office records through a public records request, told the council he does not trust Flock as the county's technology vendor. Resident Bruce Little called for independent oversight, stricter limits on data collection and consequences for violations.
Tennessen defended the cameras as a crime-fighting tool, citing 38 stolen vehicles recovered through license plate reader alerts in 2024, 46 in 2025 and 30 as of the Aug. 26 meeting. He also pointed to a Camarillo gun-store burglary in which 63 firearms were stolen as a case where the technology helped investigators.
Flock has changed its programming to block out-of-state agencies from searching California data, according to the Sheriff's Office. The department's current Flock contract runs through September 2027, and the Sheriff's Office is already testing license plate readers from Axon as a potential alternative.
