Hundreds of Denver residents gathered on October 22, 2025, packing a conference hall and overflowing into additional rooms at Geotech Environmental Equipment’s facility. The reason? Outrage and anxiety over Mayor Mike Johnston’s decision to unilaterally extend Denver’s contract with Flock Safety, the company behind a sprawling network of AI-powered license plate reader cameras. The extension, announced just hours before the town hall, has sparked a citywide debate about privacy, civil rights, and the growing reach of surveillance technology in the hands of both local and federal authorities.
The new contract, now running through March 2026, comes with a price tag of $498,500—just below the $500,000 threshold that would have required City Council approval, according to reporting by Colorado Newsline. That detail alone drew sharp criticism from both council members and the public, many of whom saw it as a deliberate move to sidestep democratic oversight. Council member Sarah Parady didn’t mince words, calling the extension an “undemocratic dealing with a known bad actor.” She was joined by colleagues Serena Gonzalez-Gutierrez and Shontel Lewis at the heated town hall, where all three voiced deep concerns about the contract and the mayor’s handling of the issue.
Mayor Johnston, for his part, defended the decision in a statement, touting the deal as a “Denver-specific package that will lead the way in using this technology for the public good.” The city’s press release highlighted new safeguards: Flock Safety has verbally agreed to pay $100,000 for each instance of data being improperly released to external parties, and technical measures are supposed to prevent access by federal agents or law enforcement from outside Denver. Yet, the crowd at the town hall was far from reassured.
Tim Hoffman, Johnston’s director of policy, faced a barrage of questions and skepticism. “I would respectfully disagree with the idea that the mayor did not engage in any public process,” Hoffman told the crowd, only to be met with derision. The tension in the room was palpable, reflecting the broader national anxiety about the role of surveillance technology in policing and immigration enforcement.
Since their installation in May 2024, the city’s 111 Flock Safety cameras have been credited with helping recover over 250 stolen vehicles and contributing to the arrests of nine homicide suspects, according to city officials. But critics argue that these benefits come at the cost of fundamental civil liberties. The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado called the cameras “a serious threat to the democratic rights of every person in our city,” and neighborhood activists questioned whether any privacy safeguards could truly protect residents from misuse.
Those fears aren’t unfounded. Audit logs revealed that, before the city disabled Flock’s “national lookup” feature in April 2025, Denver’s cameras had been accessed more than 1,400 times specifically for immigration enforcement purposes. City officials had previously denied such uses were possible, only for the logs to show otherwise. Denver Police Commander Jake Herrera acknowledged that between 700 and 800 officers have access to the Flock system—meaning a substantial number of people could potentially facilitate outside access, whether knowingly or not.
Federal pressure and the risk of backdoor access loom large. Colorado law bars local law enforcement from collaborating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or sharing personal information with federal immigration authorities. Still, as Parady pointed out, similar protections in Washington state failed to prevent federal agents from accessing local Flock networks. In one instance earlier this year, a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent used login credentials from a Loveland Police Department account to access Denver’s system—an example that has left many residents questioning just how secure the promised safeguards really are.
Concerns about mass surveillance go beyond Denver’s city limits. According to 404 Media and The Washington Post, ICE has access to over 80,000 Flock Safety cameras nationwide. In September 2025 alone, ICE signed $1.4 billion in new surveillance technology contracts—the largest such expenditure in at least 18 years. These contracts cover not only license plate readers but also facial recognition, iris-scanning apps, smartphone spyware, and real-time tracking of social media and device locations. While these tools were initially pitched as targeting undocumented immigrants, the Trump administration has expanded their use to surveil protesters and other American citizens, particularly following President Trump’s September executive order designating antifa as a domestic terrorist organization.
“We don’t know if law enforcement or ICE are getting search warrants to deploy this spyware,” Maria Villegas Bravo of the Electronic Privacy Information Center told The Washington Post. “It’s also a First Amendment issue because your phone contains all your communications, all your expressions…it has your contact lists, it has your social media. Any political organizing people do is typically on social media now, or over the phone.”
The convergence of local and federal surveillance capabilities has left many Denverites—especially those from vulnerable communities—deeply uneasy. At the town hall, one speaker voiced fears that the technology could be used to target transgender individuals and others whom the Trump administration might label “terrorists.” Another resident, identifying as a “normie Democrat,” expressed a sense of betrayal by the mayor’s actions. These concerns are not just theoretical: 404 Media reported earlier this year that a sheriff’s deputy in Texas used Flock’s nationwide search function to monitor a woman who had an abortion. While officials claimed the search was for a missing person investigation, court records later revealed it was part of a “death investigation” involving a non-viable fetus, raising alarm about how surveillance tools can be repurposed for sensitive and controversial enforcement actions.
Parady captured the prevailing mood at the meeting: “Flock’s mass surveillance technology is serving the smaller and smaller circle of people who are absolutely convinced that they never have to fear their government—not because of a mistake, not because of their politics, not because they’ve gotten reproductive health care, not because they’re trans, not because they’re immigrants, not because they stood up for immigrants, not because they’re a democratic socialist elected official, not because they tried to prosecute Donald Trump.” She added, “If you are in that circle, perhaps this technology is serving you. That circle is shrinking every day.”
The story unfolding in Denver is emblematic of a nationwide reckoning over surveillance, privacy, and the balance between security and civil liberties. With city officials and federal agencies both expanding their technological reach, questions about oversight, transparency, and constitutional rights are becoming ever more urgent—and the answers, for now, remain deeply contested.
