Washington police data gaps let the feds in, report finds
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Federal authorities have been able to access police surveillance data in Washington state — sometimes without permission, a recent report shows.
Why it matters: Washington calls itself a sanctuary for immigrants, abortion seekers and people pursuing gender-affirming care, but the study by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights suggests that gaps in local data-sharing rules are giving federal agencies access to information the state says it's protecting.
State of play: Public record requests by researchers showed that eight Washington state law enforcement agencies using Flock Safety — a brand of automated license plate readers (ALPR) — enabled direct one-to-one sharing of their networks with the U.S. Border Patrol at some point during 2025, per the report.
- Ten other departments — including Mukilteo and Renton — were accessed through technical "back doors," despite no formal authorization, the UW report found.
- In one case, a Yakima County Sheriff's Office user ran two plate searches across 89 networks and listed "ICE" as the reason.
The other side: Flock Safety said in August it was pausing pilot programs with federal agencies after confusion and concern over how its data was being used.
The big picture: Axios has reported that cities are rapidly expanding surveillance tools — from Seattle's real-time crime center to Denver's network of Flock readers — often under the banner of public safety.
- But allowing federal authorities to access such systems leads to the risk that certain groups will be targeted, critics have told Axios.
- The UW findings suggest those systems are in some instances already exposing residents to immigration and federal searches that may violate state law.
The latest: Some residents are pushing to remove Flock cameras altogether in Redmond, calling them "AI-powered mass surveillance."
- They argue the system misidentifies plates and builds a national map of people's movements, with little independent oversight.
- The UW report highlights similar pushback in Mountlake Terrace and Stanwood, where police paused Flock deployments after public concerns.
Zoom in: The Seattle Police Department uses Axon, an entirely different system, Callie Craighead, a spokesperson for the mayor's office, told Axios.
Yes, but: The ability to access data is not just a Flock-specific problem, but rather an issue with the technology itself, said Tee Sannon of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington.
- "If an agency were using a different vendor, they could still be sharing their data with other entities and the data would still be at risk of being misused," Sannon told Axios.
Catch up quick: Unlike some other states that have specific limits on how long license plate data may be kept, such as New Hampshire (three minutes) and Maine (21 days), Washington has no law governing how long agencies can keep or share ALPR data.
What we're watching: Whether public pressure for a statewide privacy law grows amid questions over the civil cost of being tracked.