Jackson Town Council sides with Flock despite residents’ concerns

JACKSON — The Jackson Town Council backed its contract with Flock Safety, the company behind 28 license-plate-reading cameras in Jackson, on Monday, despite impassioned cries from residents concerned about data security.

“Respectfully, Mayor, mass surveillance is never safe,” Sam Strauss, 30, told councilors during public comment Monday. “It’s naive of the council to bet the safety and privacy of your constituents on a technology that has, around the country, been proven again and again to be fallible and corruptible.”

Despite those concerns, town councilors voted unanimously to continue the contract, with members saying the cameras have become a valuable investigative tool for local law enforcement and that a newly-strengthened contract limits how the data can be accessed and used.

“Our legal department has worked tirelessly to strengthen what was already a tight contract from the start,” Councilor Alyson Spery said. “I have faith in what parameters we have here to protect our community ... we are a model in that respect that other communities could learn from.”

But councilors didn’t hold back their own concerns. 

Though officials generally believed that license plate readers were useful for the Jackson Police Department, they wondered whether Flock was the right company to trust with doing so.

“Can we trust Flock? I don’t know,” Councilor Jonathan Schechter said. “Can we trust them any more than any other company that is going to be vulnerable? I don’t know.”

Data breaches, more generally, were among the council’s concerns.

“I also am not naive,” Mayor Arne Jorgensen said. “We live in a world that, frankly, people are doing things that they shouldn’t with data.”

Councilors asked Town Attorney Lea Colasuonno to review the contract in January, following residents’ concerns. That included making any changes to the contract to make it safer.

But communication with the company stalled for months. It wasn’t until this weekend that Flock agreed to requests the town had for “greater privacy and security” in the contract, Colasuonno said.

Over the weekend, Flock and the town agreed to last-minute changes to the contract. The new update states that Flock may only use town data to improve services for the town, and not for the company’s services more generally, Colasuonno said. Flock also agreed that the town was the sole owner of any data collected.

“There was some potential for misunderstanding there,” Colasuonno said about the data ownership question under the previous contract.

The delay between Flock and the town attorney concerned officials. Councilor Devon Viehman said she was prepared to step away from the Flock contract going into the weekend.

“I was prepared, on Friday, to come and vote no if I needed to tonight, if the changes to the contract were not successfully negotiated,” Councilor Devon Viehman said. “It was really frustrating that it took our town attorney so many months to get this done. But she did, and that’s why I can support it tonight.”

Jorgensen also called out Flock’s delayed response time, saying that the delay was on Flock and not on Colasuonno. Like Viehman, though, he was comfortable moving forward after the company acquiesced.

“We were not getting the response that would be ideal from Flock until the very end,” Jorgensen said. “At the end of the day though, the issues we put on the table, they have come back to us with changes that” the town had asked for.

Councilors did want to do more digging into whether there were other companies that could monitor license plates in town, instead of Flock.

“I am also in support of the idea of looking at other companies that may even more secure approaches to data,” Schechter said. “But on balance, this particular shade of gray [discussion] has me coming down on the side of the Flock contract.”

Flock did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

The Flock Group Inc., which operates the surveillance cameras and has a contract with the Town of Jackson, has come under national scrutiny for the breadth of its data collection and — in some cases — unintended uses of the data, including tracking vehicles for immigration enforcement. The technology has been controversial, raising concerns about civil liberties and the potential for abuse. Flock has been building a national database from more than 5,000 communities using its cameras.

Seven public commenters expressed concerns with the Flock cameras during Monday’s meeting, citing reports they had read about security breaches and unintended use of the data across the country.

Chris Glenn, a 33-year old ski resort manager running for Teton County Sheriff on a progressive platform, pointed to his hometown of Dayton, Ohio. Flock data was reportedly accessed there for immigration enforcement reasons, in violation of city policy, according to the Dayton Daily News.

“I would request that we also end our contract with Flock before it becomes a long and lengthy legal battle, and our privacy is violated,” Glenn said. “If it hasn’t been already.”

For Lauren Bennett, an 18-year resident, the changes to the town’s Flock contract made over the weekend spoke volumes.

“The contract was amended to state that Flock could not use it for their benefit. That statement, right there, I feel like it says it all,” Bennett said. “We shouldn’t be partnering with a company that has any private interest, for the safety of our town.”

Though Viehman said she had concerns about stories she had heard from other communities, she and other councilors believed the town’s contract offered protection from unwanted data uses.

“Other communities don’t have policies like we do. They are quite lax, and it’s shocking,” Viehman said. “I think that other communities could learn from what we’re doing. And I wish that they would have tighter contracts for this.”

But to Strauss, who was “disappointed” and “embarrassed” following the council’s decision, the protections stipulated in the town’s contract have not yet been tested.

Councilors “did express wariness. And they should feel rightfully wary,” Strauss told the News&Guide Tuesday. “It’s regrettable that they’re willing to trade our privacy, and our security, with an overconfident attitude towards these untested protections that have been put in place.”

In September, the Town of Jackson renewed the contract after two years of service with Flock. The initial two years cost $184,800, and the renewal puts the town on the hook for two more years at nearly $90,000 per year.

In 2023, the council voted 3–2 to contract with Flock for 28 license-plate recognition cameras around town as part of a five-year program; Jorgensen voted against it, citing the high cost. Under the contract, the Jackson Police Department is the data owner, and records are accessed for criminal investigations.

But tucked into page 14 of the 23-page contract, under Section 4.1 Confidentiality, is this provision: “For clarity, Flock may access, use, preserve and/or disclose the Footage to law enforcement authorities, government officials, and/or third parties, if legally required to do so or if Flock has a good faith belief that such access, use, preservation or disclosure is reasonably necessary to: (a) comply with a legal process or request; … or (d) protect the rights, property or safety of Flock, its users, a third party, or the public as required or permitted by law, including respond to an emergency situation.

This provision was not mentioned in previous staff reports and has not been discussed by the council.

Before the 2023 vote, Jorgensen questioned whether the law enforcement tool could be used to track women seeking abortions across state lines. As the federal government has ramped up immigration enforcement, Flock and other surveillance vendors have drawn increased scrutiny across the country.

Immigration advocates in Teton County have questioned the surveillance program, arguing that the federal government will use any means possible, including vendors like Flock, to acquire undocumented residents’ information. License plate data entered into the National Crime Information Center, a central database for tracking crime-related information, doesn’t stop at county lines. It can trigger alerts for federal agencies, too. Flock’s data feeds into the NCIC, according to its website.

This story was published on June 17, 2026.