By Nathan Wilson
Columbia Gorge News
SKAMANIA CO. — Last month, the Skamania County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) opted to shut down its network of Flock Safety cameras, which tracked license plate numbers, models and other vehicular identifiers at six points across the county, and information gathered by a local digital security expert demonstrates how widely that data was previously used.
After two cities attempted to prevent disclosure, a Skagit County court ruled that all Flock footage is available for request under the Washington Public Records Act. Despite having a year left in their two-year contract, that was the final straw for Sheriff Summer Scheyer, she announced on Nov. 12, calling the explicit expansion of access a threat to public safety.
“I’m done with this. I’m done with the potential of the problems,” Scheyer later said during a meeting at the Underwood Community Center on Dec. 4. “Kate [Bertash] has been someone who’s very, very well-versed on the subject. I had a surface-level view of it.”
A hacker, fashion designer and Executive Director of the Digital Defense Fund, originally established in 2017 to improve online security for the abortion rights movement, Bertash also researches automated license plate readers (ALPRs) like Flock’s. She’s held three meetings this year to help Skamania residents better understand the technology and evaluate whether it’s worth the tradeoffs, all of which Scheyer attended.
“Is this really how we want to live together?” Bertash asked the audience. “Is this the best use of our limited tax dollars?”
Months before the court ruling, Bertash filed her own public records request with SCSO, learning how officers used and searched for Flock data from December 2024 through June 2025. More than 4,800 law enforcement agencies have a contract with Flock nationwide, according to the private company’s website, and all the information is held on a centralized server, available to anyone paying for the service.
While SCSO accessed its data 513 times during that time period, scores of other agencies did too — and exponentially more frequently. The Houston Police Department searched Skamania’s data more than 83,000 times, and at least 14 others made over 10,000 searches, Bertash found, including those in Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Virginia and more.
In one instance, a different Texas agency tapped Skamania’s database to help locate a woman who self-administered an abortion, as reported by 404 Media.
Bertash further discovered that the majority of SCSO queries weren’t targeted. Of the 513 searches, 331 were made without a specific license plate number. When she separately analyzed missing person cases, officers didn’t include a case number 60% of the time.
Scheyer did note, however, that SCSO limited access to in-state only and reduced data retention from 30 days to seven after Bertash communicated her findings earlier this year. Scheyer also reprimanded those who conducted vague searches, implemented training for deputies and conducted two audits of the system, Scheyer said.
Beyond local law enforcement, a range of federal agencies can access Flock’s database as well. While U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Border Patrol don’t have a contract, a recent report by the University of Washington found that at least eight law enforcement agencies in the state directly shared Flock data with immigration agents in 2025.
Additionally, at least 18 were subject to “back door” searches, including those that didn’t grant the Border Patrol authorization to search their data, and despite protections embedded in Washington’s sanctuary law. SCSO was not one of the entities examined in the report.
Along with Skamania County, Oregon’s Eugene, Springfield and Woodburn have either temporarily paused or discontinued the technology, as have Olympia, Stanwood, Redmond and Lynwood in Washington.
Earlier this year, SCSO cut loose two deputies because the county’s budget was that bleak, fueled by a lapse in Secure Rural Schools payments, and Scheyer said she’s seen a record number of search and rescue requests. Stretched thin, Flock cameras were an opportunity to do more with less, but the privacy violations that could stem from the court ruling, which is being appealed, just weren’t worth it for Scheyer.
“There are many things we can’t solve. We were able to absolve suspects in a homicide because of the Flock cameras,” she said. “You may be waiting longer. We may not find your stolen vehicle … it’s the give and take.”
As stipulated in the contract, SCSO isn’t allowed to physically remove the cameras themselves, so Scheyer plans to cover each lens with black tape since there have been documented instances of the cameras still operating, even after the company said it had deactivated them, and of the company reinstalling cameras against city orders.
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