Dane County will no longer fund a controversial automatic license plate reader system.
The Dane County Board of Supervisors approved 2025 RES-403 on Thursday, which amends the 2026 county budget to remove $80,000 in funding for the Dane County Sheriff’s Office use of the Flock automatic license plate reader system, prohibiting further expenditures on the system.
“There are well-documented concerns about how this company operates and uses its technology to violate people’s 4th Amendment rights,” County Board Chair Patrick Miles said in a statement. “The board’s action supports protecting our community from a proven bad actor.
“We have full confidence in our sheriff and deputies, and we are open to considering other companies that have stronger safeguards in place. At a time when Flock, some of its law enforcement partners and federal immigration enforcement agencies have been found to collect and misuse personal information for tracking and surveillance in ways that violate constitutional rights, the board has a responsibility to act.”
The resolution cites concerns raised by residents, policymakers and privacy experts about reported and verified abuses of data collected through Flock’s network. Some of those abuses include informal data sharing with federal agencies.
The Dane County Sheriff’s Office granted access to information gathered by the office’s 24 Flock cameras to more than 140 law enforcement agencies.
“Nothing about this action suggests that our deputies have misused this system,” Supervisor Chad Kemp, District 32, author of the resolution, said in a statement. “But the sheriff’s office has not been able to affirmatively confirm that the agencies it shares data with, or Flock itself, are not misusing the information collected by cameras in Dane County.
“Given what we know about how this technology has been abused elsewhere, the responsible course of action is to end funding for this contract.”
The 2026 county budget included $80,000 for an annual Flock subscription for the sheriff’s office. The current subscription runs through May 31.
