Overview

Many California homeowners who discover an automated license plate reader (“ALPR”) at their community entrance assume that the cameras exist to catch package thieves and car burglars. What many homeowners don’t know is that the Flock cameras their HOAs installed feed a national database, and that the news stories they’ve been reading about law enforcement searching Flock data describe the same network their own HOA entrances feed. [Flock Safety is an Atlanta-based company whose automated license plate reader technology has become so widespread in residential communities that homeowners now use “Flock camera” and “ALPR camera” interchangeably, and this Fact Sheet does the same.]

Flock cameras installed by HOAs don’t operate as closed neighborhood systems. They can connect to a national network that subscribing police agencies search, which means plate reads captured at a private community entrance become available to law enforcement agencies that have no relationship with the community and no reason to know it exists. Investigative reporting has documented thousands of searches run by local police on behalf of federal immigration authorities, with “ICE” and “immigration” written into the audit logs, and more than 30 cities have canceled their Flock contracts as those disclosures surfaced.

Many California homeowners assume that the law shields them. It doesn’t. The Davis-Stirling Act says nothing about ALPR cameras, and California’s Flock statutes draw a sharp line that lands in exactly the wrong place for homeowners. Civil Code 1798.90.55 bars public agencies from selling, sharing, or transferring plate data outside of government, so a city faces a hard ceiling on what it can do with the data its cameras collect. That prohibition, however, doesn’t reach HOAs at all. The only thing governing an HOA’s sharing decisions is the written policy the HOA board drafts for the HOA.

That gap guts homeowner privacy in California HOAs. The police department across town operates under a statutory sharing ban, while the HOA down the street can hand the same category of data to whoever its own policy permits, including a national network its members never agreed to join.

In this Fact Sheet, I explain why the sharing restrictions in California’s Flock statutes skip over HOAs entirely, what the Flock statutes still require of HOAs that share plate data, how the national network turns a neighborhood camera into a law enforcement tool, why HOAs that write no sharing limits into their own policies can share the data with anyone, and where California’s constitutional right to privacy picks up what the Flock statutes leave out.

Key Points

The Davis-Stirling Act gives homeowners nothing to work with here, and unfortunately, California’s Flock statutes hand HOAs a pervasive freedom that the law denies to law enforcement. Homeowners who want a say in whether their plate data is shared with outside agencies, including law enforcement, have no choice but to  work with what the Flock statutes do impose on HOAs. The points below explain who the sharing ban covers, how HOA cameras end up feeding a national law enforcement network, and where the Flock statutes stop protecting homeowners altogether.

• HOAs that install Flock cameras become ALPR operators, and the ALPR statutes apply to them the same way they apply to any other private operators. Civil Code 1798.90.5 defines a covered person to include associations, corporations, and other legal entities, which captures HOAs regardless of how they organized themselves. Civil Code 1798.90.51 then imposes the operator duties, including reasonable security safeguards and a written usage and privacy policy available to the public. HOAs that also search the database they run take on the separate end-user duties in Civil Code 1798.90.53. [For the full picture of what those duties require, read my Fact Sheet, “Can My California HOA Track My License Plate With Flock Cameras?”]
• The ban on sharing Flock data found in Civil Code 1798.90.55 only applies to public agencies. The statute prohibits public agencies from selling, sharing, or transferring ALPR information except to another public agency, and only as the law otherwise permits. Civil Code 1798.90.5 defines public agency as the state, cities, counties, and their agencies and political subdivisions, including law enforcement agencies. HOAs appear nowhere in that definition. So the sharing restriction that governs every police department in California stops at the entrance of every HOA in California.
  • The requirement that public agencies must take public comment before switching an ALPR system doesn’t apply to HOAs. Just as Civil Code 1798.90.55 says nothing about HOAs selling, sharing, or transferring homeowner license plate data to third parties, that same statute’s requirement that public agencies seek public comment before adopting Flock systems doesn’t apply to HOAs. This is why most HOA members in California learn about their HOA’s Flock cameras after installation rather than before. [I recognize that the adoption of Flock cameras in HOAs is a decision that needs to be made in an open meeting, but my comment here is a reflection of what I see practically on a day-to-day basis, as most people don’t attend board meetings or regularly read the minutes.]
• The national Flock-data network turns a neighborhood camera into a law enforcement tool. Flock cameras don’t operate as closed community systems because the platform connects customer cameras into a searchable national network that subscribing police agencies query. HOAs that opt into network sharing (either consciously or not) put every plate read at their entrances in front of law enforcement agencies with no connection to the HOA. Investigative reporting documented roughly 4,000 searches run by local police on behalf of federal immigration authorities, with officers entering “ICE” and “immigration” as the stated reason in the audit logs, and more than 30 cities canceled their Flock contracts as those disclosures surfaced. Santa Cruz discovered its plate data had reached the national network without the city knowing, and it canceled its contract.
• The HOA’s own written policy becomes the ceiling on what it can do with the data. Civil Code 1798.90.51 requires the usage and privacy policy to describe the purposes of, the process for, and the restrictions on the sale, sharing, or transfer of ALPR information to other persons. Civil Code 1798.90.52 then requires HOAs to limit use of the data to the authorized purposes their policies identify, and to keep a running access log capturing the date and time of each search, the plate or query used, the identity of the person who ran it, and the purpose. The issue with that, however, is that HOAs that write no meaningful sharing limits into their own policies are perfectly free to share plate data to law enforcement, to a national network, or to anyone else they choose, with no vote, no disclosure, and no input from the homeowners whose vehicles the cameras recorded.
  • HOAs that never adopted the required policies are a big problem. Civil Code 1798.90.51 requires HOAs to establish written Flock policies. But some HOAs that are using Flock cameras have no such policies in place. The problem has even been litigated, with a California appellate court having held earlier this year that an operator’s failure to adopt and publish a compliant policy is itself the harm the statutes exist to prevent. This means that, with all of the weaknesses in the Flock statutes when it comes to HOA members, at least homeowners can sue over the missing policy without proving a breach, a misused search, or a dollar of financial loss.
• Where the Flock statutes might leave homeowners exposed, California’s constitutional right to privacy partially fills the gap. Article I, Section 1 of the California Constitution protects the right to privacy, and California courts have turned away privacy claims built on plate collection at one location that a person can choose to avoid. But when it comes to Flock cameras within their own communities, that’s not the case. Homeowners can’t avoid their own entrance, and HOAs that push those reads into a national database searchable by hundreds of outside agencies produce the aggregated, wide-area surveillance record that those decisions treated as a different problem entirely. [Although not related to the use of Flock cameras, I cover the constitutional privacy analysis connected with HOAs’ use of surveillance cameras in more depth in my Fact Sheet, “Can a California HOA Install Security Cameras in the Common Areas?”]
• If your HOA is sharing your license plate data with police or a national network, call the HOA attorneys at MBK Chapman. The HOA attorneys at MBK Chapman are among the most respected and feared homeowner-side HOA lawyers in California precisely because we have deep expertise in ensuring that the rights of homeowners are protected. This includes representing homeowners whose HOAs have violated California’s Flock camera laws, or are otherwise violating their privacy rights by sharing homeowners’ ALPR data with outside parties without permission. Whether your HOA opted into a national network without telling its members, operates Flock cameras with no policy at all, or maintains a policy so broad that it authorizes sharing with anyone who asks, homeowners deserve straight answers about who holds their plate data and who can search it.

California drew its ALPR sharing line around public agencies and left every HOA in the state on the other side of it. Homeowners get one real lever, which is the written policy their HOAs owe the public and the duty to use the data only for the purposes that policy names. Unfortunately, it’s the HOAs who write those policies, so that often doesn’t help much. HOAs that share plate data outside those terms, however, can be held liable to homeowners, and that’s why homeowners need to understand their rights and the limits of California’s Flock camera laws.

FAQs

About Michael Kushner

Michael Kushner is a California attorney with over 30 years of experience representing homeowners in disputes with their HOAs. He is widely regarded as California’s leading homeowner-side HOA attorney, and has built one of the state’s most prominent law practices dedicated to holding HOAs accountable under the Davis-Stirling Act and California law.

In addition to his law firm’s work, Michael is a recognized lecturer, author, and the host of the hit HOA HELL podcast, where he provides homeowners living in HOA-governed communities with clear, practical strategies for dealing with bad HOAs. He’s also the author of the best-selling book, HOA HELL | California Homeowners’ Definitive Guide to Beating Bad HOAs, which has become a go-to resource for both homeowners seeking real-world solutions to their HOA disputes, as well as those good HOA board members who are interested in doing a good job.

About MBK Chapman Fact Sheets

Homeowners searching for answers online will often come across articles that appear authoritative, but are actually written as search-engine marketing content rather than by an experienced HOA lawyer. These pieces tend to prioritize keyword density over clarity, accuracy, or legal context, which often leaves homeowners more confused than informed.

At MBK Chapman, our Fact Sheets are part of our HOA Law Library and are written by Michael Kushner, an HOA lawyer with decades of hands-on experience representing California homeowners. In fact, Michael Kushner is the HOA lawyer who pioneered the systems and strategies used by some of California’s most successful homeowner-side HOA law firms.

Each Fact Sheet is deliberately concise, statute-based, and designed as a quick-reference guide to help homeowners understand key HOA laws and enforcement rules at a glance.

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