Every grade, sourced.

STATE BASELINE · CITY OVERRIDE · LIVE SIGNALS

Flocklight grades a city's ALPR transparency posture — not the size of its surveillance footprint. Two cities with identical camera counts can land at A and F depending on whether their use is regulated, retained, disclosed, audited, and published.

SECTION 01

What the grade measures

The score is composed across five axes. Each axis is sourced to a published statute, ordinance, audit, or official portal. No axis is inferred.

POLICY

Statute, ordinance, or standing order governing ALPR use.

RETENTION

Statutory cap on how long plate-read data is kept.

SHARING

Disclosure regime for downstream agencies and vendors.

OVERSIGHT

Audits, council review, IG or AG authority.

PORTAL

Public-facing usage policy, vendor list, transparency portal.

SECTION 02

How a city score is built

Three layers merge into the final score, in this order:

STATE BASELINE

Published-law posture for the state. Every entry cites a real source — a statute, AG directive, appellate ruling, or the documented absence of an ALPR-specific framework.

CITY OVERRIDE

Signed per-axis delta applied where a city's own ordinance materially diverges from its state baseline (SF Admin Code Ch. 19B, Seattle SMC 14.18, Boston §16-63, NYC POST Act, Oakland OMC 9.64, and others). Capped so a single override can't flatter or punish a city out of proportion.

LIVE SIGNALS

Field-verified signals: confirmed retention windows, published audits, disclosed downstream agencies. When present they weigh 55% / baseline 45%. When absent, the baseline stands alone — we never fabricate.

SECTION 03

Grade bands

Academic convention, so the score maps cleanly to the universal A–F mental model:

90–100

80–89

70–79

60–69

0–59

We never widen the bands to flatter a city. If the posture grades to an F under the academic convention, that's the honest framing.

SECTION 04

Default-low for unregulated states

States with no ALPR-specific statute receive a default-low baseline (composite ≈ 35) rather than a fabricated low. Unregulated does not mean opaque — it means we don't have a state-level signal. Under academic bands the default-low still grades F on its own; live city-level signals are what move a city above it.

SECTION 05

What we never do

— Fabricate a number. Every input traces to a public source.
— Punish a city for being in a state that hasn't legislated.
— Send your location, plate text, or device identity to the scoring backend.

SECTION 06

Challenge a grade

If a city has a policy we missed, send the statute, ordinance, or resolution number to support@flocklight.io. We update the override table as new sources land.