The Dealmakers of Our Data

“Portland is extra special to Flock.” 

“It sounds like now is the right moment to bring life-saving technology to Portland PD.” 

“You and the other folks in Portland are ‘special children,’ and we are motivated to get you some wins and bring this life-saving technology to your jurisdiction. Thus, I am not much concerned about limiting the timeframe of your full nationwide access.” 

These are just some of the email messages Flock Safety sent to the Portland Police Bureau between July and October 2025. Flock was hoping to gain a new customer in the bureau — Oregon’s largest law enforcement agency — and their sales pitch was unrelenting. 

Flock Safety was founded in 2017 in Atlanta, Georgia, with a mission to “eliminate crime.” One of their biggest sellers is automatic license plate readers (ALPRs): AI-powered, high-speed cameras that automatically capture the license plate, make, and model of cars driving past them. Other products include gunfire locator systems and drones. Flock sells these tools to law enforcement agencies and private companies. Of their 12,000 customers across the country, over 5,000 are law enforcement agencies. 

In Oregon alone, Flock has 37 customers. The Portland Police Bureau was the next target on their list. 

Through a public records request to the Portland Police Bureau, Feet in 2 Worlds obtained email correspondence showing a history of sales communications from Flock Safety in 2025. These sales pitches pinged into the bureau’s inbox as Portland was going through a particularly tumultuous time. 

The city made national news for ongoing protests against Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) actions in its South Waterfront neighborhood. In September, President Trump threatened to deploy the National Guard to Portland as federal agents used tear gas, pepper spray, and chemical munitions against protesters — including children and the elderly. 

These emails suggest that Flock tried to capitalize on ongoing political tensions and seize an opportunity to gain a customer. The Flock sales manager explained that Flock typically offers new customers access to information about drivers in states across the country for 90 days. But to sweeten the deal and secure a new client, Flock was willing to offer the Portland Police Bureau unlimited, nationwide access to its network of data — while referring to people in the bureau and Portland as “special children.” And that access would come at no additional cost to the police bureau. 

In a deal like this, the public’s data becomes a bargaining chip between tech companies and government agencies. 

If that added offer was enough to get Portland’s police to sign the contract, Flock would not just gain another customer — but also access to Portlanders’ information, such as how residents were moving around the city. With that new data added to its network, Flock’s product would become even more enticing to future prospective customers. 

In a deal like this, the public’s data becomes a bargaining chip between tech companies and government agencies. 

“That’s also part of what makes the exchange easy because the cost isn’t to [the bureau] — it’s to somebody else,” says Emerald Tse, an associate at the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law. 

In an email to Feet in 2 Worlds, a Flock Safety representative stated, “Flock doesn’t own or share access to customer data at all. Customers control their data, and only they can decide to share their data with other law enforcement agencies.” 

“We support the legal use of Flock technology to stop crime in our communities, and have actively worked with democratically-elected governing bodies to hold the rare instances of users who abuse the tools responsible,” the representative added. 

Ultimately, the bureau went with another vendor called LiveView Technologies, with whom it already had an existing relationship. 

Whether your local law enforcement agency chooses to do business with Flock or LiveView Technologies, companies like these operate under a business model in which your data is the product — one that rakes in tens of millions of dollars annually. 

Private companies and government agencies have nothing to lose from sharing this data — and millions in revenue to gain. Companies ingratiate themselves with city departments, state governments, and federal agencies, hoping to sell a product and grow their profit margins.

Meanwhile, employees at the local, state, and federal levels of government benefit by having convenient access to a wide network of data. Investigators who would normally request a judicial warrant and follow bureaucratic procedures to obtain information can now opt for easier, informal channels such as email requests to their colleagues. 

Helping your fellow investigators find someone they suspect of wrongdoing means they may help you when you need it. These quid pro quo data-sharing relationships occur at every level of law enforcement. They foster a culture of “share data now and ask questions later.” The fast-tracking of information requests can lead to mistakes and the circumventing of due process. 

Flock Safety, the company that courted the Portland Police Bureau in 2025, has recently been at the center of a controversy over data sharing. Journalists, advocates, and academics have revealed Flock’s assistance in ICE’s deportation efforts across the country. Others have revealed Flock’s tracking of protesters and activists. 

When Feet in 2 Worlds reached out to Flock for comment, the same Flock Safety representative said the company has no ties to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) or any DHS sub-agency. 

An Industry Worth Billions

Even when faced with public scrutiny, business at Flock was still booming.

In 2025, Flock said it surpassed $300 million in annual recurring revenue, a 70% year-over-year increase. In March 2025, Flock announced that it secured $275 million from investors, raising its total funding to over $950 million, according to PitchBook data. The financing was led by Andreessen Horowitz, a controversial venture capital firm whose co-founder, Marc Andreessen, has close ties to President Donald Trump. 

But Flock is far from the sole profiteer of the public’s data.

Data brokers such as LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters earned over $250 billion in 2022, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Data brokers are private companies that aggregate and sell Americans’ personal information. That information can include phone records, vehicle registrations, utility bills and address information, and ALPR data.

Through what’s known as the data broker loophole, agencies such as ICE harness this information and bypass sanctuary protections in cities like Portland — powering numerous traffic stops and arrests around the metro area in the past year. In U.S. immigration enforcement, federal agencies boast a long history of gathering data of vulnerable populations. Over the course of 13 years, ICE spent $97 million on data brokers. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a contract with LexisNexis worth over $20 million for access to an investigative database that ICE says is “pivotal” to its operations. DHS also has an open contract with Thomson Reuters worth $22.8 million.

“There are big incentives to find ways around sensible restrictions,” says Spencer Reynolds, senior counsel at the NAACP, a civil rights organization. “It’s a system of workarounds. Those workarounds need to be closed. And it’s very difficult because there’s a lot of money behind it.”

The lack of guardrails and government oversight allows this billion-dollar industry to flourish.

An Unexpected Profiteer

A public records request Feet in 2 Worlds submitted to the Portland Bureau of Transportation confirms that as of December 2025, Oregon Driver and Motor Vehicle Services has an active contract with LexisNexis — meaning the data of drivers in Oregon is accessible to LexisNexis’s subscribers. 

In a sprawling and lucrative data economy, law enforcement is not the only government agency to participate. Federal agencies including ICE routinely buy different states’ DMV information through data brokers. Nationwide, DMVs sell drivers’ personal information to private companies like LexisNexis, which then sell it to ICE — generating millions of dollars in profit. 

LexisNexis did not respond to a request for comment.

In the first part of our series Surveilled and Sold, Feet in 2 Worlds uncovered the existence of active contracts between Portland police and private data brokers, which undermines the city’s sanctuary policies.

By selling DMV data, California earned roughly $50 million in just one year. Illinois collected $45 million in 2022. And Washington state’s Department of Licensing — where researchers verified that driver information was directly linked to ICE arrests in 2025 — earned over $26 million in 2017. 

A spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Transportation told Feet in 2 Worlds that part of the revenue it collects from sharing driver data goes towards the State Highway Fund, while the rest goes to covering the costs of providing electronic records and operating the state web portal. 

In other states, it remains unclear to academics and researchers exactly where the money goes within these departments.

“I have not really seen much of an explanation for why they do that or what they do with the revenue,” says Emerald Tse, from the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law.

The data sold by DMVs varies from state to state; generally, it can include a person’s name, address, ZIP code, date of birth, phone number, and email address. It’s completely legal to do so under federal and state laws. Both the Drivers Privacy Protection Act and Oregon state codes authorize the sale and sharing of driver information with government agencies and any “person who is in the business of disseminating such information.” 

While these agencies rake in millions, undocumented drivers are tracked down and arrested en masse. 

“For any of us, it’s alarming to know whether or not we are immigrants, that when we furnish our name, our date of birth, our home address, our photos of our faces to a government entity for the purpose of obtaining a benefit that is as crucial to daily life as driving on streets, that information is being funneled systematically all over the country to private data brokers that sell it to law enforcement agencies and private parties that could exploit it to harm us,” says Laura Rivera, Senior Staff Attorney for Just Futures Law.

Friendly Favors Over Professional Procedure

In 2016, a DHS employee asked a favor of a detective at a fusion center, an intelligence hub that aggregates information among state, local, and federal agencies into large databases. 

“I am sorry but would you please run the following plates for me,” the DHS employee wrote. 

Within the hour, the fusion center detective replied, “Why sorry? No need to be. We all have work to do. I am here for ya. :)”

In 2018, a Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent wrote to a different fusion center employee, asking them to search for a license plate. 

“Hate to ask but… would you mind running 2 more [plates]?” wrote the HSI agent.

“Come on, you don’t really hate to ask… :)” replied the fusion center employee, including an attachment in their response.

In 2019, a Colorado DMV employee emailed an ICE agent, asking for a photo of an individual.

The ICE agent pinged back the same day with the photo, adding the words: “Good hunting!” 

Without context, these messages may read like casual text messages between friends. But these are official emails between government employees — casually discussing and sharing people’s private information for any number of investigative and enforcement purposes. 

Exchanges of private data can strengthen relationships between law enforcement agencies — circumventing formal procedure. Employees of different federal and local law enforcement agencies may share sensitive information with each other without much hesitation or formality — seeing these instances as a favor to a colleague, or a way to make each other’s jobs easier. This cultivates “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitudes among those involved, helping each other cut through due process and formal investigative pathways quickly with little outside scrutiny. 

A Spotlight on Portlanders’ Data

Correspondence about private data is happening in Oregon, too — despite state and local laws prohibiting local law enforcement from assisting with immigration enforcement. Feet in 2 Worlds submitted a public records request to the Portland Police Bureau for email correspondence among federal immigration agents, research analysts at intelligence-sharing hubs, and Portland Police Bureau officers. The records show evidence of collaboration and data sharing — raising questions about violations of city and state sanctuary laws.

Although most of the records received were heavily redacted, their very existence — along with unredacted subject fields, recipients, and attachments — suggest existing working relationships between federal agencies and local law enforcement. 

In July 2025, for instance, a Special Agent for Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) sent an email with the subject, “HSI Request for Assistance,” to an investigative analyst at the Portland Police Bureau. The analyst replied within the hour. The body of the email is redacted; however, records show back-and-forth correspondence before the request was forwarded to a research analyst at the Oregon Watch Center, a fusion center. 

Created by Congress in 2004 in response to the September 11th attacks, fusion centers today operate with very little oversight. They are heavily criticized by privacy advocates for targeting marginalized groups such as racial minorities, abortion seekers, and immigrants under the guise of counterterrorism and public safety. 

The July 2025 email between the HSI agent and a Portland Police officer is an example of prohibited collaboration occurring in a sanctuary city and state, supercharged by the networks of personnel and investigative tools that a fusion center analyst would have access to. 

In another email, a different HSI agent sent a spreadsheet titled, “New List HSI Portland Plates,” to a Portland Police criminal analyst and an HSI colleague. Over a week later, records show correspondence regarding the list between a Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agent and the criminal analyst. 

Although the contents of these messages have been redacted, the investigative purpose of the shared spreadsheet is most likely immigration-related, as HSI is the primary investigative division within ICE. The very existence of a back-and-forth conversation between a Portland police officer and an ICE agent about license plates that HSI is interested in raises questions about the Portland Police Bureau’s compliance with state sanctuary law. 

In an email to Feet in 2 Worlds, a spokesperson for the Portland Police Bureau wrote, “The Portland Police Bureau does not engage in immigration enforcement. PPB follows and enforces Oregon law and City Ordinances. In addition, as the Chief has stated publicly on numerous occasions, PPB does communicate and coordinate with federal law enforcement partners when it comes to criminal investigations. This type of collaboration is focused on public safety and is distinct from immigration enforcement.”

The entire criminal justice system is supposed to be a friction point. Policing is not supposed to be easy.

Brian Hofer

All of these investigative practices — from data broker contracts to a friendly colleague down the hall — may increase efficiency for law enforcement agencies. Searches on a commercial investigative database yield results within seconds; investigators return each other’s emails within the hour. But experts argue that while these tools make jobs easier, someone pays the price. 

“The entire criminal justice system is supposed to be a friction point,” says Brian Hofer, the executive director of Secure Justice, a digital privacy advocacy organization. “Policing is not supposed to be easy,” he adds.

Still, efficiency for investigators and profits for private companies are prioritized. 

“The efficiency argument always seems to come up with a new technology as a way to sell the product without exactly having that question of, ‘What are we losing when we gain efficiency?’” says Tse. 

Without overarching federal protection of our data, surveillance technology and the data brokerage industry continue to outpace piecemeal state-by-state legislation trying to cover the gap.

Basic constitutional guardrails like obtaining judicial warrants are a way to prevent wrongful accusations from upending someone’s life.

And without overarching federal protection of our data, surveillance technology and the data brokerage industry continue to outpace piecemeal state-by-state legislation trying to cover the gap.

Mass deportation goes hand in hand with mass surveillance. While President Donald Trump’s second administration is targeting immigrants as criminals first, its definition of a criminal can change. Immigrants may be among the first to be targeted by private surveillance; they will likely not be the last.

“With surveillance technologies, it comes at the cost of people,” says Tse.

This investigation was supported in part by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Feet in 2 Worlds is supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, The Ford Foundation, the Fernandez Pave the Way Foundation, the Elizabeth Bond Davis Foundation, an anonymous donor, and contributors to our annual NewsMatch campaign.