DeFlock Champlin

Champlin, Minnesota · Resident surveillance brief

Not suspected of a crime? Then why are you being tracked?

Six automated license plate readers photograph vehicles on Champlin roads. They don’t wait for a warrant, a call, or reasonable suspicion. They log first.

See the cameras

6 stationary Flock devices documented by Champlin’s 2025 state-filed audit.

ALPR capture active
Automated license plate reader scanning a vehicle A pole-mounted camera points toward a car while capture data appears beside it. MN • 7KX CAPTURE / 14:32:08 PLATE / MN ••• 7KX VEHICLE / SEDAN • BLUE LOCATION / CHAMPLIN
No opt-out · Stored for 30 days by default
Follow the record

Camera locations

Six known eyes on Champlin roads.

These markers come from current OpenStreetMap community reports and align with the six stationary devices in Champlin’s official 2025 audit. Locations are approximate—not a city-issued inventory.

Community map · checked July 19, 2026
Reported Flock ALPR
Community-reported · locations approximate

Know of another one? Crowdsourced maps are only as complete as their reports.

Open the live DeFlock map

How the system works

Not a traffic camera.
A searchable movement log.

A Flock camera captures a vehicle image and turns visible details into searchable data. A plate doesn’t need to be on a hotlist to enter the system.

Camera 05 · Winnetka Ave NLive capture simulation
PLATE MATCH

One pass can create this record

PlateMN ••• 7KX
Time2:32:08 PM
PlaceChamplin, MN
VehicleBlue · sedan
FeaturesRoof rack · decal

Flock says its cameras identify license plates and vehicle characteristics—not faces. That still makes it possible to search where a particular vehicle has been seen.

The cellphone rebuttal

No. This is not “just like having your phone on you.”

Your phone can expose an enormous amount about you. That is a real privacy problem. It is not permission for the city to build a second, government-searchable record of everybody who drives past.

The question
Your cellphone
A city ALPR network
Can you leave it behind?
Yes. You can leave it home, power it down, or change app permissions.
Not while driving past. The camera captures the vehicle whether anyone inside has a phone or not.
Who chose the device?
You did. That choice is imperfect in a phone-dependent world, but the device belongs to you.
The government did. It is pointed at a public road and records without asking.
What identifies you?
Accounts, device identifiers, apps, and carrier records—spread across private companies.
A plate designed by law to identify the vehicle and connect it to registration records.
What must police do?
For extended historical cell-site location records, the Supreme Court has generally required a warrant.
Minnesota requires logs and audits, but does not require a warrant before every ALPR search.
Who gets collected?
People using the device and services that generate location data.
Every visible plate. Suspect, witness, victim, visitor, or resident—it records first.

The honest answer: your phone is not private. But “another system already tracks you” is an argument for stronger privacy protections—not for more surveillance.

Read Carpenter v. United States
Common rebuttal
“I have nothing to hide.”
That is not a safeguard.

Privacy is not secrecy

You don’t need something to hide. You need something to go wrong.

  • Bad data can make an innocent vehicle look stolen.
  • Bad searches can turn a tool for serious crime into a tool for stalking partners or monitoring protesters.
  • Bad sharing can put local records in the hands of agencies Champlin residents never approved.
  • Changed rules can make yesterday’s harmless trip relevant to tomorrow’s government.

Public safety matters. So do verification, limits, and consequences when powerful tools fail. “Trust us” is not a guardrail.

The scale problem

The camera is local.
The reach is not.

Champlin’s six devices are only one doorway into a wider sharing network. Public Flock portals for nearby agencies—including Blaine, Anoka, Wayzata, Maple Grove, and Hennepin County—list Champlin Police among organizations that can receive their shared data.

That does not prove every Champlin search reaches every agency. It does show the system is designed to cross city lines.

Verify a nearby sharing list
ChamplinPolice
Blaine31 cameras
Anoka7 cameras
Wayzata12 cameras
Hennepin Co.4 cameras
Maple Grove1 camera

Camera counts shown are those reported on the linked agencies’ public Flock portals when checked July 2026.

The record

Misuse isn’t hypothetical.

These are documented examples from the wider Flock network. They are not allegations about Champlin officers. They show what becomes possible when ordinary driving is made searchable at national scale.

Local proof Same county Plymouth · Hennepin County

Plymouth, Minnesota · June 2026

He had nothing to hide. Four police vehicles still boxed him in.

Automotive journalist Joel Feder was driving a borrowed Range Rover with New Jersey plate 34 10 DTM. A different plate had been entered into the national stolen-vehicle database incompletely as 34 DTM. Flock matched Feder’s vehicle to that partial record.

Plymouth police tracked him through the camera network for two days, then surrounded him and his wife in a Kohl’s parking lot. Officers approached with hands on their guns, ordered them out, patted Feder down, and detained them while the error was untangled.

CBS Minnesota report Driver’s follow-up investigation

Innocence did not stop the collection, the false match, the tracking, or the takedown.

01

A nationwide search for a woman believed to have had an abortion.

A Texas sheriff’s office searched more than 83,000 cameras to find a woman described as missing after family members said she may have self-managed an abortion.

Read EFF’s documented account
02

Border Patrol searched local camera data without local permission.

University of Washington researchers found at least ten police departments were exposed to Border Patrol searches even though they had not explicitly authorized that access.

Read the university report
03

Hundreds of searches connected to protests and activist groups.

EFF analyzed ten months of Flock audit data and found more than 50 agencies ran searches connected to protest activity, sometimes naming activist groups directly.

See the audit findings
Filed public record October 22, 2025

Minnesota Security Consortium

Champlin Police Department
2025 Flock ALPR Audit

6 active stationary/flex devices and no Flock mobile units at the time of audit.

The manufacturer’s default retention was confirmed at 30 days.

The audit found the department compliant in most reviewed areas, while recommending a breach policy to conform with state law.

Open the complete five-page audit

What the city’s own audit says

Compliance is a floor. Public consent is a different question.

The audit says Champlin followed Minnesota’s current ALPR statute and documented inter-agency requests. It also confirms a system that collects first and retains by default.

“The entire Flock system has a default 30-day retention period.”

Following the law does not settle whether six suspicionless tracking points are necessary, proportionate, or acceptable to the people who live here.

Read Minnesota Statute § 13.824

A reasonable public ask

Pause. Publish. Prove.

Before Champlin renews or expands automated vehicle surveillance, residents deserve answers in public—not just settings inside a vendor dashboard.

Pause

No expansion or renewal without a public vote.

Put the contract, full cost, renewal date, and proposed camera inventory on a City Council agenda.

Publish

Show the locations, searches, hits, and sharing.

Release a current location list and monthly audit log with purposes, outside agencies, policy violations, and outcomes.

Prove

Measure public-safety value against public cost.

Report cases materially advanced by the cameras—not raw “hits”—and compare that value with false alerts and privacy impact.

Send a clear message

Ask Champlin’s mayor and council for a public hearing.

We wrote a concise, source-based note you can copy, personalize, and send through the city’s official contact channels.

Find your council member

Read it yourself

Primary records & evidence

No anonymous screenshots. No made-up counts. Start with the public record and follow every claim to its source.

  1. Local audit Champlin Police Department 2025 Flock ALPR Audit ↗
  2. State law Minnesota Statute § 13.824 — Automated License Plate Readers ↗
  3. Local failure CBS Minnesota — Flock cameras wrongly flag plate in Plymouth ↗
  4. First-person record The Drive — How the Plymouth stop happened ↗
  5. Phone location law U.S. Supreme Court — Carpenter v. United States ↗
  6. Live map data DeFlock / OpenStreetMap community ALPR map ↗
  7. Federal access University of Washington Center for Human Rights report ↗
  8. Network misuse Electronic Frontier Foundation audit analysis ↗
  9. Official portal Champlin MN PD Flock Transparency Portal ↗

Minnesota Data Practices Act

Request the receipts.

Public records can answer what a vendor portal cannot. Copy this request and send it to the City of Champlin.

Subject: Public data request — automated license plate reader records

Under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act, I request electronic copies of the following records concerning Champlin Police Department automated license plate readers from January 1, 2025 to the present:

1. The current location and direction of every fixed or mobile ALPR device;
2. The current Flock contract, amendments, invoices, and renewal date;
3. Monthly public logs required by Minn. Stat. § 13.824, subd. 5;
4. The current list of agencies with direct or network access to Champlin ALPR data;
5. Audit logs showing outside-agency searches of Champlin data, with legally required redactions;
6. Current ALPR, data-sharing, breach-notification, and discipline policies.

I prefer the records in their existing electronic format. If any portion is withheld, please identify the specific statutory basis for withholding it.

Open city contact page ↗
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