Waterloo Region’s new police cameras are not Flock cameras—but privacy questions remain

WATERLOO REGION — July 17, 2026 — A growing network of police cameras in Waterloo Region has been described online as “Flock cameras,” raising questions about vehicle tracking, facial recognition and whether collected data is ever truly deleted.

The cameras perform some of the same functions commonly associated with Flock Safety’s surveillance network in the United States. They record public spaces, automatically read licence plates and create searchable records of where vehicles were observed.

But procurement records show that Waterloo Regional Police Service, or WRPS, did not buy Flock Safety cameras.

The service tendered for Verkada cameras and accessories, awarding a contract to Toronto-based systems integrator Telanet Canada. The initial contract was worth approximately $185,000 including the net HST cost reported to the police board.

Calling them “Flock cameras” is therefore technically incorrect. Flock Safety and Verkada are separate American technology companies with different platforms, contracts and data-sharing arrangements.

The more accurate description is a WRPS closed-circuit television and automated licence-plate recognition system using Verkada equipment.

That distinction matters. Concerns arising from Flock’s American data-sharing network cannot automatically be attributed to Waterloo Region’s system. At the same time, the local cameras create many of the same fundamental privacy questions because they can record people and establish when a particular vehicle passed a particular location.

Where the cameras are operating

WRPS initially planned to install 52 cameras at 10 locations during the first phase of a longer-term program.

Its current public list shows fixed-camera systems operating at four locations in Cambridge, two in North Dumfries and four in Waterloo:

Cambridge

• Hespeler Road and Bishop Street North
• Franklin Boulevard and Avenue Road
• Ainslie Street North at Simcoe Street
• Christopher Drive at Champlain Boulevard

North Dumfries

• Cedar Creek Road at Northumberland Street
• Cedar Creek Road at Dumfries Road

Waterloo

• King Street North at Conestogo Road
• University Avenue West at King Street North
• Bridgeport Road East and Regina Street North
• Erb Street East and Peppler Street

Installation in Kitchener is expected to follow. Wilmot council postponed a decision on participating in the program.

The cameras are placed in public areas such as intersections, entry routes and high-traffic locations. WRPS says locations are selected using crime reports, calls for service and other public-safety data.

Signs are supposed to notify the public when they enter a camera area.

What the cameras collect

The system has two related but distinct functions.

The CCTV component records continuous video of public areas. It does not record audio, according to WRPS.

The automated licence-plate recognition component, commonly shortened to ALPR, uses software to locate and read licence plates in the camera image. A plate capture can include:

• The characters on the licence plate.
• The date and time it was observed.
• The camera location.
• An image of the plate or vehicle.
• Associated video showing the vehicle passing the camera.

The technology compares plate numbers with police lists containing stolen, suspended or wanted vehicles and vehicles connected with active investigations. It can alert police when a listed plate is detected.

Verkada’s documentation also says its platform permits authorized users to search historical plate sightings. Selecting a plate can reveal its recent appearances across cameras within the customer’s system.

That means the system is not limited to watching for stolen vehicles in real time. Within the available retention period, an authorized investigator can potentially search backward to determine whether and when a vehicle passed multiple police cameras.

A licence plate does not identify the driver by itself. Police can, however, query government and police databases to obtain information about the registered owner. WRPS says officers must confirm the information and the driver’s identity before taking enforcement action based on an alert.

What police do with the footage

WRPS says the cameras are primarily an investigative tool rather than a system watched continuously by officers.

After a reported crime or serious incident, an authorized officer can search recordings from nearby cameras for evidence. Police might use the system to find a suspect vehicle, reconstruct its route, identify witnesses or determine what occurred before or after an incident.

Access to live footage is also possible, but WRPS says it is restricted to major or unfolding events where real-time information is needed for public or officer safety.

The service says access requires a legitimate law-enforcement purpose and is limited to authorized members. System activity is subject to audit logging, meaning the platform should record who accessed it and what actions were taken.

Police have not published the full operational procedure describing every permissible search, supervisory approval requirement or audit process. The service says those matters are governed by Police Service Board policy and a procedure issued by the chief.

Is the footage actually deleted?

The most accurate answer is: unused footage is scheduled for automatic deletion after approximately 30 days, but footage used by police is not necessarily deleted at that point.

WRPS says recordings that are not required for a law-enforcement purpose are automatically erased after about 30 days. The licence-plate data and corresponding video should have the same general retention window because Verkada states that captured plate characters remain available for the retention period of the camera that recorded them.

There are important exceptions.

If police access footage for an investigation, export it, preserve it as evidence or otherwise use it for a law-enforcement purpose, it can be retained beyond 30 days. A relevant clip may be transferred into the police digital-evidence system and kept according to investigative and evidence-retention schedules.

Those schedules can extend well beyond the conclusion of the initial 30-day period, depending on the type of investigation, court proceedings, appeals and legal disclosure requirements.

Ontario privacy law also generally requires a public institution to retain personal information it has used for at least one year. The rule gives the person concerned a reasonable opportunity to seek access to the information. Surveillance footage that nobody reviews is not normally considered “used,” allowing it to be erased on a shorter schedule.

As a result, the 30-day statement should not be understood to mean every copy of every recording disappears after 30 days. It applies to routine footage that has not been preserved or used.

Can the deletion claim be independently confirmed?

The public information establishes the policy, not independent proof of every deletion.

WRPS says deletion is automatic, the system records access activity, and it completed a Privacy Impact Assessment after consulting Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner.

The Privacy Impact Assessment has not been posted with the public information reviewed for this article. Neither has WRPS published deletion logs, audit results, the number of searches conducted or the number of clips retained beyond 30 days.

Without those records, members of the public cannot independently verify how consistently the deletion rule operates.

Greater transparency could include annual reporting on:

• The number of licence plates scanned.
• The number of alerts generated.
• The number of historical searches.
• The number of users authorized to access the system.
• The number of recordings preserved past 30 days.
• Access violations or disciplinary incidents.
• Sharing with other police or government agencies.
• Audits confirming that scheduled deletion occurred.

Where is the data stored?

WRPS says camera data is encrypted, uploaded automatically and stored on servers in Canada. Access is restricted to authorized police personnel.

The service also says municipal partners and the equipment vendor do not have access to footage.

That is a stronger restriction than the broad inter-agency data-sharing model associated with Flock Safety in parts of the United States. Nothing in the public WRPS material reviewed for this article indicates that Waterloo’s plate records are placed into Flock’s American network.

However, the public-facing information does not fully describe every technical administrator, subcontractor, backup process or circumstance in which data could be disclosed through a warrant, court order or another lawful request.

The cameras are also capable of connecting with cloud-based evidence systems. Verkada advertises integrations that allow recordings to be exported to Axon Evidence.com, while WRPS uses an Axon-operated Canadian digital-evidence platform. Once a recording is exported as evidence, the original camera’s 30-day deletion schedule no longer determines how long that evidentiary copy remains available.

Does the system use AI?

Yes, in the broad technical sense.

Automatically locating a licence plate in an image and converting its characters into searchable text requires computer-vision and machine-learning technology. The system also uses automated detection to generate alerts and index video.

Calling that “AI” is accurate, but it does not mean the system is identifying every person by name.

The relevant question is what kind of analysis WRPS has enabled.

Does it track people’s faces?

WRPS says facial recognition is not used as part of the CCTV and ALPR program.

That means police say the cameras are not comparing faces captured on the street against a database of named people to identify them.

The underlying Verkada platform is technically capable of more. Verkada offers optional “People Analytics” features that can detect faces and filter recorded people using characteristics such as clothing colour, apparent sex and whether they carry a backpack. Its documentation says more advanced face-search functions must be enabled by the customer.

Verkada also says its people and vehicle analytics are disabled on a camera operating specifically in licence-plate recognition mode. Other context or panoramic cameras in the same installation can still record people.

The fact that a vendor offers facial or people analytics does not establish that WRPS has activated those functions. The police statement is explicit that facial recognition is not part of this program.

WRPS does, however, use a separate video-analysis product called BriefCam for a small number of investigations. Police say an investigator can select an object or person in lawfully obtained video and have the software find other appearances within that footage.

WRPS describes this as object recognition rather than the controversial form of facial recognition that matches a person against a database of known identities. In practical terms, it can still help police follow the movements of a selected, visually similar person through recorded video.

That creates an important distinction:

• Identity-based facial recognition: comparing a face against a named database to establish who someone is. WRPS says the new camera program does not do this.
• Appearance-based video search: finding other instances of the same-looking person, vehicle, licence plate or item within video already obtained for an investigation. WRPS has acknowledged using BriefCam for this purpose.

Police reported creating eight BriefCam cases in 2025, down from 35 when the software was introduced in 2022. The published figures do not say how many involved a person rather than a vehicle or other object.

The central privacy issue is movement, not necessarily faces

Even without facial recognition, an ALPR network can reveal sensitive information.

A plate sighting establishes that a vehicle was near a particular place at a particular time. One record may say little. Multiple observations can reveal patterns: where someone regularly travels, when they leave home, whether they attended a protest, visited a medical clinic or met another person.

Most vehicles recorded by the system will not be connected with a crime. Nevertheless, their plates and movements enter the system temporarily because ALPR cameras scan passing traffic rather than only vehicles already under suspicion.

That is why Ontario’s Information and Privacy Commissioner recommends strict necessity, limited retention, access controls, audit logs and public notice when police deploy ALPR systems.

WRPS says it completed a privacy assessment and built those safeguards into the program. Whether the public considers them sufficient may depend on information that has not yet been released—particularly search statistics, audit results, the detailed retention procedure and any agreements governing disclosure to other agencies.

What can be concluded

The cameras appearing around Waterloo Region are not Flock Safety cameras. They are Verkada CCTV and licence-plate recognition cameras supplied through Telanet Canada.

They continuously record public areas and automatically turn licence plates into searchable data. Police say routine footage and associated plate data are automatically deleted after approximately 30 days.

Recordings used or preserved for an investigation can be retained much longer and may be copied into a separate evidence system. The 30-day deletion period therefore does not apply to every copy of footage police decide is relevant.

The system does use automated, AI-based image processing to read plates. WRPS says it does not use facial recognition in this camera program. The equipment is technically capable of people and face analytics, while a separate police tool can search investigative footage for repeated appearances of a selected person or object.

The remaining gap is not what the cameras are capable of—it is how their use will be audited and reported. Public statistics on searches, retained clips, inter-agency disclosures and confirmed deletion would allow residents to judge whether the safeguards described by police are working in practice.