with a better headline: "Judge denies request to exempt Flock footage from Public Records Act"

Thanks, that is better.

Also:

Redmond temporarily suspends use of Flock cameras - https://www.king5.com/article/news/local/redmond-police-depa...

Gonna need to contact the county clerk. Using https://www.courts.wa.gov/index.cfm?fa=home.contentDisplay&l... and entering superior court and the county then the case number returns "Status: Archived No Docket Info" for both plaintiffs and the defendant.

This is a reasonably common (sadly) methodology that many agencies utilize.

"We are not legally permitted to blanket surveil/ALPR entire neighborhoods/towns, etc. ...

... and we can't pay a private company to do this for us ...

... but nothing prevents us from paying a private company who is doing it already, to give us that data."

The line between the last two is blurry but also utilized - you can't put out an RFP for a company to capture such data that you're not permitted to, but if that company is doing it because it sees a/your market for it, then it's a free-for-all.

Courts have found that scale and intent matter.

An offhand picture by a private individual is OK, but a large scale organized hoovering of personally identifying information is not OK.

The finding is also the denial of an exemption appeal which has a much lower legal threshold to clear.

Those private installations are almost certainly not subject to FOIA (they wouldn't be in Illinois, hard to see how they would be in any state). Without a court order, none of them should be exposed to law enforcement, though there might be opt-out features that have that effect.