Flock Safety and ALPR cameras don’t make you safer.

They track everyone, share data with federal agencies, misread plates, and chill free speech. Here’s what they don’t tell you.

Cities Blocking the Flock

Division United

Mass surveillance does not care about your politics. Different reasons, same problem. Swipe through.

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One company. Thousands of agencies. One searchable record of where Americans drive. Left or right, if you care about limits on government power and basic due process, this ought to bother you.

Sources: EFF, 404 Media, DeFlock.

Debunking the sales pitch

Flock and similar vendors (Vigilant, Motorola, etc.) repeat the same lines. What actually happened often does not match.

“Cities control their data.”
Your city decides who sees the data.
Cities learned after the fact that their data was in Flock’s national network and that federal agencies (including U.S. Border Patrol and DHS) had been searching it. Santa Cruz, Flagstaff, Hillsborough, and others discovered they were sharing more broadly than they intended. Flock had a pilot with Customs and Border Protection and another with Homeland Security Investigations; the company later admitted it “communicated poorly” and that federal users weren’t clearly separated in the system. Police in some areas have been documented conducting searches on behalf of ICE (listing “ICE” or “immigration” as the reason). At least 30 localities have deactivated or canceled Flock since early 2025 over these issues.

Source: EFF, 404 Media, city councils (Santa Cruz, Flagstaff, Hillsborough).

“It helps solve crimes and find missing people.”
The benefit is worth the cost.
The same system is used to surveil protesters and activists (EFF found many departments searching Flock in connection with protest activity), and to track people for non-criminal reasons. For example, Texas sheriff’s deputies searched for the car of a woman after a medical appointment, reportedly “for her safety” while also considering charging her. So “solving crimes” is one use; using data to target unpopular groups, sensitive medical decisions, and dissent is another. The benefit is uneven; the harm falls on everyone who drives, protests, or seeks healthcare.

Source: EFF, 404 Media (Texas medical privacy case).

“The technology is accurate and reliable.”
You only get stopped if you’re actually a match.
Flock’s AI has repeatedly misread plates, with serious consequences. In Toledo, a camera read a “7” as a “2,” flagging an innocent man’s truck as stolen. Police drew guns and a K-9 attacked him; charges were later dismissed. In Redmond, WA, a father was handcuffed in his driveway because a Flock camera associated his car with his son’s warrant (the car was registered to the father). Business Insider and CBS News have documented dozens of wrongful stops and detentions tied to ALPR misreads. Innocent people pay the price.

Source: NPR, CBS News, Business Insider.

“We only use it for serious crimes.”
Searches are limited to stolen vehicles and violent felonies.
Audit logs and reporting show searches for immigration enforcement, protest-related activity, and sensitive medical or location-based tracking. Police have been instructed to be "as vague as permissible" when stating the reason for a Flock search. Once the data exists and is shareable, mission creep is the norm, not the exception.

Source: 404 Media, EFF audit logs.

Real harm, real people

Documented cases with named sources, not hypotheticals.

Brandon Upchurch (Toledo, OH)

Flock misread “7” as “2.” Police pulled him over at gunpoint; a police dog attacked him. Arrested for obstructing and resisting; charges dismissed.

Source: NPR, WTOL (settlement).

Thor Andrews Sr. (Redmond, WA)

Camera linked his car to his son’s felony warrant. He was handcuffed in his driveway despite the car being registered to him. Redmond later disabled Flock cameras.

Source: CBS News, Seattle-area reporting.

Medical privacy case (Texas)

Sheriff’s deputies ran her vehicle through the system; court records showed they considered charging her with a crime while claiming the search was “for her safety.”

Source: EFF, 404 Media, court records.

Officer used the system to stalk his ex (Milwaukee, WI)

A Milwaukee police officer was charged after allegedly using Flock searches to track a romantic partner and her ex-partner for personal reasons — not a case, not an emergency, just access being abused. He reportedly ran the plates again and again and logged the searches under a generic “investigation” label.

Source: Channel3000, Urban Milwaukee.

Protesters and activists (nationwide)

EFF analysis found a significant number of police departments using Flock’s network to search in connection with protest activity.

Source: EFF.

“I have nothing to hide”

People use this line to shut down the conversation. It misses the point.

“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different from saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”
- Edward Snowden, The Guardian (2015)

Privacy isn’t about hiding wrongdoing. It’s about who gets to know what about you, and what they can do with it. Mass surveillance causes harm even when you’ve done nothing wrong:

You do not need to be doing something wrong to care. You just need to care about a society where the government and private companies can track everyone, everywhere, and share that data across agencies with very little oversight.

Who’s talking about it

Journalists, activists, and researchers have exposed how Flock and ALPR surveillance actually work. Here’s where to hear them.

More they don’t tell you

Retailers, liability, attacks on transparency, and how critics are treated complete the picture.

Retailers are in the loop.
Home Depot and Lowe’s deploy Flock cameras in parking lots and share data with law enforcement. One Texas sheriff’s office had access to 173 Lowe’s locations nationwide plus multiple Home Depot stores. Walmart has funded Flock camera grants for police in several cities (e.g. Texas, Illinois, Kansas), creating a pipeline where local surveillance can be queried by federal agencies like ICE. So your trip to the hardware store or big box retailer feeds the same network.

Source: 404 Media (Home Depot, Lowe's), EFF (Walmart grants).

Flock isn’t liable when it goes wrong.
Flock leases cameras as “Security-as-a-Service” and contracts shift liability away from the company. When misidentifications lead to wrongful detentions or settlements, taxpayers and victims pay, not Flock.

Source: Reporting on Flock contract terms and wrongful-detention settlements (e.g. Toledo/Upchurch, WTOL).

They attack transparency.
Flock hired a “brand protection” firm to file takedown demands against HaveIBeenFlocked.com, a site that aggregates publicly available police records showing how Flock data is used. The company claimed the transparency site “poses an immediate threat to public safety.” Flock has also restricted access to audit logs that let the public see how police use the system. When a redaction error exposed millions of plates and searches, Flock went after the person who compiled the data, not the design that caused the leak.

Source: 404 Media (HaveIBeenFlocked, redaction leak).

Critics get smeared.
Flock’s CEO called the DeFlock mapping project “terroristic” for crowdsourcing camera locations. In a letter to customers he described opposition as a “coordinated attack” from groups that “want to defund the police, weaken public safety, and normalize lawlessness.” A Virginia police chief pushed back in writing: the people raising concerns are “local citizens” and their efforts are “democracy in action.” That city ended its Flock contract.

Source: 404 Media (DeFlock), EFF, Virginia city response.

Some states criminalize resistance.
Florida passed a law that can send you to jail for hacking or jamming Flock cameras. The law prioritizes machine readability over your ability to question who’s watching. The same logic that protects the cameras also protects the industry.

Source: Fla. statutes (traffic/plate obstruction provisions), 404 Media.

Take action

Plenty of cities have already ended or paused Flock. Yours can too.

Map Flock cameras near you (DeFlock) Get alerts for camera proposals (alpr.watch) EFF: Flock surveillance abuses (2025) ACLU: Surveillance technologies

What you can do: Call or email your city council and mayor. Ask whether your city uses Flock or other ALPR systems, who has access to the data, and whether it’s shared with federal agencies. Demand a public vote on renewing or expanding contracts. Share this page. Support local groups that oppose mass surveillance.

Resources

Advocacy sites, journalism, tools, and official sources. Dig deeper and verify.

Advocacy & campaigns

Tools & mapping

Journalism & investigations

Legal & government

Beyond ALPR: the bigger surveillance stack

License-plate cameras don’t exist in a vacuum. They slot into a broader ecosystem of cameras, data brokers, and persistent IDs that follow people across devices and daily life.

See more: Consumer Rights Wiki ↗

Doorbell cameras + “AI” features become a neighborhood dragnet.
Ring and similar vendors market “smart” detection (people, packages, motion) and push neighborhood-sharing features. For years, Ring also built police-request tooling inside its Neighbors app. That turned private cameras into an easy channel for police video requests. Even if the workflow changes, the result is the same: lots of cameras, easy sharing, and social pressure to participate.

Source: EFF (Ring police request tooling), Reuters (Neighbors police requests), Ring support (Community Requests).

“Link analysis” companies turn separate databases into one story about you.
Platforms like Palantir are built for stitching together disparate records (government + commercial) into searchable profiles, maps, networks, and “leads.” When agencies can combine location histories, identifiers, and case data at scale, oversight gets harder and mistakes get amplified.

Source: EFF (Palantir + ICE), The Guardian (ICE documents on Palantir).

App-store and mobile ad IDs make cross-app tracking easy.
Mobile platforms provide advertising identifiers (Apple’s IDFA; Android’s Advertising ID) built for tracking across apps for ads and measurement. Even with opt outs and resets, this normalizes a world where “who is this device?” is a default question. That same logic shows up again and again across surveillance tech.

Source: Apple Developer docs (advertisingIdentifier / IDFA), Android Developers (Advertising ID).

Age “attestation” turns into ID upload and face scans.
Once platforms are pressured to prove your age, “just click yes” quickly becomes photo ID checks, facial age estimation, or both. Discord has rolled out age assurance flows using face scans or ID. Google is rolling out age assurance features tied to new laws. App stores are moving toward age checks too, which can turn into an identity gate for basic access.

Source: BBC (Discord face scan or ID), Discord support (age assurance), Google (age assurance rollout), Reuters (Apple age assurance).

Also in the stack:

Automatic content recognition Face scanning at stores Link analysis profiles Mobile ad IDs Age assurance rules

Flock Safety FAQ (info, protests, and opposition)

If you’re searching for Flock info or looking for ways to oppose Flock cameras in your city, start here and use the sources above to verify.

What is Flock Safety?

Flock Safety sells automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras and software. In practice, ALPR camera networks can create a searchable record of where vehicles travel and can be shared across agencies and jurisdictions.

Why are people protesting or opposing Flock cameras?

Opposition to Flock and ALPR surveillance commonly centers on mass surveillance, protest surveillance and chilling effects on free speech, sensitive-location tracking (clinics, houses of worship, gun stores, etc.), federal or out-of-area access to local data, and documented misreads that can lead to wrongful stops.

How can I find out if my city uses Flock?

Check city council agendas and procurement records, ask your city council or mayor’s office directly, and look for public contracts or policy documents. You can also use mapping and alert tools like DeFlock and alpr.watch.