Stop Flock

What Are Flock Cameras?

Flock Safety markets its devices as “AI-powered precision policing technology” — not just simple license plate readers (ALPRs) (Flock Safety). These cameras analyze vehicle characteristics like color, make, model, bumper stickers, roof racks, visible damage, and even non-factory wheels or tinted windows.

The data is indexed and searchable across a nationwide law enforcement network — any officer from any subscribing jurisdiction can access it, without neding a warrant. According to Flock’s marketing, the system “can link to a network of law enforcement databases and automatically flag a wanted license plate before a crime ever occurs” (Flock HOA Marketing).

While these tools may help find stolen vehicles or missing persons, they also create a sweeping record of individuals' movements. And they’re already being misused — such as when a Kansas police chief used Flock cameras 228 times to track an ex-girlfriend and her new partner without cause (Local12).

Why Privacy Matters

“If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear” is a tempting thought — until someone misuses your information. Privacy isn’t about hiding wrongdoing. It’s about autonomy, dignity, and the ability to live free from unjust scrutiny. “Saying you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.” - Edward Snowden

The Fourth Amendment was written in response to the British Crown's “general warrants” — broad authorizations to search anyone, anywhere, anytime. Mass surveillance revives that threat in digital form. Simply moving freely in public should not require that you be profiled and scrutinized. It is important to point out that the courts have repeatedly ruled so-called "dragnet warrants," often using cell phone GPS locations, unconstitutional under the 4th amendment. Flock Security makes an end-run around these rulings by operating as a private entity, recording happenings in public, and then making their data available on the market. Of course governmental agencies can purchase goods and services from private entities, but private entities do not have the same restrictions around mass collection of private citizens' data.

How Widespread Are These Cameras?

The map below shows just a fraction of current Flock camera installations around NW Chicago. These points are a better reflection of where the person tagging often drives than they are a representation of how many there actually are. Almost all of these have been installed since 2020; these systems are expanding rapidly, often with little public debate or oversight.

Flock’s Rapid Expansion

The Atlas of Surveillance, maintained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, has documented over 3,000 law enforcement and government agencies using Flock products as of 2025 — a number growing monthly.

What began as a niche product is now embedded in thousands of communities nationwide. The pace of deployment is breathtaking, and rarely subject to public vote or meaningful transparency.

Civil Liberties at Risk

Surveillance tools like Flock cameras erode the Fourth Amendment, enabling searches of your whereabouts without a warrant or probable cause. Organizations like the ACLU argue these tools create vast warrantless databases of our public movements^* and demand transparency (ACLU).

In Oak Park, Illinois, 84% of drivers stopped using Flock camera alerts were Black — despite the town being only 21% Black. Flock’s data funnels into already biased enforcement (Freedom to Thrive).

Corporate Incentives and Mass Surveillance

Flock encourages law enforcement agencies to promote adoption by recruiting private businesses and HOAs to install cameras and share footage. This practice enables police access to private footage showing not just cars, but people, clothing, behavior, and more.
It is not difficult to imagine that declining such requests may come with implications regarding how your local police may serve you or your business. (Flock Community Outreach).

Flock also markets to employers and retail settings, blurring the lines between public safety and profit-driven surveillance (Flock Business Sales).

The Illusion of Security

Flock advertises a drop in crime, but the true cost is a culture of mistrust and preemptive suspicion. As the EFF warns, communities are being sold a false promise of safety — at the expense of civil rights^* (EFF).

A 2019 report by the Georgetown Center on Privacy & Technology noted that mass surveillance systems can give an illusion of omniscience without delivering actual results — especially when used to predict, rather than respond to, criminal behavior. “Predictive policing,” they wrote, “often reflects and amplifies existing biases under the veneer of scientific objectivity.”

True safety comes from healthy, empowered communities — not automated suspicion. Community-led safety initiatives have shown far greater long-term success in reducing harm than opaque surveillance networks with little oversight or accountability.

Part of a Larger Trend

Flock’s expansion is part of a broader movement toward ubiquitous mass surveillance — where your associations, online comments, purchases, movements, and more may be logged, indexed, analyzed by AI, and made easily searchable by almost any government agency at any time.

As Edward Snowden warned: “A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves—an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought.”

Bruce Schneier, a prominent cryptographer and privacy advocate, put it simply: “Surveillance is the business model of the Internet.” What begins as data collection for convenience or security often evolves into persistent monitoring, normalization of tracking, and the loss of autonomy.

In Dunwoody, Georgia, drones are now dispatched from Flock Safety “nests” to respond to 911 calls autonomously, often arriving in under 90 seconds (Axios).

In California, 480 high-tech cameras were recently installed to surveil Oakland’s highways — tracking license plates, bumper stickers, and vehicle types — with alerts sent to law enforcement in real-time (AP News).

The Harvard Law Review warns that this growing surveillance leads to “selective enforcement, blackmail, and coercion,” with the chilling effect falling most heavily on dissenters and marginalized communities (Harvard Law Review).

Words from the Watchers

Some of the most chilling validations of mass surveillance come not from critics — but from the very people promoting it. These aren’t out-of-context slips; they are open endorsements of a world where privacy is sidelined in favor of control, compliance, and convenient enforcement.

“Anything technology they think, ‘Oh it’s a boogeyman. It’s Big Brother watching you,’ … No, Big Brother is protecting you.”
- Eric Adams, NYC Mayor (Politico, 2022)
New York’s mayor casually rebrands Orwell’s authoritarian icon as a guardian figure. It’s a startling reversal — not a warning about overreach, but a defense of it.

“Instead of being reactive, we are going to be proactive... [we] use data to predict where future crimes are likely to take place and who is likely to commit them... then deputies would find those people and take them out.”
- Chris Nocco, Pasco County Sheriff (Tampa Bay Times, 2020)
This “Minority Report”-style program led to harassment of innocent people — and was ultimately found unconstitutional in court. A rare win, but a stark example of where unchecked surveillance can go.

“Tech firms should not develop their systems and services, including end-to-end encryption, in ways that empower criminals or put vulnerable people at risk.”
- Priti Patel, UK Home Secretary (UK Govt, 2019)
The logic: protecting everyone’s privacy is dangerous. This kind of framing justifies backdoors into secure systems — ones that inevitably get abused.

“The risk [of built-in weaknesses]... is acceptable because we are talking about consumer products... and not nuclear launch codes.”
- William Barr, U.S. Attorney General (TechCrunch, 2019)
A clear "rules for thee but not for me" mentality. Your data, messages, and devices don’t deserve the same protections as the government’s — because you’re just a civilian.

“China exploited a U.S. government surveillance portal meant for lawful access to tap into the private phone records and messages of American citizens — all without warrants.”
- Reuters (Reuters, 2023)
This surveillance tool was built for legal access — but abused by a foreign power. Backdoors aren’t just risky; they’re outright dangerous. Once created, they will be used — by anyone who gets access.

Take Action

We don’t have to accept this future. You can:

Contact your local officials and demand transparency and oversight of surveillance programs. (See 5 Calls)
Support organizations like the ACLU and the EFF who challenge mass surveillance in the courts and legislatures.
Start conversations with neighbors and community groups about the risks of systems like Flock.
Share this website and make your community aware.

^* Some quotes paraphrased for clarity. See linked sources for full context.