Surveillance cameras from Flock Safety now track vehicles across thousands of U.S. communities using automated license plate readers and AI vehicle fingerprints. While police credit the devices with solving crimes, critics raise mass surveillance concerns, data sharing with immigration authorities, and high rates of misread plates.
Automated license plate readers mounted on utility poles and traffic signals have quietly multiplied across the United States. Manufactured by Atlanta-based Flock Safety, the cameras are designed to read license plates and capture identifying vehicle characteristics whenever a car passes.
Founder Garrett Langley established the company in 2017 after experiencing a rise in neighborhood crime in Atlanta. A police major told him that more than 70 percent of crime involves a vehicle and that most of those offenses go unsolved because officers rarely have the license plate. Flock Safety now operates as a subscription business, charging annual service fees for each camera, and was recently valued at $8.4 billion.
How Flock Cameras Track Vehicles With AI
Unlike ordinary traffic cameras or speed enforcement devices, Flock Falcon cameras take between six and 12 still images each time a vehicle passes. The company’s software then uses machine learning to extract searchable information, including license plates, vehicle makes, models, colors, body types, directions of travel, damage, aftermarket wheels, and bumper stickers.
According to cybersecurity experts, these systems compile distinct identifiers into a searchable format. The software analyzes images of vehicles and extracts characteristics such as license plates . . . and other distinguishing features,
Trevor Horwitz, co-founder and chief information security officer of the cybersecurity firm TrustNet, explained to ZDNET. Those become searchable, allowing investigators to look for a vehicle even if they don’t have a complete license plate number.
Police departments, local governments, businesses, schools, and homeowners associations deploy the devices. Flock reports that it has installed roughly 120,000 cameras across 49 states, while public estimates place the active number closer to 90,000. In addition to its flagship hardware, the company sells conventional video cameras, audio-detection technology, investigative software, and drones. Its systems can also integrate with partner hardware, such as Motorola cameras connected through shared APIs and platforms like Motorola’s CommandCentral Aware.
Law Enforcement Defense Versus Civil Liberties Backlash
Law enforcement agencies defend the technology as a vital tool for locating stolen vehicles, missing persons, and suspects. Langley noted in a social media post that across a single day, the company’s camera network alerted authorities to thousands of sex offenders, stolen cars, and wanted individuals. Police departments maintain that the cameras help solve crimes that would otherwise remain cold.
Privacy advocates and civil liberties organizations offer a starkly different assessment. The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that continuous photography of every passing vehicle constitutes mass surveillance rather than targeted law enforcement. Critics warn that connected networks of cameras create comprehensive historical records of ordinary citizens’ daily movements.
Because these cameras record every driver regardless of suspicion, critics argue the resulting data trails can expose sensitive personal habits. The Electronic Frontier Foundation warned that the systems have been misused by police to spy on their ex-partners and could be used to target people engaged in First Amendment activities or seeking medical care.
Concerns over data sharing with federal immigration officials have also prompted dozens of communities to cancel, pause, or suspend their contracts with the surveillance provider.
False Alerts, Wrongful Stops, and Local Pushback
The widespread deployment has also exposed technical vulnerabilities and error rates. Investigative reporting has documented at least a dozen instances where misreads or unverified alerts resulted in innocent motorists being detained at gunpoint or jailed. In Toledo, Ohio, a driver was mauled by a police dog after a Flock camera misread a 7
on his license plate as a 2
.
An investigation in Roseville, California—which has utilized the technology since 2021—found that Flock incorrectly read plates in 71 percent of the 1,427 stolen-vehicle and felony alerts issued during 2023 and 2024. In response to public scrutiny, some municipalities have reconsidered their agreements. Saranac Lake in upstate New York cancelled its contract with Flock Safety following resident protests last spring, leading to the removal of the local cameras.
Flock states that its default data retention policy deletes vehicle records after 30 days, though customers may adjust retention windows where local laws permit. Company representatives maintain that the cameras do not utilize facial recognition and that customers retain control over access to collected data. They are built to focus on the vehicle involved in an incident and the details that can help distinguish it from other vehicles on the road,
the company stated.
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