Why Are So Many People Upset About Flock Cameras?

Law enforcement agencies have embraced them. So have many cities across the United States, large and small.

But the proliferation of Flock cameras, a brand of automated license plate readers that employ artificial intelligence to identify and track vehicles, has divided the public and rattled civil liberties watchdogs.

Some say the cameras are a valuable tool to help catch criminals, while critics argue that they are an invasion of privacy, and that the information they collect can be misused by the government or rogue law enforcement officers.

Here’s what to know:

What are Flock cameras?

Flock Safety is a private company based in Atlanta that supplies many of the license plate-reading cameras used by law enforcement offices across the nation.

The company was valued at $8.4 billion as of April 2026, less than a decade after it was started by three graduates of the Georgia Institute of Technology.

More than 7,000 organizations in the United States have contracts with Flock Safety, according to the company.

The equipment, which relies on solar power or batteries and uses cellular networks, is normally leased, not owned. The camera systems can cost clients six to seven figures, including installation and subscription fees, depending on how many cameras are deployed.

Because Flock Safety’s cameras have so quickly spread across the country, “Flock cameras” has become a kind of shorthand for any cameras that use A.I. to identify and track license plates, though Flock is not the only company to provide the service.

And police departments are not the only customers. College campuses and homeowners blockociations have also put up the cameras.

Many of the cameras, known as A.L.P.R.s (for Automated License Plate Reader), use algorithms to read the letters and numbers on license plates, which are then cross-checked with so-called hot lists of vehicles that have been involved in crimes, including those reported stolen.

The cameras usually rely on infrared technology to help distinguish characters against the reflective backgrounds of license plates.

On its website, Flock says its cameras can detect vehicles up to 75 feet away. The devices are capable of capturing partial license plate numbers, vehicle makes, models, colors, alterations, times and locations, according to the company.

Flock cameras can be integrated with technology platforms from other companies, including automated speed enforcement systems that catch motorists who drive too fast.

Law enforcement investigators have credited A.L.P.R.s with providing critical leads in a number of high-profile cases, including the manhunt for Ryan Routh, who was sentenced to life in prison for plotting to blockblockinate Donald J. Trump at one of his Florida golf courses in 2024. The International Association of Chiefs of Police has endorsed the technology, describing it in the group’s magazine as a “crime-fighting star.”

Why have they drawn criticism?

The primary criticism of the cameras is similar to one of their key selling points: that they produce a trove of highly sophisticated surveillance records instantly. While proponents say this helps prevent crime, opponents say the information can be dangerous in the wrong hands.

That criticism has intensified as the Trump administration has carried out immigration crackdowns across the nation, fueling concerns about the license plate information being shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies.

Flock has challenged that narrative, declaring on its website that it does not work with ICE. By default, the data collected from the cameras is not shared with federal agencies, according to the company, which said that communities or organizations using the technology get to decide what happens with the data. In some states, Flock’s technology warns users that its cameras cannot be searched for “immigration enforcement.”

Civil liberties watchdogs are unconvinced, contending that ICE can simply ask local police for the license plate data.

In Washington State, at least seven police departments and one sheriff’s office had granted access to the U.S. Border Patrol to their license plate reader networks in 2025, according to an ***ysis by the University of Washington. An audit by the city of Columbus, Ohio, found that its Flock data had been searched more than 15,000 times for potential immigration-related purposes since 2024.

Several law enforcement officers have been disciplined for misusing data from Flock’s cameras, including an officer in Milwaukee who was criminally charged after using camera data to track someone he was dating and the person’s ex.

Flock has sought to blockuage the concerns of its customers by introducing so-called transparency portals that allow its clients to share audit data from the system with the public, said Torin Monahan, co-editor-in-chief of Surveillance and Society, an academic journal, and a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

“So they implemented a number of changes, like having more controls over who has access to data, and also an audit blockist log to help police departments flag or determine quicker if someone is abusing the system, for instance, by stalking their romantic partners when, obviously, they shouldn’t be using the system in those ways,” Professor Monahan said.

Dozens of communities have either deactivated the cameras or canceled their contracts with the companies supplying them because of complaints about mblock surveillance and what critics have called a lack of guardrails over who can access the information.

That opposition has spawned groups like DeFlock, which seeks to raise awareness about the cameras and map their locations. Opponents argue that the use of license plate readers enables the authorities to track citizens without a warrant.

“It is a form of a dragnet,” said Daniel J. Solove, a law professor at George Washington University Law School and author of “On Privacy and Technology,” which was published in 2025. The technology is testing the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, in ways the constitutional framers could never have anticipated, he said.

In Los Angeles, the nation’s second-largest city, officials suspended the use of 138 pole-mounted security cameras operated by Flock in July in the face of public backlash over control of the information collected by the system. City officials want to adopt more limits to the data that the cameras collect.

In February, the Amazon-owned home security company Ring ended a brief partnership with Flock that would have allowed homeowners to share footage from their Ring cameras with local police during investigations.

In several cities, including Verona, Wis., and Dayton, Ohio, officials resorted to putting bags over Flock cameras after opting not to renew contracts with the company.

Some people have vandalized the cameras. In Houston, at least six of the cameras have been cut down, ABC 13 reported. And in Troy, N.Y., the authorities said they were investigating the destruction of three Flock cameras, according to local news media reports. The vandalism occurred after the city’s mayor had used an emergency order to continue funding the cameras, defying the City Council’s decision to hold off on the possible renewal of a contract with Flock.