How Flock Cameras Took Over America

Flock has 120,000 cameras in 49 states, used by 40% of law enforcement, capturing billions of reads and allowing rapid searches by plate or vehicle description.

The company helped solve more than a million crimes last year.

He founded Flock after repeated car break-ins in his Atlanta neighborhood, initially building cheap cameras for homeowners associations before pivoting to police contracts in 2020.

Flock expanded rapidly through police word-of-mouth after its first municipal contract, reaching an $8 billion valuation.

Most departments opt into the national network, enabling cross-state tracking like locating a suspect who traveled from North Carolina to Florida.

Police used Flock to track a woman suspected of self-administering an abortion, and officers have abused access to stalk romantic partners. ICE agents access Flock's network by partnering with local police, leading some cities to pause contracts after discovering federal immigration enforcement use.

Flock uses click-through acknowledgments and an audit system to flag unusual searches, but ultimately relies on police departments to use the tool appropriately.

Flock is just a technology company offering a service, and it is up to lawmakers and regulators, not the company, to decide how the cameras should be used.

Citizens have vandalized Flock cameras and protested at city councils, while the Deflock map has documented over 100,000 cameras, prompting lawsuits alleging unconstitutional surveillance.

Courts have rejected Fourth Amendment challenges so far, with one judge ruling 172 cameras in Norfolk is not ubiquitous enough, though civil liberty attorneys argue judges underestimate the network's scale.

Opposition to Flock is bipartisan, with the physical visibility of cameras and private companies conducting warrantless surveillance driving heightened public concern over the privacy-security trade-off.