Flock Safety is the biggest player in a city-by-city scramble for surveillance
Automated license plate readers from Flock Safety and similar vendors are rapidly spreading across U.S. cities, suburbs, and even private HOAs, creating a de facto mass-surveillance network of vehicle movements. Commenters weigh potential benefits in crime detection and deterrence against serious concerns about privacy, legality, data sharing, and abuse by both government and private actors, arguing that current laws did not anticipate monitoring at this scale. Many call for stronger regulation, transparency, and limits on how long data is stored and how it can be queried, rather than relying on vendor promises or police policy alone.
Scope of Flock and Related Surveillance Tech
- Flock license plate readers and similar systems are rapidly proliferating across cities, suburbs, HOAs, businesses, and shopping centers.
- Devices are cheap, solar-powered, cellular, and easy to deploy at scale; some users report heavy penetration in places like Atlanta suburbs.
- Private deployments (e.g., Walmart, Lowes, HOAs, shopping centers) can share data with police and others, often at no cost to government.
Privacy and Mass Surveillance Concerns
- Many see this as a qualitative shift: continuous, centralized tracking of movements, not just “someone might see you in public.”
- Concern that plate data + other sources (apps, period trackers, payment and phone data) form a detailed behavioral dossier that can be misused.
- Hypothetical and real scenarios raised: abortion travel tracking, outing visits to gay bars or mosques, and false-positive hits leading to armed stops.
- Some argue that recording in public is technically legal but should be restricted when it becomes pervasive, cross-referenced, and permanent.
Legal and Constitutional Debate
- Debate over whether mass plate tracking is an “unreasonable search,” or covered by “plain view” since plates are public by design.
- Some say current law largely permits this; others think precedents (e.g., limits on tech-enhanced surveillance) could be extended to ALPRs.
- Distinction raised between individual recording vs. industrial-scale monitoring and retroactive querying (“show me everywhere this car was”).
Support for Surveillance and Crime-Fighting Claims
- Proponents argue ALPRs help solve burglaries, car theft, and violent crime, and that higher chance of getting caught deters crime.
- Some are “huge fans” of public surveillance, preferring cameras plus regulation over bans, and even suggest national IDs or more cameras.
- Flock markets itself as contributing to solving ~10% of reported U.S. crime; several commenters are skeptical of methodology and definitions of “solved” or “helped.”
Governance, Activism, and Alternatives
- Suggestions include stronger privacy laws, warrant/standards for searches, limits on retention/sharing, and local surveillance ordinances (e.g., CCOPS-style review).
- FOIA is used to map camera locations and scrutinize deployments, with reports that ALPR hits often serve other jurisdictions or stale hotlists.
- Some advocate sousveillance (citizens monitoring authorities), drone-based vandalism of cameras, or routing tools to avoid surveilled roads.
- Others argue resources should go to social programs rather than expanding surveillance infrastructure.