The Unseen Eye: How Flock Cameras Are Redefining Surveillance and Privacy in America
By Apirate Monk
In the quiet expanse of Johnson County, Texas, a sheriff’s deputy sat before a computer screen on May 9, 2025, accessing a sprawling network of over 83,000 automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras scattered across the United States. The officer was searching for a woman who had reportedly self-administered an abortion, prompted by her family’s concern that she might be in medical distress. The tool at the deputy’s fingertips, provided by a company called Flock Safety, allowed the search to extend far beyond Texas’s borders—reaching into states like Washington and Illinois, where abortion remains a protected right. The sheriff’s office insisted the search was about ensuring the woman’s safety, not enforcing Texas’s restrictive abortion laws. Yet the incident, first reported by 404 Media, sent a chill through privacy advocates and reproductive rights groups, exposing the dystopian potential of a technology originally marketed to catch carjackers and find missing persons.
Flock Safety’s ALPR cameras, now installed in over 5,000 communities nationwide, represent a seismic shift in how law enforcement monitors the public. These unassuming devices, often mounted on street poles or tucked into residential neighborhoods, capture license plate numbers, vehicle details, and timestamps, feeding this data into a centralized database accessible to police departments across the country. Unlike traditional surveillance tools, Flock’s system is designed for seamless interoperability, allowing a deputy in rural Texas to query cameras in Seattle or Chicago with a few clicks. The technology’s reach is staggering: in Denver alone, Flock cameras photographed over 2 million vehicles in a single 30-day period in 2025, with 82,052 flagged as matches to a police “hotlist.”
For law enforcement, Flock’s appeal lies in its promise of precision and efficiency. The company markets its cameras as tools to solve crimes like auto theft, abductions, or violent offenses. In Richmond, Virginia, for instance, police used Flock data to track a suspect’s gold Acura sedan in a 2023 armed robbery case, leading to an arrest without violating the suspect’s Fourth Amendment rights, according to a federal judge. But the same technology that helps catch robbers can just as easily be turned toward more controversial ends, as the Texas case illustrates. The ability to track a vehicle—and by extension, its driver—across state lines raises profound questions about privacy, civil liberties, and the potential for abuse in a nation deeply divided over issues like abortion.
A Nationwide Web of Eyes
Flock Safety, founded in 2017, has rapidly expanded its footprint, capitalizing on the growing demand for data-driven policing. The company’s cameras are now ubiquitous, found in small towns, sprawling suburbs, and major cities like Los Angeles, Houston, and Boston. What sets Flock apart is its networked approach: every camera is part of a broader system that shares data across jurisdictions. Police in one state can query cameras in another, creating what critics describe as a de facto national surveillance network. This interconnectedness is further amplified by Flock’s partnerships with local law enforcement, private businesses, and even homeowners’ associations, which can purchase and install cameras that feed into the same database.
The implications of this network are stark. As Kate Bertash of the Digital Defense Fund noted in the Texas case, Flock’s technology enables “extraterritorial reach,” allowing police in states with restrictive laws to monitor activities that are legal elsewhere. This is particularly alarming in the context of abortion, where post-Roe v. Wade legal battles have created a patchwork of state laws. In Texas, where abortion is heavily restricted, police could use Flock’s system to track someone traveling to a state like Illinois, where reproductive rights are protected, potentially intimidating or prosecuting individuals for exercising those rights.
The Texas incident is not an isolated one. In October 2024, 404 Media reported on a tool called Locate X, which tracked an Alabama resident’s phone to a Florida abortion clinic, mapping their stops at a Lowe’s, a gas station, and a church along the way. While Locate X relies on mobile advertising data rather than license plates, the parallels are striking: both systems enable law enforcement to monitor sensitive personal activities without a warrant, exploiting technologies that individuals have little ability to opt out of. As one privacy advocate put it, “Your car is being tracked. See where license plate readers are, avoid them, and report new ones.”
The Privacy Paradox
The proliferation of ALPRs has sparked a fierce debate over privacy. Unlike traditional surveillance methods, which often require physical presence or judicial oversight, Flock’s cameras operate continuously, capturing data on millions of vehicles without regard for whether their drivers are suspects. In Denver, for example, the transparency portal built by Flock for the local police department revealed that 2 million vehicles were photographed in a single month, with tens of thousands flagged for further scrutiny. This indiscriminate data collection raises concerns about what Jake Laperruque of the Center for Democracy and Technology calls “non-criminal tracking”—the potential to monitor people attending political rallies, religious services, or, as in the Texas case, medical procedures.
The risks are compounded by the vulnerability of the data itself. In January 2025, a privacy advocate exposed hundreds of Motorola ALPR cameras streaming live video and license plate data to the open internet, accessible to anyone with basic technical know-how. A security researcher developed a tool to scrape this data into spreadsheets, demonstrating how easily bad actors—whether hackers, stalkers, or rogue police officers—could exploit these systems for targeted harassment. “Law enforcement agencies and the companies that provide ALPRs are no different than any other data company and can’t be trusted with this information,” the researcher told 404 Media.
Flock’s own ambitions amplify these concerns. Leaked audio from an internal company meeting revealed plans for a new product called Nova, which would allow police to “jump from LPR to person,” linking vehicle data to individuals and their associates—through marriage, gang affiliations, or other connections. This proposed system, which raised ethical questions among Flock’s own employees, could transform an already invasive technology into a tool for mapping entire social networks, further eroding personal privacy.
A Tool for Abuse?
The Texas case underscores the potential for ALPRs to be weaponized in ways that transcend their original purpose. While the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office claimed the search was motivated by concern for the woman’s health, privacy advocates remain skeptical. “The idea that the police are actively tracking the location of women they believe have had self-administered abortions under the guise of ‘safety’ does not make me feel any better about this kind of surveillance,” said Eva Galperin of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The fear is that such searches could be used to intimidate or criminalize individuals seeking reproductive care, particularly in states with aggressive anti-abortion laws.
This fear is not hypothetical. In Alabama, Attorney General Steve Marshall has faced legal challenges for threatening to prosecute those who help women obtain abortions across state lines. The use of tools like Flock or Locate X could make such threats far more feasible, enabling authorities to track vehicles or phones to clinics in neighboring states. Meanwhile, a failed Texas bill in 2025 would have allowed private citizens to sue those facilitating telehealth abortions for up to $100,000, signaling the state’s willingness to expand surveillance and enforcement mechanisms.
Nor is the issue limited to abortion. Flock’s data has been used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through “side-door” access, with local police performing lookups for federal immigration investigations despite ICE lacking a direct contract with Flock. In Sacramento County, California, a grand jury found that sheriff’s and police departments shared license plate data with out-of-state agencies, violating state privacy protocols. These examples illustrate how ALPRs can be repurposed for purposes far beyond local crime prevention, often without transparency or accountability.
Resistance and Reckoning
As Flock’s network grows, so does resistance. In Denver, a proposed contract extension with Flock was rejected in May 2025 over privacy concerns, with critics citing the risk to immigrants and the potential for federal data mining by agencies like ICE. In Norfolk, Virginia, a Fourth Amendment challenge to Flock’s system argued that its pervasive tracking violates the right to privacy, though the case has yet to overturn the technology’s use.
Grassroots efforts are also emerging. A project called DeFlock, launched by a privacy advocate in Huntsville, Alabama, maps the locations of ALPRs worldwide using open-source software. By crowdsourcing data on camera locations, DeFlock aims to empower individuals to avoid surveillance and raise awareness about its scope. “Knowing where they are is the first step toward resisting them,” the project’s creator told 404 Media.
Legally, the battle over ALPRs is still unfolding. A federal judge in Virginia ruled in 2024 that Flock’s use in a robbery investigation did not violate the Fourth Amendment, as license plates are publicly displayed and thus lack a reasonable expectation of privacy. But privacy advocates argue that the sheer scale of Flock’s network—tracking millions of vehicles daily—creates a “mosaic” of data that reveals far more about a person’s life than a single license plate snapshot. The Supreme Court has yet to weigh in definitively, but related cases, such as challenges to Texas’s age-verification laws for pornography websites, suggest growing judicial scrutiny of technologies that infringe on personal freedoms.
The Road Ahead
The rise of Flock Safety’s ALPRs reflects a broader tension in modern America: the promise of technology to enhance safety versus its potential to erode civil liberties. For every success story of a stolen car recovered or a missing person found, there is a counterpoint—a woman tracked for seeking reproductive care, an immigrant targeted through shared data, or a protester monitored at a rally. The Texas case is a stark reminder that tools like Flock’s are only as benign as the intentions behind their use.
As Flock continues to expand, with plans for even more invasive products like Nova, the need for oversight grows urgent. Privacy advocates call for stricter regulations, such as mandatory data deletion policies, limits on inter-jurisdictional data sharing, and transparency about how ALPR data is used. Some propose that cameras should require judicial approval for searches, akin to a warrant, to prevent abuse. Others, like the creators of DeFlock, advocate for public awareness and avoidance as a form of resistance.
For now, the Flock cameras remain ever watchful, their lenses capturing the movements of millions of Americans each day. In Johnson County, the woman who was the subject of the May 2025 search was never publicly identified, and her fate remains unknown. But the incident she sparked has ignited a broader conversation—one that asks how far we are willing to let surveillance creep into our lives, and at what cost to the freedoms we hold dear.
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