A few years ago, most of us probably hadn't even heard of Flock, the AI-powered cameras known officially as Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs or LPRs). Run by a private company called Flock Safety, these cameras are popping up all over the country with one supposed purpose: to aid law enforcement by capturing and analyzing images of all passing vehicles.
Flock Safety builds a "vehicle fingerprint" that captures things like your car's make, model, and color, and also unique car features such as dents, roof racks, and even bumper stickers; it also stores information like your car's location, date, and time. All of this information then becomes searchable data points for police ... and others.
The folks at Flock Safety say they store your information for 30 days, then it is "automatically and permanently" deleted. However, its "customers" – police departments, cities, businesses, and even HOAs (!!) – are able to request the data be held for longer if state and local laws allow it.
So, during that time period, police or your nosy HOA president can access a bountiful amount of information about where you've been, what you've been doing, and who you've been doing it with. What could possibly go wrong, right?
Well, something like this case out of Colorado that had social media abuzz last week. A police officer confronted a woman at her home with supposedly concrete proof that she had stolen a $25 package from the porch of a house in a neighboring town – and he had the Flock images to prove it! (And, well, she had the doorbell camera system that caught the entire ugly episode.)
The woman, Chrisanna Elser, denies stealing the package, but the police officer is sure he's got his suspect, smugly telling her, "We've got [Flock] cameras everywhere" and "You can't get a breath of fresh air in or out without us knowing." The officer maintains that he has proof of her forest green Rivian R1T electric pickup truck being at the scene of the crime, despite Chrisanna's insistence she had nothing to do with it.
After ignoring Chrisanna's attempt to prove her innocence, the officer eventually issues her a court summons.
A Flock camera hit turned an innocent Colorado woman into a theft suspect.
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) July 8, 2026
A Colorado police officer told a woman he was "100% certain" she committed the theft because Flock cameras captured her truck. He was wrong. pic.twitter.com/ldHlYkgJor
As you might have guessed, the police officer had it all wrong. Chrisanna tracked down video footage of the crime, and, lo and behold, the suspect fled on foot with nary a sign of a forest green Rivian truck being involved.
Lest you think your community is Flock-free, just check this out:
Well, this is neat in a very surreal way.
— Katt (@kattnotwilliams) July 15, 2026
A crowdsourced ALPR surveillance map: https://t.co/fr6h76MJdT #Flock #FlockCameras #Surveillance pic.twitter.com/6yoDZkL8F4
The court cases against Flock are now starting to pile up.
Here in Virginia, a Norfolk couple, Lee Schmidt and Crystal Arrington, sued after Schmidt's car was caught by a Flock camera 475 times over the course of four and a half months, and Arrington’s was photographed 325 times during the same time period, something the two found “creepy.” They argued that the capture of their daily movements – they were not accused of doing anything wrong or illegal – amounted to a warrantless search under the Fourth Amendment.
A judge found that Flock hadn't done anything unconstitutional ... yet. However, he did warn in his ruling that ALPR surveillance systems, as they become more pervasive, could quite easily become intrusive to the point of violating the Constitution.
The outcry against Flock has given birth to the "DeFlock" movement, which maps the locations of the cameras across the United States and warns of possible civil liberties violations from a surveillance system that tracks Americans so closely without a warrant or probable cause. There's even a website that lets you know if you've been "flocked."
Flock proponents say the cameras help quickly locate stolen cars and can provide investigators with evidence in crimes where few clues exist. And, sure, they can do that, but the concern that remains is the amount of privacy we law-abiding citizens have to surrender in the process.
