Flock Safety: license plate cameras and privacy

What is Flock Safety

Flock Safety is a US company, based in Atlanta, that sells networked license plate reader cameras and related surveillance tools to police departments and communities. Its cameras photograph every passing vehicle, software reads the plate, and the record goes into a database that, according to the company, more than 5,000 police departments can search. License plate readers have existed for decades, but the Flock network is a pooled, AI-driven system, which is why it draws attention from lawmakers, courts and privacy groups. See also the license plate readers topic.

Flock’s own history page, read on October 10, 2026, says it was founded in 2017 and describes a business built on cameras, software and machine learning “to help reduce crime”. CEO Garrett Langley argues that privacy versus safety is a false choice and that the data is used only for law enforcement.

What are Flock cameras and what else does Flock sell

Flock cameras are solar-powered, LTE-connected cameras mounted on poles that photograph passing vehicles and use AI to read the plate and note details such as damage, bumper stickers and roof racks. They do not issue tickets; the data goes to police for investigations. In Suffolk County, New York, a Flock representative told legislators at a hearing that the technology is “about vehicles, not people” and that data is kept up to 30 days. Hackers who analyzed a camera’s software found that it also detects people, as well as vehicles, plates and bicycles, but found no evidence of face recognition beyond Android defaults. More on that technology in facial recognition.

Flock now sells more than cameras:

Flock also pitched turning Uber and Lyft drivers into a mobile surveillance network through dashcams from Nexar. Flock told 404 Media the Nexar deal was never put into place. Read more on the data brokers topic.

Who owns Flock Safety and where is it based

Flock Safety is a venture-backed company based in Atlanta, founded in 2017 by Garrett Langley, Matt Feury and Paige Todd, with Langley as CEO. The founders and the 2017 start (Y Combinator S17 batch) come from the company’s own history page, read on October 10, 2026. Fortune called it a venture darling with an $8.3 billion valuation; another report gives $8.4 billion. Neither the stories nor Flock’s page say it is listed on a stock exchange, and no report describes a sale to a larger owner.

Ownership of the data is a separate question. In Los Angeles, the proposed new contract would let the LAPD keep ownership of every image, record and metadata, and ban Flock from selling, sharing or using it to train AI. The ACLU’s analysis in Cleveland found that Flock keeps a perpetual license to camera data even after a contract ends.

How many Flock cameras are there

Flock says it operates more than 120,000 cameras in 49 states, making roughly 20 billion vehicle scans a month, and crowdsourced maps count even more. Sen. Hawley’s investigation cites those company figures. As of August 20, 2026, FlockHopper listed 132,225 license plate readers in the contiguous US and DeFlock 133,607, of which about 110,000, or 82%, belong to Flock, according to SlashGear’s report on camera counts. Both counts rely on user submissions. Local numbers: about 13,000 cameras in Texas, nearly 200 in Suffolk County, 138 in Los Angeles. Flock does not publish camera locations; volunteers map them, and the EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance lets you search by city or police agency.

Can Flock cameras be hacked

Yes: in September 2026 a hacker group called stegan0gram physically removed a Flock camera from above a road, reverse-engineered it and recovered a large amount of data. WIRED reported on logs from the camera covering about 21 days with 1.6 million images of roughly 50,000 vehicles. Another report put the totals at 50,200 vehicles and 27,321 video clips, and said the group found an encryption key on the device, which unlocked further partitions. Flock says the removal was illegal, that exploiting the cameras requires physical access, and that it got no report through its vulnerability disclosure policy.

A threat intelligence analyst said the incident did not compromise Flock’s cloud network, and Flock reports about 97% of law enforcement agencies using the system have multifactor authentication on. Sen. Schumer countered that Flock told the public its cameras were encrypted and secure. At the Senate hearing, researcher Benn Jordan described exposed camera interfaces and called false the claim that Flock has never been hacked. Separately, 404 Media reported a leak of police searches: Flock exposed license plate searches and their stated reasons to DuckDuckGo and Bing.

How do police misuse Flock and how accurate is it

Police have repeatedly misused Flock searches, and its alerts are not always right. Cases from the stories:

Institute for Justice cataloged more than 240 misuse incidents, as heard in the Senate, where Lindsey Isaacs testified she was jailed 13 days after a Flock camera placed her Dodge Durango near a fatal crash, though investigators sought a black Durango and witnesses described a maroon one. On accuracy, Roseville police found 71% of 1,427 alerts misread plates in 2023 and 2024, though none led to a stop because the city requires officers to verify a plate first; Flock says its cameras read over 96% of plate characters in optimal conditions and that Roseville used older hardware placed unusually high. Flock’s answers so far: a required offense category for searches, Audit Assistance lockouts, and a default retention of one week instead of the earlier 30 days. The ACLU recommends 48 hours. Related topic: police misuse of surveillance databases.

Who is pushing back on Flock

Courts, Congress and cities are pushing back, but Flock is still in thousands of communities. Key moves:

• Courts. A federal judge in Tulsa ruled a warrantless Flock search unconstitutional, calling the system “indiscriminate mass surveillance”; it is not binding precedent, but among the first such federal rulings. See geofence warrants and the Fourth Amendment.
• Congress. Sen. Hawley opened an investigation in late August and chaired a Senate hearing that Flock’s CEO skipped. Sen. Schumer demands answers by October 16. Hawley introduced the Stop Flock Abuse Act and Sen. Sanders the Block Flock Act.
• States. Florida banned Flock readers on state highways. In Oregon, six cities and two counties cut ties, and the state limited image storage to 30 days.
• Cities. The LAPD stopped using Flock on July 11, and Mayor Bass called on it to end the partnership over deportation fears; Flock denies having contracts with ICE. Pflugerville turned off 28 cameras, Saranac Lake voted 4-1 to cancel, and Lee’s Summit now requires a signed pledge before sharing data. More in ICE and DHS immigration surveillance.

Cancelling does not end the technology. Departments are switching to competitors such as Axon, and the Trump administration uses the HIDTA program to pull plate data from Flock, Axon and other cameras onto federal servers. Records are costly too: North Richland Hills quoted $2.3 million for records on Flock use.

What it means for you

• To see whether police near you use Flock, search the EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance by city or agency, or check the DeFlock map.
• Retention differs by contract: one week is only Flock’s default recommendation, and the LAPD’s old contract guaranteed five years. Ask your city for its terms.
• Public meetings work: Saranac Lake, Pflugerville and Oregon cities cancelled after resident pushback. Ask your council for audit reports and data-sharing rules.
• Records requests can be expensive and uneven: Texas agencies quoted anywhere from nothing to $121,000 for similar records.

Still open: how Flock answers Sen. Schumer by October 16, whether the Tulsa ruling is followed by other courts, whether Congress passes the Stop Flock Abuse Act or the Block Flock Act, and whether cities that drop Flock end up with the same technology from another vendor.