Flock AI Surveillance Cameras

The Flock database holds record of our most personal location data. It records when you leave for work every day, what routes you take, when you are alone in the car versus when your children are with you. It can expose intimate details about your life including trips to doctors, therapists, support group meetings for addiction, as well as  places of worship and protests you attend.

Because this data is not just retained within the Madison County Sheriff Office, but is shared in a nationwide database, it leaves the door wide open for misuse. Stalkers, hackers, foreign spies, or anyone else that gains access to a Flock customer account can misuse it to track Americans across the country.

In January 2026, Security Researchers found 67 Flock cameras streaming to the open internet without passwords.

In November 2025, Security Researchers discovered they could hack into Flock Camera systems in under 30 seconds by simply pushing a button on the back of the devices.

These researchers discovered other several highly negligent security vulnerabilities within Flock Camera Systems:

1. Passwords were stored on the device in plain text (no encryption)
2. Lack of multi-factor authentification; a violation of federal law and industry standard security practices; this potentially means the device has less security than logging into Disney Plus and this is very sensitive data. 
3. Flock logins found for sale on Russian hacking forums

These findings prompted US Senators and Representatives to submit an official letter to the FCC to open an investigation into Flock Safety, highlighting the National Security risks associated with their camera systems.

•  "By not requiring industry-standard multi-factor authentication (MFA) to secure law enforcement accounts, Flock has needlessly exposed Americans’ sensitive personal data captured by the company’s surveillance cameras to theft by hackers and foreign spies, and unauthorized access through multiple documented instances of unauthorized password sharing."

Flock continually claims “Flock has never been hacked.” Which is a blatant lie, given all of the evidence that is freely available to review.

Should the Madison County Sheriff Department be trusting our extremely sensitive location data with an AI startup company that continuously lies to their clients and has a cavalier attitude towards cybersecurity?

Flock cameras are not just tools for catching criminals, they record the movements of everyone. This is known as dragnet mass surveillance—collecting information on all residents, regardless of suspicion. 

The Fourth Amendment is meant to protect us from warrantless government surveillance. It was originally written in response to the British Crown's "general warrants", authorizations that allowed officials to search anyone at any time without evidence or probable cause.

When the fourth amendment was codified long ago, it was decided that as a nation, we value liberty over security. As Benjamin Franklin warned, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

In Madison County, the Sheriff’s Department’s use of Flock Safety surveillance cameras raises similar concerns. By continuously recording the movements of vehicles throughout the county and storing that data in a private company’s database, the system allows extensive tracking of residents’ daily activities without a warrant or public oversight, bypassing the privacy protections the Fourth Amendment was designed to ensure.

In Carpenter v. United States (2018), the Supreme Court ruled that police cannot access historical cell phone location data without a warrant, recognizing that tracking a person’s movements over time is a deeply personal form of information. ALPR cameras, like those being installed through the Flock Safety subscription, collect similar location data on vehicles across the county. Because this surveillance is continuous and centrally stored by a private company, it raises serious concerns that residents’ movements are being tracked without the warrants or oversight that the Fourth Amendment is meant to guarantee.

As one observer put it: "While today they are no threat to me...circumstances change, leadership changes, laws change. When you really boil this down, what is this nationwide system? What did Flock really make? It's a weapon. A silent weapon. Right now it targets what many would agree are criminals. But with the flip of a switch this system can be used to target or oppress anybody the people in power decide is a threat."

"If you've got nothing to hide, you've got nothing to fear" is a tempting thought - until someone misuses your information. Privacy isn't about hiding wrongdoing. It's about autonomy, dignity, and the ability to live free from unjust scrutiny. "Saying you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say." - Edward Snowden

Without strict oversight, law enforcement can misuse ALPR data for unrelated investigations or personal tracking.

A Milwaukee Police Department officer charged after using Flock Camera systems to stalk the woman he was dating

Specifically, he looked up the license plate of his dating partner more than 120 times between March 26 and May 26 of 2025. He also looked at a second license plate that belonged to that person's former partner 55 times in the same time period. The officer listed the reason for his search in the Flock system as "investigation."

Kechi police lieutenant arrested for using police technology to stalk wife

Kechi Police Lieutenant Victor Heiar was arrested by the Wichita Police Department after it was discovered he utilized his position within the police department to unlawfully access WPD’s flock license plate reader technology to monitor where his estranged wife was located.

A Menasha police officer was charged with misconduct in office for using a license plate recognition system to track his ex-girlfriend

According to the complaint, Morales’ ex-girlfriend complained he had used the Flock system to monitor her location. A review of Morales’ activity showed he tried to use it five different times for her vehicle in early October 2025.

In 2025, a Georgia police chief was arrested for using the system to harass and stalk victims.

Another Georgia reserve officer was terminated after an internal investigation revealed he exploited the city's Flock camera network for personal gain and suspected corporate espionage.

In August of 2025, ranking member of the House Oversight Committee Robert Garcia (D-CA) initiated an investigation into Flock Safety over reports and cases in which its ALPR system was used by law enforcement to wrongly track and to potentially harm people. 

An officer in Georgia accepted a bribe to run a woman’s license plate

Flock’s contracts often include clauses that allow the company or local authorities to change the terms of data collection, storage, or sharing without public notice. 

On February 16, 2026, Flock rewrote its Terms & Conditions again. 

Here are some of the concerning contract changes they quietly made:

1. The December commitment that “Flock does not own and shall not sell Customer Data” was deleted. That sentence no longer appears anywhere in the contract.
2. The data license was expanded. The February changes grants flock: “ a limited, non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide license to (a) use and disclose Customer Data to provide the Flock Services; and (b) use Customer Data to support and improve Flock’s products and services”

That’s two critical additions. The license is now perpetual — meaning it doesn’t expire when the contract ends. Flock quietly granted itself ‘forever’ access to everything recorded through their cameras. And clause (b) allows Flock to use all Customer Data for its own product development (the training of future AI models). No restrictions. No limitations.

Read about even more changes to the Terms & Conditions here.

Residents deserve full transparency before cameras are installed or upgraded, including:

• How long data is stored
• Who can access it
• How it may be used or shared

The negligent use of ALPRs has led to dangerous police encounters, including pulling guns on innocent drivers. Here are just a few examples:

Brandon Upchurch was mauled by a police dog and spent time in jail after a Flock camera misread his license plate. 

Flock camera errors led police to accuse a Denver woman of package theft, watch footage of an officer aggressively insisting he knew she stole it because of all of the cameras installed in the town, "You can't get a breath of fresh air in or out of that place without us knowing” Sgt. Jamie Milliman insisted.

Cops Terrorize Black Family but Blame License Plate Reader for Misidentifying 'Stolen' Vehicle

San Francisco Woman Pulled Out of Car at Gunpoint Because of License Plate Reader Error

Deputies Sued After False ALPR Hit Leads To Guns-Out Traffic Stop Of California Privacy Activist

Privacy advocate sues CoCo sheriff's deputies after license plate readers mistakenly target his car stolen and deputies detain him at gunpoint 

Private surveillance vendor Flock Safety reinstalled all of its stationary license plate cameras in Evanston, Illinois without authorization. 

The city of Eugene discovered Flock reactivated a camera after the department had ordered it shut down. The department learned of the reactivation not from Flock but from a community member.

Last November, the city of Verona, Wisconsin, voted to end their contract with Flock Safety in hopes of protecting residents’ privacy. Several months after the closure of their contract, Mayor Luke Diaz noticed that the cameras were still up. City officials reached out to Flock to demand they take down cameras but the company effectively ignored their request, while at the same time a sales team contacted them to try and sell them a new contract. “They didn’t have enough time to send a technician out here for the cameras, but they did have sales people reaching back out to us,” Diaz said.

“The fact that they didn’t take the cameras down shows that we are the product,” Diaz said. “They were never really selling to us in the first place. What they are doing is selling to much bigger agencies the ability to spy on a ton of people.”

“The ability to spy on us is being sold to much bigger players, and to me, that’s another indication of the cameras need to come down,” Diaz said. “The whole point of Flock is that it’s a network, and the more people you have in the network, the more people you have accessing and using it, the stronger it gets.”

Surveillance Company Flock Now Using AI to Report Us to Police if it Thinks Our Movement Patterns Are “Suspicious”

Flock is also tying its cameras to commercial data brokers, making it possible for police to link license plates directly to personal information. While Flock once claimed its system didn’t collect identifiable data, the new tools openly let officers “jump from LPR to person,” effectively exploiting a legal loophole to access private data. By connecting ALPRs with these brokers, Flock is automating a way around traditional privacy protections.

In another major expansion, Flock is turning its plate readers into surveillance cameras. The company has announced that police departments will soon be able to obtain not just still photos from ALPR cameras, but also video, with the ability to request live feeds or 15-second clips of cars passing by the cameras.

Learn more: ACLU article on Flock

Flock Safety markets itself as a simple license plate reader. But their patents, acquisitions, and architecture reveal something far more dangerous: infrastructure for total surveillance. and profiling individuals beyond their vehicles.

The Patent They Don’t Talk About

Flock’s patent US11416545B1 describes a powerful surveillance system far beyond license plate reading. It can identify and track people, vehicles, animals, and objects across multiple cameras, both public and private, including police, store, traffic, home, and drone cameras.

Key capabilities include:

• Human tracking: detect individuals, estimate age, gender, race, height/weight, clothing, and body shape.
• Face recognition: match faces across cameras and networks.
• Vehicle intelligence: track make, model, color, decals, occupants, and license plates.
• Full-body fingerprints: identify the same person or vehicle across cameras, angles, and days.
• Movement reconstruction: log exact timestamps, GPS locations, and map a person’s movements.
• Real-time alerts: notify authorities when a specific person, vehicle, or behavior is detected.

In short, this patent outlines a “Dynamic Surveillance Network” that combines video, AI, and multiple camera sources into a nationwide tracking system, capable of profiling and following residents anywhere cameras exist—public or private.