How Flock Safety Detects and Stops ALPR Misuse

Our Take

This is Flock Safety marking its own homework. The company that sells departments a nationwide network of always-on license plate cameras is now selling them a tool to catch cops who abuse that same network. Notice what's being solved here: not the existence of dragnet surveillance, but the embarrassing headlines when an officer runs plates on an ex or a political rival. Audit Assistance is a PR patch, not a policy change — it flags 'abnormal' searches after they happen and still leaves a human administrator, usually inside the same department, to decide whether to act.

The bigger issue this video quietly sidesteps is that 'misuse' isn't just about rogue individual officers. It's baked into the system when every plate, every driver, every trip to a clinic or a protest or a lawyer's office gets logged and stored whether or not you're suspected of anything. Making the audit trail 'mandatory' is a marginal improvement, but it does nothing to shrink the footprint of these cameras or give the public real say in whether they get installed at all.

Accountability tools designed and controlled by the vendor aren't a substitute for independent oversight, public records access, and communities deciding for themselves whether they want this infrastructure watching every car that passes. Check our map to see how many Flock cameras are already logging your neighborhood, then hit take action for tools to push back at your next city council meeting.