Ledyard police raise concerns about Flock cameras after recent ‘security incident'

Our Take

Credit to NBC Connecticut for getting police in Ledyard, Connecticut on record about a Flock Safety "security incident" involving their ALPR network. The details are thin so far, but the fact that a police department itself is raising red flags about these cameras is notable. For years, the pitch to small towns has been that Flock's system is secure, professionally managed, and nothing residents need to worry about. When the agency running the cameras starts sending letters expressing concern, that pitch starts to look a lot shakier.

This is the recurring problem with privatized mass surveillance infrastructure: once a town signs up, it's trusting a third-party vendor to safeguard a rolling database of every car that passes through — plates, timestamps, locations, travel patterns. That data doesn't just sit there for traffic enforcement; it's searchable, shareable across jurisdictions, and valuable to anyone who wants to know where you've been. A "security incident" at any point in that chain — vendor servers, local access controls, data sharing agreements — isn't a minor IT hiccup. It's a direct hit to the privacy of every driver whose plate got logged.

We'll be watching to see what Ledyard officials and Flock actually disclose about what happened. In the meantime, check our camera map to see if Flock has a presence near you, and visit our take-action page if you want to push your local council for transparency before the next "incident" becomes the next headline.