Flock safety is tracking everything

Our Take

Credit to The Unraveling (Yersocialistdad) for putting a spotlight on Flock Safety, the company whose camera poles have quietly multiplied along American streets, parking lots, and neighborhood entrances. We haven't watched this one with a transcript in hand, so we won't pretend to summarize every claim — but the core premise, that Flock's network amounts to a de facto tracking system for ordinary drivers, lines up with what we've been documenting for a long time.

That's the uncomfortable truth about ALPR infrastructure: it was sold to city councils as a tool for catching stolen cars and Amber Alerts, but the architecture captures everyone's movements by default, retains the data, and shares it across a growing web of agencies with little public oversight. Once that kind of dataset exists, the question stops being "did you do anything wrong" and becomes "who gets to look, for how long, and why." Videos like this matter because most residents still have no idea a camera near their house is logging every plate that passes, timestamped and searchable.

If this video left you wondering whether Flock cameras are operating near you, check our camera map to see what's been documented in your area, and if you want to push back locally — at a city council meeting, through a public records request, or by organizing neighbors — our take-action page has concrete steps to start with.