Beyond Flock: What Other License Plate Reader Systems Can Do

Our Take

Credit to Simon Williams for pulling the camera back (pun intended) and looking past Flock Safety, which has become the face of license plate surveillance in the U.S. simply because it markets itself so aggressively to police departments and HOAs. But as the video points out, Flock is one vendor among several. Motorola Solutions (which owns Vigilant Solutions), Rekor, Genetec, and a handful of smaller players all sell ALPR hardware and software to law enforcement, private security firms, and repo companies. Different logos, same basic function: scan every plate that passes, timestamp it, map it, store it, and often share it across jurisdictions with little oversight.

This matters because the public conversation about license plate readers keeps getting flattened into a referendum on one company. That's useful shorthand, but it lets competitors and copycats build out equally invasive networks under the radar while the spotlight stays fixed on Flock. Whether it's Flock's cloud-connected camera grid or a competitor's system feeding data into the same regional fusion centers, the privacy problem is identical: a permanent, searchable record of where your car has been, built without a warrant and often without your city council ever voting on it.

If you want to see what's actually been installed near you, check our camera map — it's not limited to one manufacturer, because the surveillance problem isn't either. And if you're ready to push back on a system in your community, our take-action page has concrete steps for making noise at the local level, regardless of whose logo is on the pole.