It tells you which cameras it routed you around.
The short version: A new routing tool reportedly shows drivers which Flock ALPR cameras they avoided, exposing just how blanketed everyday routes have become.
Our Take
Flock U's demo is a small thing with a big implication: if an app can map a route around license plate readers, that means someone has already mapped where all the cameras are — and where they're not. That's useful for drivers who'd rather not have their plate, timestamp, and location logged by default and stored for who knows how long. But it's also a quiet admission of scale. You don't build a "route around the cameras" feature unless the cameras are everywhere.
That's the part worth sitting with. Flock's pitch has always been that these systems are for finding stolen cars and wanted suspects, not for logging the daily movements of everyone else. Yet here's a tool whose entire value proposition is helping ordinary drivers dodge routine surveillance of their own plates. If avoiding the dragnet requires a dedicated app, the dragnet is the default, not the exception.
We'd rather people know exactly where this infrastructure sits in their own neighborhood instead of routing around it one trip at a time. Check our camera map to see what's logging your plate right now, and hit take action if you want to push back on it where you live.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Flock U, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.