Secret car tracking is not due process

Our Take

AI Safety Watch is flagging something we've been shouting about for a while: when police quietly lean on Flock Safety's license plate reader network to build a case, then scrub that fact from reports or parallel-construct their way around it, the defendant never gets a fair shot at challenging the surveillance that put them in a courtroom. That's not a technicality — it's the whole point of due process. If a machine silently tracked your car's movements for months and nobody has to tell you, you can't cross-examine the evidence, challenge the warrant (or lack of one), or even know it exists.

This is exactly the pattern we've documented: Flock markets itself as a tool for solving crimes, but the backend lets any connected agency query a nationwide trove of plate scans with minimal oversight and even less transparency to the public. When police departments treat that capability as a secret rather than a disclosed investigative method, they're betting that defense attorneys, judges, and journalists won't notice. Reporting like 404 Media's — and coverage like this video — is how that bet gets called.

Credit to AI Safety Watch for putting a spotlight on it. If you want to see how dense this tracking network is near you, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back on secret ALPR deployments in your town, our take-action page has concrete steps.