U.S. police officers are using Flock surveillance cameras to illegally stalk

Our Take

Every time Flock Safety sells a city council on its camera network, the pitch is the same: this is for finding stolen cars and violent fugitives, not for personal business. Reporting from Princess Balloveras puts a hard dent in that promise, documenting officers who allegedly used their department's ALPR access to run plates tied to romantic partners, exes, or people they had no legitimate investigative reason to track. That's not a hypothetical slippery slope — it's the predictable result of handing thousands of officers nationwide a searchable log of where everyone's car has been.

Flock and its police customers love to point to audit trails as the safeguard, but an audit log only catches misuse after the fact, and only if anyone bothers to look. There's no indication these systems are proactively flagged for stalking-pattern searches, no meaningful federal oversight of who gets credentials, and in most towns, the public never finds out about an abuse case unless a reporter or a victim forces it into daylight. The infrastructure is built for scale and speed, not restraint.

This is exactly why we track where these cameras actually are — because the risk isn't abstract, it's your plate, your route to work, your ex's new address. Check the map to see what's watching your neighborhood, and if your city is considering a Flock contract or already has one, use our take-action resources to push for real audit transparency before the next headline is about your town.