Flock tracks your license plate. We track Flock's $2 million in lobbying.

Our Take

OpenSecretsDC does what it does best: follow the money. And the number they found — over $2 million in federal and state lobbying since 2025 — tells you everything about how Flock Safety plans to handle pushback. When local city councils start asking hard questions about warrantless plate tracking, or when state legislators float bills to rein in ALPR networks, Flock isn't just sending a PR rep to the podium. It's paying lobbyists to shape the rules before residents even know there's a fight.

This is the part of the surveillance expansion story that doesn't show up on a dashcam or a company brochure. A camera on a pole is easy to see and photograph. A lobbying contract in a statehouse is not. That asymmetry is exactly why outlets like OpenSecretsDC matter — they make visible the political infrastructure propping up a surveillance network that now scans billions of plates a month, often with zero public vote on whether a town wanted it in the first place.

Credit to OpenSecretsDC for digging into disclosure filings instead of taking Flock's "community safety" talking points at face value. If you want to see whether this spending is buying Flock a free pass in your own state, check our camera map for nearby readers, and head to take-action for ways to push back before the lobbyists finish writing the rulebook.