Report reveals police officers in several states have been using Flock cameras to stalk women
The short version: A new report spotlighted by journalist Hanna Battah shows officers in multiple states allegedly abused Flock ALPR access to track women, proving the surveillance-abuse risk is not hypothetical.
Our Take
Credit to Hanna Battah for pulling this into the light. Every time Flock Safety pitches its camera network to a city council, the sales deck promises 'officer safety' and 'solving crime.' What it conveniently leaves out is that any database of everyone's daily movements is also a ready-made tool for a bad actor with a badge. This report is exactly the kind of case we've warned about: when you build a system that logs where every car goes, you have built a stalking machine, and it will occasionally be used as one.
The defenders of this tech always say 'audits will catch misuse.' But audits are reactive — they tell you abuse happened after someone's life was already upended. The officers in these cases didn't need a warrant, didn't need probable cause, just a login. That's the whole problem with blanket ALPR networks: the convenience that makes them attractive to police is the same convenience that makes them dangerous in the wrong hands, and there's no technical fix for human abuse of unrestricted access.
If you want to know whether this kind of surveillance infrastructure is sitting on your street, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for the next abuse report to find out your own town is exposed, see what you can do on our take-action page.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Hanna Battah, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.