Flock Wanted to Turn Rideshare Cars Into Moving Cameras

Our Take

If accurate, this isn't a small tweak to Flock's business model — it's a leap from fixed cameras bolted to a pole at a known intersection to a fleet of unmarked, constantly moving surveillance nodes blanketing entire metro areas. Patrick Bet-David and the PBD crew deserve credit for putting this on the radar, because a mobile ALPR network erases the one limited comfort fixed cameras offered: at least you could learn where they were and route around them. Cars that look like your Lyft driver's Camry can't be mapped the same way.

The pitch makes business sense for Flock — gig drivers are already everywhere, all day, and adding a camera to a windshield mount is cheap compared to municipal pole contracts. But that's exactly the problem. A surveillance company doesn't need a city council vote or a public records request trail to deploy thousands of new eyes on the road; it just needs partnership deals with rideshare and delivery companies, negotiated in private, with riders and drivers kept in the dark about what's riding along with them.

This is why we keep pushing people to see what's already out there before the network gets harder to track. Check our camera map to see what's been documented in your area, and if you want to push back on this kind of expansion, our take-action page has concrete steps for raising it with local officials before mobile ALPR fleets become the new normal.