Are Flock License Plate Cameras Violating Your Privacy in New York?
The short version: A Tully Rinckey/News10 segment on 1,000+ Flock cameras in New York shows lawmakers and lawyers finally catching up to what a dragnet of plate readers actually means for the Fourth Amendment.
Our Take
Credit to Tully Rinckey and News10 for getting a working attorney, founding partner Greg Rinckey, on camera to say plainly what we've been arguing for a while: just because a car is in public view doesn't mean the government should get a permanent, searchable record of everywhere it's been. Once you aggregate enough of those "single public sightings" across a state, you've built a movement-tracking system that no legislature ever explicitly voted to create.
That's exactly why Assemblywoman Pamela Hunter's push to restrict how New York's Flock data is collected, stored, and shared matters. Legislation is one of the only checks on a system that expanded through vendor sales pitches to individual police departments rather than any real public debate. Over 1,000 cameras is a lot of infrastructure to have appeared with almost no statewide conversation about retention limits, audit trails, or who else — ICE, out-of-state agencies, private data brokers — gets to query it.
If you live in New York or anywhere else, don't wait for a bill to tell you what's already watching your commute. Check our map to see what's been documented near you, and use our take-action resources if you want to push your local council or state rep the way Hunter is pushing Albany.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Tully Rinckey, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.