Flock Safety: Mission Creep, and the Private Panopticon
The short version: A YouTube deep dive lays out how Flock Safety's ALPR network has drifted from 'stolen car finder' into a de facto national tracking system.
Our Take
Credit to Myth, Supernatural, Fact, or Fiction for pulling together EFF and University of Washington research into one clear narrative: this is what mission creep looks like in real time. A network sold to city councils as a tool for recovering stolen vehicles now doubles as a de facto movement-tracking system, one that's reportedly been tapped for warrantless lookups tied to reproductive healthcare and protest activity. That's not a bug in the system. That's the system working exactly as a mass surveillance dragnet is designed to work.
The most damning point in the video is the 'back door' problem: even towns that pass strict local ordinances limiting who can query their Flock data have found federal agencies like Border Patrol getting access anyway. Local control means nothing if the data still flows upstream. Add in the documented error rates from misreads and bad hotlist matches, and you've got a system that's both invasive and unreliable — a combination that should worry anyone regardless of politics.
This is exactly why we built the map — so people can see how far this camera network actually extends in their own communities, block by block. If your town hasn't had the ALPR conversation yet, or if your council thinks Flock is 'just for finding stolen cars,' now's the time to push back. Head to take action for tools to raise it at your next city council meeting.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Myth, Supernatural, Fact, or Fiction, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.