Holy FLOCK!
The short version: A Texas deputy allegedly used Flock's nationwide ALPR network to search for a woman over an abortion, exposing how easily these systems enable reproductive surveillance.
Our Take
YouTuber I'm That Mitch surfaced a chilling example of why we keep sounding the alarm on Flock Safety: a Texas deputy reportedly typed "had an abortion, search for female" into the reason field of a license-plate reader query that pulled from a nationwide network. That's not hypothetical mission creep — that's a cop allegedly using thousands of cameras across state lines to hunt for a person over a medical decision that's legal in many parts of the country.
This is the core problem with Flock's model: the "reason for search" field is self-reported, rarely audited in real time, and shared across a patchwork of agencies with wildly different laws and politics. One deputy's personal agenda can tap a surveillance web built by hundreds of police departments who never agreed to help enforce another state's abortion restrictions. When the network is this big and the oversight this thin, every camera becomes a potential tool for whoever types the query, not just for solving the crime it was sold to you on.
Credit to I'm That Mitch for digging this up and putting it in front of people. If this bothers you as much as it bothers us, check our camera map to see what's watching your own roads, and hit up take action for ways to push back before your plate data ends up in someone else's investigation.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of I'm That Mitch, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.