Flock Cameras CAN Track Your Phone! Signal Trace Revealed!

Our Take

Julian Dorey's deep dive into Flock's "Signal Trace" feature is the kind of reporting we wish got more airtime. For years, Flock has marketed itself as a license-plate reader company, full stop. But if these cameras — or associated hardware — are capable of picking up device signals, that's a quiet expansion of the surveillance net most city councils never debated and most residents never consented to.

This matters because the entire ALPR rollout across the country was sold on a narrow premise: cameras read plates, help solve crimes, done. Every time a new capability surfaces — license plate to face, plate to phone, plate to pattern-of-life — it confirms what critics have said all along: these networks are built to expand quietly, feature by feature, long after the public hearing is over and the cameras are already bolted to the pole.

Credit to Dorey for pulling this thread. Whether or not every technical detail holds up to scrutiny, the broader point stands: once a company owns the physical infrastructure on your street corner, it owns the roadmap for what that infrastructure eventually does. Check our map to see what's already deployed near you, and hit take action if you want to push back before the next "quiet feature" becomes normal.