‘Rampant misuse’: Federal class-action lawsuit filed against Flock

Our Take

FOX Carolina News is reporting on a federal class-action lawsuit that alleges something we've been saying for a while: Flock Safety knows its automated license plate reader network gets misused, and the company keeps the cameras running anyway. 'Rampant misuse' isn't a hypothetical in this telling — it's the alleged pattern. When a private company builds a searchable, nationwide log of where your car has been, the incentive is to keep the network growing, not to police every query that flows through it.

This matters because Flock's pitch has always rested on trust: trust that access is limited to legitimate law enforcement purposes, trust that audit logs actually get audited, trust that a patrol officer or a small-town police chief isn't using the system to track an ex, a journalist, or a political rival. A lawsuit like this is a stress test of that trust, and allegations of knowing inaction are exactly the kind of thing that should worry anyone who assumed 'oversight' meant more than a checkbox.

We'll be watching how this case develops, but the bigger picture doesn't change: these cameras are proliferating in towns across the country with little public debate about who gets access and why. Credit to FOX Carolina News for surfacing the suit. If you want to see how dense this surveillance net is near you, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back locally, our take-action page has a starting point.