Flock Safety tightens safeguards after alleged police misuse of license plate readers to track women
The short version: Flock adds 'safeguards' after cops reportedly used ALPRs to stalk women, but patches don't fix a network built to track everyone, everywhere.
Our Take
13WHAM ABC News lays out a story we've seen before: a company scrambling to add guardrails only after its cameras get used exactly how critics warned they would — to track women, not just chase stolen cars. When officers can allegedly run plate searches to stalk someone, that's not a hypothetical privacy risk anymore. That's the system working as designed, just pointed at the wrong target this time.
Flock's response — more audit logs, more policy language, more promises — treats this as an abuse-of-access problem. It isn't. With over 120,000 cameras logging where your car goes, the danger was baked in the moment that database got built. Knox County's mayor is right that police should have good tools, but 'good tools' and 'a searchable log of every driver's movements' aren't the same thing, and no dashboard update changes that math.
Audits catch misuse after the fact — they don't stop the network from existing or from being one bad login away from the next scandal. If you want to know whether this kind of surveillance has already reached your neighborhood, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back, our take-action page has next steps.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of 13WHAM ABC News, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.