Your License Plate Is Being Tracked #ALPR #LicensePlateReaders #Surveillance #privacy
The short version: NYCLU's short explainer nails the core problem: every plate reader vendor, not just Flock, is building a warrantless movement-tracking network with zero real oversight.
Our Take
Credit to the NYCLU for keeping this simple: a camera doesn't need to catch you breaking the law to log your plate, your location, and your timestamp forever. That's the whole ALPR business model, whether the box on the pole says Flock, Motorola, Rekor, or Axon. We spend a lot of time on Flock specifically because they're the biggest player and the most aggressive about data-sharing between agencies, but NYCLU is right to widen the lens. Swap one vendor's logo for another and the surveillance math doesn't change.
The bigger point buried in this video is the one legislators keep dodging: there is no federal standard for how long this data gets kept, who can query it, or what happens when it leaks or gets abused. New York doesn't have statewide guardrails. Most states don't. That's not an oversight, it's a vacuum that vendors and police departments have been happy to fill on their own terms.
If you want to see how far this network has already spread near you, check our camera map, and if you're in a state debating ALPR rules right now, our take-action page has what you need to push back before the guardrails get written by the industry instead of the public.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of NYCLU, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.