Investigating Flock Safety

Our Take

BM Blogs digs into the origin story Flock Safety loves to tell: a founder frustrated by car break-ins, a waterproof box, an Android phone, and a mission to "eliminate crime." It's a good founder myth. It's also a useful reminder that the surveillance apparatus now scanning your plate at intersections in thousands of towns didn't start with a public debate about whether Americans wanted a private company logging their movements — it started as a garage project that scaled before most city councils understood what they were approving.

That gap between origin story and current reality is the whole ballgame. A single camera catching catalytic converter thieves in one neighborhood is a very different animal than a nationwide, cross-jurisdictional network that lets police departments in one state query plate scans captured in another, often with no warrant and minimal oversight. The video is worth watching for the history, but the history matters mainly because it explains how we got a surveillance company mission statement instead of a surveillance policy debate.

Credit to BM Blogs for laying out the timeline. Our job at DeFlock is to make sure the story doesn't end with a feel-good founder narrative — check our camera map to see how far this has spread in your own backyard, and hit take action if you want to push back on it.