Flock Cameras: Your Privacy Under Attack! #shorts

Our Take

Kyle Anzalone packs a real question into a short clip: when a vendor markets license plate readers to local police as a tidy public-safety upgrade, what else is riding along in that network? Flock Safety has built one of the largest privately-run surveillance networks in the country, and the pitch to city councils rarely mentions the data-sharing pipelines, retention policies, or potential for facial recognition creep that worry privacy advocates.

That's the core problem with ALPR rollouts everywhere: they're approved in budget meetings as crime-fighting tools, not as the backbone of a tracking system that logs where you drive, when, and how often — information that can be pooled across agencies, states, and sometimes private companies with little public oversight. A short video can't cover every technical detail, but it doesn't need to; the point lands — this technology is expanding faster than the policies meant to constrain it.

If you want to see whether these cameras have already shown up on your streets, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back at the local level, our take-action guide walks you through it.