Gotham’s Zero Flock Cameras!

Our Take

Credit to Specular DC for digging into a genuinely interesting data point: Gotham, by their count, has zero Flock Safety cameras. For a watchdog project like ours, that kind of absence is almost more interesting than a city packed with them, because it begs the question of why. New York isn't exactly camera-shy — it's got one of the most extensive video surveillance and license-plate reading networks in the country, built and run by the NYPD itself rather than outsourced to a private vendor like Flock.

That distinction matters. Flock's pitch to small and mid-size police departments is that it's a turnkey camera network they don't have to build themselves. A city like New York doesn't need that pitch because it already has the Domain Awareness System, its own ALPR units, and a budget big enough to run surveillance in-house. Zero Flock cameras doesn't mean zero automated tracking of your plate — it just means the brand name on the box is different. That's a distinction people should keep in mind before assuming a 'no Flock' zone is a privacy safe harbor.

This is exactly why we built our map — to track Flock specifically, since it's the fastest-growing and most opaque network nationwide, stitching together thousands of local departments into a single searchable surveillance grid. Check the map to see what's near you, and if you want to push back on these systems in your own town, our take action page has concrete steps.