A Cop Searched Her Ex's Plate 3,000 Times 🦊🚔 #Flock #Surveillance
The short version: An Albany County sheriff's investigator allegedly ran roughly 4,000 plate searches, most targeting an ex, before an audit caught the abuse.
Our Take
Credit to Sly Decodes for digging into this one, because it's the case that proves every warning civil liberties groups have made about ALPR networks right. This wasn't a hacker or a stalker with stolen credentials — it was a sworn officer with legitimate access to Flock's system, using it as a personal tracking tool against an ex-partner. Four thousand queries, the vast majority reportedly aimed at one person, is not an accident or an oversight. It's a pattern that should have triggered alarms long before an outside audit caught it.
This is the part Flock's marketing never leads with: the database doesn't know the difference between a stolen-vehicle lookup and obsessive surveillance of someone you used to date. The system logs searches, sure, but logging only matters if someone is actually reviewing it in real time — and in agency after agency, that review happens only after the damage is done, if at all. Audits that happen annually or 'as needed' are not oversight, they're paperwork.
Every one of these cameras sits on a public road or pole near you, feeding a database that local officers can query with a few keystrokes and little meaningful accountability. If you want to know what's watching your own neighborhood, check our camera map, and if your town is considering a Flock contract, push for real-time audit requirements before it's signed — not after someone's ex gets hurt. Here's where to start.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Sly Decodes, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.