Originally Posted By realwar:
https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/32274/Screenshot_2026-07-23_at_22-55-18_Orwell-3800151.JPG

Broken Utility Box Eposes Hidden Cameras
-------------------------------

After a storm knocked down a tree near the Chain Bridge that connects DC to Virginia, a utility worker in the DC area, spotted a box that was on the pole that was broken open.

Hanging out were a pair of… pic.twitter.com/s3ZKG9n8wf

Orwell Day  (@OrwellDay) July 23, 2026

https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/32274/Screenshot_2026-07-23_at_22-56-26_Orwell-3800152.JPG

https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/32274/Screenshot_2026-07-23_at_22-56-32_Orwell-3800153.JPG

https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/32274/Screenshot_2026-07-23_at_22-56-38_Orwell-3800154.JPG

Originally Posted By M4-AK:
The big question...

What's in this for Flock?

Originally Posted By lygxis:
Another "don't take no for an answer" user.  Ex who stalks.

https://www.clickorlando.com/news/local/2026/07/24/central-florida-sheriff-suspends-flock-cameras-after-scandal-involving-detective/

At a City Club of Cleveland forum on July 10, Flock's chief communications officer, Josh Thomas, said that such tech is here to stay.

“There will be cameras in public, and if it’s not Flock, it’ll be someone else,” Thomas said, according to Cleveland.com. “So, the question that we have to ask ourselves is, how do you then align the values that matter?”

The forum came days before Cleveland City Council was scheduled to vote on whether to renew the city’s contract for the 100 Flock cameras it has used since 2023.

Key Takeaways

   Flock Safety’s Alpha drone reads license plates from 2,000 feet autonomously.
   Alpha integrates optical, thermal, and laser sensors into Flock’s existing ALPR network.
   EFF documented cross-jurisdiction data sharing, false hits, and officer misuse of Flock systems.

A drone that reads your license plate from 2,000 feet away sounds like a Black Mirror pitch. It’s actually Flock Safety‘s newest product. Alpha, the company’s first U.S.-built quadcopter, is designed to launch autonomously, stream thermal video to officers, and plug directly into the same ALPR camera network that civil liberties groups have spent years calling a mass surveillance system. The hardware specs are genuinely impressive. The company deploying them has a documented history that demands scrutiny.

Flock’s FAQ promises no facial recognition and no demographic profiling.

Atlanta News First Investigates reported on July 17, 2026 that it identified at least 20 cases in Georgia over the past year in which officers faced discipline or criminal allegations tied to personal use of the Flock Safety license plate reader database.
Flock has replaced officer names with anonymized ID numbers in audit logs when outside agencies search a department's data, and no longer includes license plate numbers in those logs.

A Flock spokesperson said roughly 200 law enforcement leaders raised concerns about activists identifying undercover officers from publicly released audit data, and that omitted information is preserved in full with the originating agency.

Flock has made two changes to what audit records show.

Officer names have been removed from logs in the situation where an outside agency searches a department's data, replaced with anonymized Flock ID numbers. And license plate numbers no longer appear in those logs at all, which critics say makes it substantially harder for a member of the public to establish whether a particular officer searched a particular vehicle.

Flock's stated reason is officer safety, and it deserves to be stated properly rather than waved past. Spokesperson Paris Lewbel said the company identified a pattern of activists using publicly released audit data to identify undercover officers by name and publish their contact details alongside details of active investigations, and that nearly 200 law enforcement leaders raised the concern with company leadership. Lewbel also said nothing is deleted, that omitted information is preserved in full with the originating agency, and that it remains available to authorized oversight bodies.

The receipts on America's license plate dragnet.

Flock Safety cameras read billions of license plates a month for thousands of police departments. This is an open, sourced record of 2,237 documented problems with that network and the systems like it: officers running plates on ex-partners, searches quietly routed to federal immigration agents, towns discovering cameras nobody voted for, audits nobody read, and the lawsuits and repeals that followed. Every entry cites its sources. Nothing here is anonymous rumor.

2,237
Documented incidents
5,494
Sources cited
1,788
Independently verified
311
Officer misuse & audit findings
233
Federal / ICE data sharing
350
Cities that rejected or removed

06 / Contribute
Send something in

This record grows because people send things. A camera nobody voted for, an audit buried in a council packet, a case we got wrong. Nothing is required except the message itself.

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Originally Posted By lygxis:
Another "don't take no for an answer" user.  Ex who stalks.

Originally Posted By Xyster7212:

I stumbled upon some local Troy post about this on Facebook... let's just say it thoroughly displayed every negative stereotype about NY RINO boomers.
In case you're wondering what kind of people vocally support flock (aside from cops, obviously), here are plenty of examples:

Old post from when they were first going up:
https://www.facebook.com/share/1BNgC1DiWo/

Mayor's post about them being cut down:
https://www.facebook.com/share/14r8pkWGWuS/

Last December, Milwaukee Police Department internal affairs detectives began investigating an officer accused of misusing Flock, the department’s automated license-plate reader system.

The detectives investigating officer Josue Ayala found he secretly used Flock to learn the location of his romantic partner 124 times and that partner’s ex 55 times, according to a February criminal complaint.

Ayala agreed to resign from the department and plead guilty to attempted misconduct in public office as part of a deal, according to court records.

[color=#388e3c]Then earlier this month, one of the detectives who had investigated Ayala was himself arrested for misusing the Flock system. The detective, Tehrangi Chapman, admitted to using Flock to track two people and to secretly installing a GPS device on one person’s vehicle, according to a criminal complaint. [[/color]

Founded in 2017, Flock announced last March it was valued at $7.5 billion after its latest $275 million funding round from major Silicon Valley investors, who include Andreessen Horowitz and the Peter Thiel-backed Founders Fund.

SEC. 2. Prohibition.

(a) Federal agencies.—No Federal agency may purchase, deploy, operate, access, or contract for any automated surveillance system that identifies, tracks, or records individuals through any of the following:

(1) An automated license plate recognition system, including a Flock Safety camera.

(2) Facial recognition technology.

(3) Technology that uses biometric identification, including fingerprint, iris, retinal, voice, gait, or other personally identifiable biological characteristics.

(4) Any technology that captures, analyzes, or retains a person's image, likeness, or other personally identifiable information for the purpose of conducting persistent or mass surveillance.

(b) State and local governments.—A State, local, or Tribal government may not use Federal funds to purchase, deploy, operate, access, or contract for any automated surveillance system that identifies, tracks, or records individuals through any of the systems or technologies described in paragraphs (1) through (4) of subsection (a).

SEC. 3. Collected data.

(a) Deletion.—The head of any Federal agency that obtains data in violation of section 2(a) shall delete such data not later than 30 days after it is obtained.

(b) Inadmissibility.—Any data obtained by the Federal Government in violation of section 2(a) may not be admitted into evidence in any court or administrative proceeding.

On July 17, that audit trail is what ended Sgt. Kabiru Salawu’s career. A DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office veteran since August 2009, Salawu was fired and arrested after an internal review found he had run queries through the county’s Flock system for reasons that had nothing to do with police work. He is charged with a felony count of violating his oath of office and a misdemeanor count of misusing license plate data, and he is being held without bond at the DeKalb County Jail.

The Same Company Is Also Making Its Logs Less Transparent

Here’s the part worth knowing if you’re the one driving past these cameras every day. While that AI tool has been surfacing more misuse, Flock has simultaneously scaled back what the public can see in its own audit records. Officer names tied to cross-agency searches now show up as anonymized ID numbers instead, and license plate numbers no longer appear in logs released through open records requests. Lewbel says the change followed complaints from roughly 200 law enforcement leaders that activists were using published audit data to identify undercover officers, and maintains that “all omitted information is preserved in full… and remains available to authorized oversight bodies.”

Originally Posted By Cobalt135:
And yeah, that screenshot above is legit.

1 mile stretch of road in Youngtown, AZ




https://i.imgur.com/AsdvwyV.jpeg

Originally Posted By sandboxmedic:
I imagine if the organizations deploying these things are required to remove them they will be moved to private property and "owned" by those companies with incentives from the organization to point them in the directions they want.  Then they'll screech about private companies having the right to record on their property, destruction of private property, etc.  That and they'll just hide them better, like the two cameras in that utility box that were posted earlier.  Unfortunately, as more people are protesting these things the powers that been continue to essentially ignore us and do whatever they want with few if any consequences.  No matter what the people say these things are only going to proliferate in increasing numbers, especially as other companies jump in to collect and sell everyone's data.  I hate this timeline.

Originally Posted By M4-AK:
Flock apparently has enough money to start using
lawfare to sue people.

Originally Posted By M4-AK:
Flock apparently has enough money to start using
lawfare to sue people.

Originally Posted By M4-AK:
Flock apparently has enough money to start using
lawfare to sue people.

Originally Posted By AR-1556:
If these things are accessible via web and easily compromised i'm surprised there isn't mass hacking going on. I bet there could be big ransomware money if a hacker group would disable the flock network!

Originally Posted By SmilingBandit:
Thanks Bama for sharing this one in another thread:

ST. CLAIR COUNTY, Ala. (WBRC) - Two employees from different police departments in St. Clair County are no longer employed after it was discovered they violated the policy around Flock camera systems.

Though they would not name the people involved, Moody Police Chief Reece Smith and Springville Police Chief Jason Mize confirmed they were employees in their departments.

Both violations were discovered during audits of the Flock camera system.

Mize said checks had been conducted on a family member of the now former Springville officer. After the family member was notified and the investigation was concluded, the officer was called into the office where he resigned on July 8.

In Moody, Smith said it was discovered that the employee had violated the license plate reader policy and was immediately placed on leave. After an internal investigation, the employee was fired three days later.

Both cases have been turned over to the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA) for review.

“We take public trust very seriously,” Smith said. “I’m glad we were able to take swift action and turn it over to ALEA.”

..

Regarding the Moody violation, Smith addressed online rumors, saying there was no victim but declining to elaborate further.

https://www.wbrc.com/2026/07/27/employees-2-police-departments-st-clair-county-violated-flock-camera-policy/

Originally Posted By Leisure_Shoot:
supposedly obtained through a FOIA request regarding all things Flock with the city

https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/46582/758793840_10244112398686306_272706832095-3802581.jpg

Originally Posted By Leisure_Shoot:
supposedly obtained through a FOIA request regarding all things Flock with the city

https://www.ar15.com/media/mediaFiles/46582/758793840_10244112398686306_272706832095-3802581.jpg

in /r/FlockSurveillance
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r/FlockSurveillance • u/Green_Detail3710 • 12h ago
Axon is a bigger problem than flock.

Disclaimer: Posting this anonymously because I’m a current officer at a large agency, and I’d rather not have this attached to my name. These are my personal opinions.

If you’re worried about government overreach, why is nobody talking about Axon’s mobile ALPRs?

My agency uses Axon. Every patrol car has an Axon dash cam with ALPR capabilities. That means every time we’re driving around on calls or just patrolling, license plates are being read all over the city. Apartment complexes, neighborhoods, shopping centers, parking lots, side streets etc.

All that data populates into a searchable database with the ability to plot map points based on the patrol
Vehicles gps data. It also takes an extremely high definition photo of every single vehicle that it scans, during the day it’s not uncommon to be able to identify drivers and passengers in a vehicle from these photos. It is important to note that none of this data currently requires any legal process to search and there is very little oversight.

A Flock camera only sees the cars that drive past that one intersection.

An Axon-equipped patrol car is a moving license plate reader. Everywhere that car goes, it’s collecting plate reads.

And here’s what bothers me: if you drive around the same city every day like most people do, those reads start adding up. Go to the same gym every morning? Same grocery store every Sunday? Same girlfriend’s apartment every weekend? Same office Monday through Friday? Over time, that history can reveal a pretty detailed pattern of your life. You weren’t being investigated. You just happened to exist in public while the government collected data on where your car was seen.

That’s the part I have a problem with.

Before anyone jumps in, yes, ALPRs help recover stolen cars and catch violent offenders. I’ve seen them work. I’m not arguing they have zero value.
I’m saying the public has almost no idea how much data is being collected on people who have done absolutely nothing wrong.

Personally, I think we’ve crossed a line. Government surveillance shouldn’t become acceptable just because the technology exists. We shouldn’t normalize creating searchable databases of innocent people’s movements because it’s convenient.

If you’re showing up to city council meetings to fight Flock cameras, I’d encourage you to ask your local department some questions too.

Do your patrol cars use Axon mobile ALPRs?
How long are those plate reads kept?
Can historical reads be searched by plate?
Who has access to that data?
What oversight is there to prevent abuse?

I don’t care whether the camera is bolted to a light pole or sitting on the windshield of a patrol car. If the end result is the government quietly building a historical record of where ordinary people travel, it’s still government overreach.

And in my opinion, the mobile systems deserve a lot more scrutiny than they’re getting.

Another massive issue is Fusus, the real time crime app owner by axon. I have the fusus app on my phone, and I can load any camera in the city (to include city owned cameras and cameras businesses has given the real time crime center access to) and a fleet of drones that live stream to the app when dispatched. Dystopian.

For what it’s worth, my city also has flock cameras, and almost no one uses them. The axon system is substantially more powerful.

One other side note I don’t think people realize, flock cameras are frequently privately owned, for example lowes has cameras on all of their entrances in almost every location in my area.

Feel free to ask me anything, I think this deserves far more attention than it’s getting.

Flock Safety’s FreeForm tool lets authorized users type a plain-English description—make, model, color, stickers, damage, or accessories—and receive matching detections from every participating camera, even when no license plate is visible or recorded. The system stores a Vehicle Signature for each passage and returns time-stamped locations across the shared network.

In Kalamazoo, Michigan, city-owned Flock cameras produced audit logs showing Michigan State Police running 54 natural-language searches that contained no plate number at all. Every query was approved on the spot. Descriptions ranged from “U-Haul trailer with a zebra” to “white Ram, plate undetected.” The same logs document the operator, reason code, number of camera networks searched, and result.

Flock markets the capability under the slogans “No Plate? No Problem” and “Vehicle Fingerprint.” Municipal contracts grant external agencies access to the local camera feed while the city pays for the hardware and cloud service. Data is retained for 30 days; after that window the searchable history expires unless previously exported.

Existing legal frameworks that govern traditional plate-based ALPR do not clearly constrain free-text visual search. Oversight therefore rests on local contract terms, audit-log transparency, and open-records requests that have already compelled release of the Kalamazoo logs.

Sources

Flock FreeForm product page

https://www.flocksafety.com/products/flock-freeform

Natural-Language Video & LPR Search | Flock FreeForm

https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/natural-language-video-and-license-plate-reader

Flock’s FreeForm Free-For-All | Have I Been Flocked

https://haveibeenflocked.com/news/freeform-freeforall

Kalamazoo residents, city at odds over use of surveillance cameras – MLive

https://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/2026/01/kalamazoo-residents-city-at-odds-over-use-of-surveillance-cameras-after-ice-killing.html

Vehicle Recognition Software for Investigation-grade LPR – Flock Safety

https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/vehicle-recognition-software-for-investigation-grade-lpr

Flock, Ring and Atlanta’s network of more than 28,000 integrated cameras haven’t improved city’s crime clearance rates

Despite an eightfold increase in the number of cameras integrated into the city’s Connect Atlanta surveillance program, crime clearance rates have not meaningfully increased, according to data collected by the FBI.
By Matt Scott  ● News  ● July 28, 2026

According to the FBI, an offense is cleared by arrest or solved for crime reporting purposes. Police can also clear cases by exceptional means, including the identified alleged offender’s death, a victim refusing to cooperate or prosecutors declining to pursue the case.

Despite the growth of the Flock network, APD’s clearance rates have not increased markedly between 2021 and 2025, the first and last full years for which comparable clearance data are available.


Category20212025DifferenceHighest YearLowest YearVariation
Criminal Homicide53.4%48.0%-5.4%61.9%48.0%13.9%
Rape37.7%37.7%-0.0%37.7%21.2%16.5%
Robbery25.5%25.4%-0.1%28.8%25.4%3.4%
Aggravated Assault37.6%37.8%0.2%39.6%34.5%5.1%
Burglary10.7%11.6%0.9%12.3%10.6%1.7%
All Other Larceny9.0%7.0%-2.0%9.0%4.1%4.8%
Motor Vehicle Theft9.9%10.2%0.3%10.2%3.9%6.3%
Theft From Motor Vehicle1.4%2.8%1.4%2.8%1.4%1.4%
Shoplifting38.8%37.6%-1.2%38.9%34.4%4.5%

A Georgia police supervisor was arrested last week after she allegedly used a network of automated license plate reader cameras to monitor her boyfriend’s vehicle for personal reasons.

Paige Forte, 30, a dispatcher supervisor in the Conyers Police Department’s Real-Time Crime Center, was charged with misuse of a license plate reader system following an internal audit and subsequent state investigation.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation alleges that Forte accessed the Flock Safety system more than 30 times between April and July of 2026 for non-law enforcement purposes. CBS Atlanta reported that the Conyers Police Department found that she used the technology to track a vehicle driven by her domestic partner.