Profiteering

The billionaires behind Flock stand to profit massively from selling the data we are paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars to collect about us and our children. Technically, Flock can claim they don’t sell data, just like Meta doesn’t sell data. But we all know how much money Meta is making, selling access to that data in the form of targeted advertising, etc.

AI makes mistakes

Many lives have been devastated by false accusations thanks to AI cameras. This system places the burden on the accused to prove their innocence.

A 16-year old Baltimore student was handcuffed at gunpoint because the AI mistook a doritos bag for a gun.
[video] Pensacola man mis-identified by traffic camera
[video] Columbine cop says he is 100% sure of woman’s guilt because of Flock camera and refuses to hear her exonerating evidence.

Liability

When innocent people are detained (or worse) because of AI mistakes, it leads to costly lawsuits. California Attorney General Rob Bonta is suing the town of El Cajon for illegally sharing ALPR data of California residents to unauthorized organizations out of state. (CalMatters)

Aurora innocent woman sues for $1.9M for excessive force.
San Diego man suing for $1.5M

Shifting Terms and Conditions

Flock has changed its terms and conditions several times, shifting the responsibility for misuse of data or data breaches onto towns and municipalities, with little to no accountability for the privately-owned company. Flock’s previous terms also stated flatly, “Flock does not own and shall not sell Customer Data.” That language has since been removed, and they now have a broad license to use and disclose Customer Data. [ACLU]

Expand for details

October 2024 definition of customer data

December 2025 definition of customer data

February 2026 definition of customer data

Weak security

Flock has made numerous mistakes, accidentally exposing infrastructure and secret credentials on the internet. US Senator Ron Wyden has documented many of these risks in a letter to the FTC demanding an investigation into Flock’s risks to national security. [404 Media]

Benn Jordan video on hacking Flock cameras

Waste of money

There is very little evidence that surveillance reduces crime. [404 Media] Crime is reduced by building community and knowing your neighbors. Money could be better spent to increase affordable housing, mental health care, education, and stable employment opportunities. [report]

Unethical behavior

In Orlando, Flock installed 100 cameras without permits and without county approval.
Flock CEO Garrett Langley sent an unsolicited letter to Staunton police chief, accusing activists of a “coordinated attack” against law enforcement and trying to “normalize lawlessness”. He calls DeFlock a “terrorist organization” [video].
In Evanston, Flock reinstalled cameras after the city ordered them shut off.

Misrepresentation

Flock lied about the existence of a data sharing pilot program with CBP until it was uncovered through public records requests last year. [NBC News]
Flock tries to avoid using the word “surveillance” in their presentations to city councils, preferring sanitized language like “LPR cameras” or “license plate readers.” But their patent titled “System and Method for Object Based Query of Video Content Captured by a Dynamic Surveillance Network” uses the word “surveillance” 90 times because it’s written by their own engineers and lawyers, not the sales team.
Flock claims to have a permanent audit trail, but it was altered in December, removing officer names and search reasons.

We are becoming like China

China has been using surveillance-based predictive policing for years – targeting Uyghurs, Falun Gong, protesters, and journalists. These practices have been widely criticized in America, but we heading in that direction.

Not just license plates

Flock is building a surveillance empire; license plates are just the tip of the iceberg. They can stream live video. Images are tagged with metadata about all kinds of vehicle characteristics — make, model, color, bumper stickers, truck bed contents, bike racks, etc.

Flock’s FreeForm AI-powered search tool can also search for characteristics of people, such as “man in blue hoodie with backpack,” and set real-time alerts for those searches.
The Flock Wing Gateway aggregates video from third-party privately-owned security cameras into the same searchable system.
Motorized PTZ cameras on pedestrian walkways that track people, not cars.
Microphones in public places to detect gunshots and “human distress”
Flying surveillance drones.

Repeated violations of California data sharing laws

Flock claimed they had disabled the national lookup feature for California agencies to comply with SB 34, yet dozens of police departments later discovered their data was still being shared out of state — including Mountain View, Santa Cruz, Santa Clara County, and Ventura County — which led many cities to cancel their contracts.

In 2023, EFF discovered San Bernardino County Sheriff is one of 70+ agencies illegally sharing ALPR data with other state and federal agencies for many years in violation of SB 34. [MuckRock]

Mosaic Effect

A single photograph of a car in public raises no expectation of privacy, but 10,000 photographs tracking that car’s every movement over 30 days is a fundamentally different matter — and that is exactly what ALPRs are doing. The mosaic effect is well known in the intelligence community. For example, your ZIP code isn’t sensitive. Neither is your birth year. Your gender is public. But combine those three data points, and 87% of Americans can be uniquely identified. [read more]

Stolen dark web data

Flock Nova integrates data from hacked and breached databases, including SSN, credit cards, crypto wallets, IP addresses, Discord handles. After 404 Media reported on this, Flock denied it and said that feature was cancelled. But one security researcher’s analysis shows that “dark data” was live on their website for a while in 2025.