WHAT ARE 'FLOCK' CAMERAS?
FLOCK CAMERAS ARE A BRAND OF SURVEILLANCE CAMERAS THAT COLLECT PICTURES OF LICENSE PLATES AND ADD THEM TO A DATABASE THAT POLICE USE TO TRACK PEOPLE AND TARGET THEM
FLOCK automatic license plate reading surveillance cameras, Platsburgh, New York, Sept. 16, 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
MALONE, NEW YORK SEPT. 19, 2026
PART 3 OF A SERIES
FLOCK cameras are surveillance cameras.
Specifically, they are a brand of License Plate Reading or Automatic License Plate Reading camera. They are frequently called "ALPRs" or, without the automatic, "LPRs." FLOCK cameras are manufactured and sold by FLOCK Safety. The company's legal name is FLOCK Group Incorporated.
All LPR cameras including the ones made by FLOCK take photographs of license plates, electronically "read" the numbers and letters on the plates and add that information to a database. All LPR cameras can record thousands of license plates per minute. As many as vehicles drive by.
In addition to license plate tags, FLOCK says its cameras also capture “vehicle type, make, color, license plate state, missing / covered plates, and other unique features like bumper stickers, decals, and roof racks.” This individualized vehicle data is paired with “global positioning system (GPS) location data, and date and time" and recorded into an electronic database, the Congressional Research Service reports.
The database of raw information LPR cameras create with this information is searchable and sharable. Police are pairing LPR databases with predictive Artificial Intelligence, the Associated Press reported last November.
"The predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested," the AP says. "A network of cameras scans and records vehicle license plate information, and an algorithm flags vehicles deemed suspicious based on where they came from, where they were going and which route they took."
"Federal agents in turn may then flag local law enforcement," according to the AP.
Police can also set an LPR surveillance system to send alerts for specific license plates which will notify them where and when the target vehicle was spotted. FLOCK calls it the “Hot List.”
How long license plate data is kept and who it may be shared with is up to whichever government agency or private corporation is collecting it. No federal or New York laws currently regulate the public or commercial use of LPR cameras or the data.
“Municipalities and law enforcement agencies they do what they want because we lack any limits on the technology,” says Daniel Schwarz, Senior Privacy and Technology Strategist in the Policy Department of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “There are no laws on the books. There's no transparency or accountability for LPRs.”
Pair of Motorola ALPRs in South Colton, New York, Sept. 16, 2026. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
FLOCK is only one manufacturer of license plate reading cameras and LPR surveillance systems.
Another is Motorola—the cameras mysteriously placed all over upstate New York. Tuning AI is another. There are more.
The Motorola LPR cameras deployed in New York are made in England—where, unlike in America, there is no constitutional protection of privacy and mass surveillance is the norm. Aldous Huxley, the author who coined the term "Big Brother" in his 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World, was British.
So it's not a surprise it was police in England who invented the first license-plate reading surveillance camera 50 years ago.
While FLOCK is just one company that makes LPRs, FLOCK dominates the market. Thus its cameras are synonymous with LPRs because FLOCK accounts for 66% of all LPR sales in the United States, according to DeFLock.org, a grassroots initiative that maps the locations of the cameras and educates the public about them.
"All automatic license plate reading cameras have the exact same tracking capabilities as FLOCK," Eleni Manis, Research Director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, told us. That's why, she explained, "The outrage is reaching beyond FLOCK now to other license plate reader companies."
"If FLOCK takes all the flak, that's bad," Manis explained, "because there are lots of alternatives waiting to fill FLOCK's shoes. And they're already deployed by the hundreds of thousands throughout the Nation."
DeFlock.org has mapped 143,853 LPR cameras across America. It adds cameras every day. FLOCK alone says it has "more than 120,000 cameras" and "processes more than 20 billion vehicle reads each month." Their cameras, FLOCK boasts, connect "thousands of law enforcement agencies."
While LPR technology has been around for a while, its use was limited by cost.
Now, the "technology is getting cheaper," Schwarz, the NYCLU privacy expert, said. Because it's cheaper, Schwarz explained, "What we're seeing now is this explosion of LPRs."
"This rapid expansion" of the use of LPRs, he added, is "a wild west where it's virtually unregulated."
It shows.
Cops everywhere have been caught abusing LPR databases to spy on romantic interests and exes. At least 50 police officers have been charged with misusing LPR cameras and databases across America, the Washington Post reported Aug. 2.
Just last week, a former Albany County Sheriff's Investigator was busted for allegedly using FLOCK license plate readers to surveil her ex-girlfriend and five other people she knew, according to the misdemeanor charges against Laurie Moore, 47.
Moore searched the County's 32 FLOCK cameras more than 4,000 times without a legitimate law enforcement purpose, the charges allege. Most of those illegal searches were for her ex-girlfriend's vehicle.
Finally, LPR cameras are not perfect. They have an error rate. They mis-record license plate numbers, leading to false arrests.
Just ask Lindsey Isaacs. The 23-year-old Florida woman spent 13 days in jail and seven months in legal hell for allegedly killing someone with her Dodge Durango based on a false FLOCK match.
What all this means is that, every second in nearly every major American city and, increasingly, the countryside surrounding those cities, FLOCK and FLOCK-style LPR cameras are spying on American citizens: taking photographs of their license plates, documenting their daily routines and feeding that raw information into vast databases.
And, every day, more machines single out Americans it considers suspect for extra law enforcement scrutiny—based on patterns of behavior detected in those databases.
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