They Called It a License Plate Reader. That Was Never Really the Point.
- Michael Routhier
- Jul 2
- 6 min read
I want to tell you about a woman named Chrisanna Elser.
She's a financial advisor in Colorado. By every account, a law-abiding person. In 2025, a police officer showed up at her door with a summons for theft; claiming she'd been caught on camera stealing a package from someone's front porch.
She was stunned. She hadn't done it.
And here's the part that stayed with me. The officer, standing on her doorstep, said this, and I'm quoting directly, because it was captured on her Ring camera;
"You know we have cameras in that town. You can't get a breath of fresh air in or out of that place without us knowing."
She was lucky. Her own vehicle had dashcam footage proving she hadn't stopped. Charges were eventually dropped.
But what if she didn't have that footage?
And what if you didn't know you were being tracked at all?
What Is a Flock Camera And Why Should You Care?
There's a company called Flock Safety. You may not have heard of it. But there's a decent chance one of their cameras has already seen you.
Flock markets what are known as ALPRs, Automated License Plate Readers. Cameras mounted along roadways that log every vehicle that passes. I made a video about this, and they're spreading fast. There are now over 100,000 installed across the United States, and the majority of them are Flock's.
But here's the thing the name doesn't tell you.
These aren't just license plate readers. Not even close.
Law enforcement using the Flock network can search for things like "green sedan with American flag bumper sticker" or "pickup truck with paint scratches on left side and dirt bike in truck bed". The AI searches natural language descriptions; vehicles, physical characteristics, anything the camera picked up.
And Flock doesn't just sell to police departments. They sell to cities, towns, neighbourhoods, and private businesses. Once that footage is in the database, departments from across the country, and in some cases, federal agencies, can access it.
Texas can search footage from Massachusetts. ICE has been granted access through data-sharing agreements with local police. In Denver alone, officers conducted over 1,400 searches on ICE's behalf.
You didn't consent to any of that. Nobody asked.
This Is the Virtuous Machine Question
Every time we cover a story like this one, I come back to the same question.
What is this actually for?
Not the marketing. Not the press release. What is it actually for, and who does it actually serve?
Flock markets its cameras as crime-fighting tools. And to be fair, they've helped solve cases. A murder. A vehicle smash-and-grab ring. Real things.
But here's what the data actually shows. There is little evidence that Flock cameras reduce overall crime rates. The studies aren't there. The proof isn't there. What is there is a very profitable business model built on selling blanket surveillance to governments and institutions, under the cover of public safety.
Marcus Aurelius wrote; "Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect."
The people selling this technology are not losing sleep over your self-respect. They're counting cameras.
The Abuse. Let's Just Name It.
I want to be direct here, because this is where it gets personal.
Dozens of documented cases. Police officers using the Flock network to track their ex-girlfriends. Current partners. People they wanted to monitor.
Not for crime. For control.
In most cases, the only reason any of this came to light was because a victim searched their own plate on a tool called HaveIBeenFlocked and discovered their whereabouts had been queried hundreds of times.
Think about that for a moment. If that tool didn't exist, if they hadn't known to check, they would never have known.
And Flock's response to the abuse cases? They said 15 incidents had been identified, framing it as a sign their "accountability features" were working.
Fifteen known cases. How many unknown ones?
There's more. Flock employees were found to have been watching children at a Jewish community centre in Atlanta; kids swimming, kids in gymnastics, and showing those live feeds to police departments as part of sales demonstrations. Flock's official response was to defend the employees and call the reaction unfair.
These are documented facts from published reporting. I'm not editorializing.
The Security Problems Nobody Told You About
Here's a wrinkle that doesn't get enough attention.
These cameras, the ones tracking your every movement, are themselves riddled with security holes.
A musician named Benn Jordan, with no formal cybersecurity training, independently discovered that at least 70 Flock cameras were exposed to the open internet with no password protection. Live footage. Of parks. Of children. Of couples arguing. Visible to anyone with a commercial search engine and thirty seconds.
With physical access, he and a colleague were also able to gain root access, essentially full control of the device, using basic tools and a physical button on the outside of the camera. They could even install malware.
So to recap; a network of 100,000+ cameras is tracking your movements across the country, that data is being shared with federal agencies, and the cameras themselves have been physically accessible to anyone who walks up to them.
That's not a surveillance system. That's a surveillance liability.
The Part Where Cities Can't Even Leave
You might think, okay, if this is so bad, cities should just cancel their contracts.
Some have tried.
In Dayton, Ohio and Evanston, Illinois, city officials wanted out. But Flock's contracts are ironclad, leaving could mean a breach of contract lawsuit. Their solution? They covered the cameras with garbage bags. Literally. Garbage bags over government surveillance cameras.
In Denver, the city council voted unanimously to cancel the Flock contract. The mayor overruled them. He kept the cameras.
When Denver eventually did cancel, after massive public protest and a packed town hall, they replaced Flock with Axon, a company that already provides police body cameras. Different company. Same surveillance infrastructure.
That is how these systems work. They don't go away. They just change logos.
What You Can Actually Do
I'm not going to tell you there's a toggle you can flip to opt out of this one. There isn't. If a Flock camera is mounted on a road you drive, it saw you. That's the reality.
But there are things you can do. And more importantly, there are things we can do together.
Check if you've already been tracked:
Go to HaveIBeenFlocked.com and search your own licence plate. You may be surprised by what you find
Use the DeFlock map (deflock.org) to see whether any Flock cameras are near your home, your workplace, or your regular routes
Make your voice heard locally:
Find out whether your city, town, or neighbourhood has a Flock contract; this is a matter of public record in most jurisdictions, your city council or local police board will have the information
Attend public meetings. Speak at open mic time. Write to your elected representative
In Canada, contact your MP at ourcommons.ca and ask what federal policies govern ALPR data sharing with U.S. agencies, cross-border data sharing agreements are rarely discussed publicly
In the U.S., find your rep at congress.gov and ask specifically about ALPR oversight legislation
Know your rights:
In Canada, ALPR use falls under PIPEDA and provincial privacy legislation; complaints go to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner at priv.gc.ca
In the U.S., the ACLU has resources specifically on ALPR cameras and your rights: aclu.org/know-your-rights
Talk about it:
The single most effective thing you can do is tell people this exists. Most of your neighbours have no idea what a Flock camera is. That lack of awareness is what lets it grow.
The Bigger Picture
We have talked about AI being used to breach NSA systems. We've talked about your iPhone building a detailed diary of everywhere you go. We've talked about medical wearables harvesting brain data from caregivers who were just trying to help someone they loved.
This is the same conversation. Every single time.
The technology arrives quietly. It gets marketed as a safety feature, a convenience, a tool that helps the good guys. By the time people understand what it actually does, it's already everywhere, the contracts are already signed, and the cameras are already on the poles.
Epictetus said; "First say to yourself what you would be; then do accordingly."
What do we want to be? A society that surveils everyone, all the time, just in case, building databases of every movement of every person who drives a car, searchable by any official with a login?
Or something else?
That question is still open. But only for a little while longer.
I want to hear from you.
Have you checked HaveIBeenFlocked? Did you find something? Do you know whether your city has a Flock contract, or something like it?
Drop it in the comments. This is one of those conversations that is much bigger than any one post, and I learn as much from this community as you learn from me.
Stay sharp. Stay loud. Don't let anyone build a surveillance state one quiet contract at a time without your voice in the room.
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Michael Routhier is the founder of Tech 4 Grown-Ups, a platform dedicated to honest, unfiltered digital literacy for adults 55 and over. Find everything at tech4grownups.com.
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