Flock Safety Wanted 350,000 Spies on Wheels

It was never pitched to the drivers. It was pitched to the Attorney General.

350,000. That's the number I want you to sit with before you read another word. That's how many Uber, Lyft, and delivery drivers one company wanted to quietly turn into a rolling surveillance network. Not with a new gadget you'd have to install. Not with a form you'd sign. With the dashcam already mounted on their windshield.

And here's the part that should actually stop you; it's not clear the drivers would have ever known.

What Actually Happened

Flock Safety, the company behind those pole-mounted license plate reader cameras now sitting in more than 6,000 communities across the United States, put together a pitch presentation for the Georgia Attorney General's Office back in August 2025. The plan was to partner with Nexar, a popular dashcam manufacturer, and pull license plate data directly from roughly 350,000 rideshare and delivery vehicles already on the road every single day.

In Flock's own words, obtained through a public records request filed by 404 Media, the goal was to "conscript rideshare and delivery drivers to collect license plate data." Conscript. Not invite. Not offer. Conscript.

Think about what that would have actually meant on the ground. Flock's cameras have always been stationary, bolted to a pole, watching one intersection. This plan would have turned every Uber ride, every Lyft trip, every food delivery run into a moving surveillance node, scanning license plates at red lights, past driveways, down residential streets, anywhere the driver happened to go. Not because the driver chose to participate. Because their dashcam was already there.

The deal fell through. Flock confirmed the Nexar partnership never materialized. I want to be straight with you about that, because I don't do fear for the sake of clicks on this post. But I need you to hear the next part just as clearly.

Why "It Didn't Happen" Isn't the Point

The fact that this specific deal collapsed is not the same thing as the intent disappearing. The pitch document is real. It exists because a resident in Dunwoody, Georgia, filed a records request and someone actually read what was inside it. That's the only reason any of us know this happened at all.

Here's what should genuinely alarm you; this wasn't designed as an opt-in tool for drivers. It was built to work invisibly, in the background, folded into hardware people already had in their cars for a completely different reason, recording their own trips. And that's not a one-off pattern for Flock. In some jurisdictions, residents are automatically enrolled in data-sharing to Flock's "CityStream" map and have to actively opt out. Silence gets treated as consent. That's the same logic, just scaled down from a city to a windshield.

This Isn't an Isolated Incident

I want you to see the wider pattern here, because this story doesn't exist in a vacuum. In July 2026, the LAPD suspended its three-year partnership with Flock over surveillance concerns. Around the same time, a security researcher exposed something Flock had publicly denied for years, despite the company insisting its cameras don't track people, its own internal training videos showed police officers tracking a suspect "location to location to location," with camera footage visibly following a walking person in real time.

And in November 2025, a Washington court ruled that data captured by Flock's cameras qualifies as public record. That's not an abstract legal footnote. It means this data has real weight, real reach, and it's already ended up in places that should make you uncomfortable, including reports of Washington cities sharing Flock's license plate data with federal immigration agents.

The Question I Keep Coming Back To

If a company is willing to design a system specifically so the people generating the data never know they're generating it, what does that tell you about whether they expected you'd say yes if they'd actually asked?

And a second question, one I think matters even more; how many other "public safety" tools are being pitched to attorneys general and city councils right now, in presentations the public will never see unless someone happens to file the right records request at the right time? This is the same pattern I've talked about before with quiet infrastructure-building, laying the groundwork now, testing whether there's public appetite or simply a lack of resistance, and being ready to move the moment attention shifts elsewhere.

What You Can Actually Do

• Check whether your local police department contracts with Flock Safety, most city council meeting minutes and vendor contracts are public record and searchable

• Ask your city council directly whether ALPR data collected in your community is shared with other agencies, including federal immigration enforcement

• If you drive for Uber, Lyft, or a delivery platform and use a Nexar or similar dashcam, go read the data-sharing terms yourself and look specifically for auto opt-in settings

• Support the public pressure already in motion, there's an active petition circulating on this exact issue for anyone who wants to act now

Where I Land on This

This is precision over panic. The deal didn't happen. But the blueprint now exists, sitting in a drawer somewhere, ready to be revived by Flock or dusted off by another company entirely once the public stops paying attention. The only reason we're even having this conversation is because one person in Dunwoody, Georgia refused to let a pitch meeting stay behind closed doors. That's the model going forward. Not silence. Records requests, public pressure, and people who ask the uncomfortable question before the infrastructure gets built instead of after.

➡️ Related: [They Secretly Scored Half a Million People for Future Crimes] 

➡️ Related: [An AI Just Broke Into the NSA. And Nobody's Talking About What That Actually Means.] 

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Michael Routhier is the founder of Tech 4 Grown-Ups, providing honest, unfiltered digital literacy for adults 55+, and host of The Virtuous Machine, exploring the ethics and human cost of AI. Read by tech-curious readers in 50+ countries. Explore more at tech4grownups.com.