In October 2025, EFF warned the public that Flock was rolling out a new feature called “Distress Detection” that would be deployed through their acoustic gunshot detection devices (formerly known as Flock Raven, now called Audio Detection). This feature purported to use high-powered microphones scattered throughout a city to search for sounds of human distress, with original advertisements from the product indicating it would search for “screaming.” (Since the publication of our original blog post, Flock quietly amended the ad on this webpage to say “distress” instead of “screaming.”)
Now, Flock has published a blog post stating that “[a]fter careful consideration and community consultation, we decided to remove the feature.” Good riddance.
We said it when the product was announced and we’ll say it again: this was a misguided and dangerous feature because of the civil liberties concerns it poses, the possibility it could summon armed police to every loud interaction happening on the street, and because in several places this type of spying would be illegal under state eavesdropping laws.
We were not quiet about this potential new feature. Flock even mentioned our concern about Distress Detection in an attempt to rebut our opposition to the mass surveillance their products enable.
The suspension of Distress Detection, however, does not mean that these high-powered microphones are now magically safe or beyond our concern. Acoustic gunshot detection is still a dangerous and often highly inaccurate technology that has resulted in real world harm, as in Chicago where it resulted in police shooting at children lighting fireworks. As Flock itself states, “No acoustic system is perfect, and we don’t claim otherwise.” But police response to a situation where they believe guns are actively in use seems like a pretty high-stakes situation to be making, selling, and deploying technology known to be imperfect. Flock’s devices also listen for more than just gunshots. Their marketing materials admit to be listening for “community disruption,” which includes “non-violent” threats like car sideshows and fireworks.
Flock’s failed attempt to roll out Distress Detection teaches us a few important lessons about the current state of police surveillance. First, we should not assume that just because these companies are large and well-funded, that does not ensure that they are complying with local privacy laws before floating new products to customers. Second, companies roll out and police adopt invasive technology under the justification that it will be used to address our society’s very worst crimes. However, both the companies and police will leverage deployed surveillance infrastructure to introduce new uses without necessarily seeking the consent or approval of the public. Gunshot detecting microphones eventually being used to listen for screaming is exactly the type of mission creep that we’ve seen happen with other pieces of surveillance technology, including Flock’s license plate readers. Finally, gun violence is too serious and complex of an issue to purport to solve with one flawed piece of technology. It has become too easy for police and cities to listen to the fancy marketing pitches of tech companies claiming they’re going to solve all crime instead of doing the hard work of addressing the root causes of societal issues. And, in the meantime, that technology creates more problems and hazards for the communities they blanket in police surveillance.
As we’ve also seen with people across the country pushing back on Flock license plate reader contracts in their communities, public pressure can sometimes work to influence both companies and lawmakers that control a city’s purse strings to discontinue or divest from harmful products. Flock’s decision to end “Distress Detection” for human voices is a win.
Cops are human beings. Despite constantly pretending they’re on a higher plane (see also: Thin Blue Line, etc.), they’re just as fallible as anyone else. Especially now.
This occupation is self-selecting. Righting wrongs is rarely the main draw. It’s almost always the immense of amount of power that comes coupled with nearly zero accountability. There have always been more Nottingham Sheriff wannabes in law enforcement than there have been Frank Serpicos.
Which is why we should not be giving them more powerful tech tools with each passing year. The last thing most officers need is another avenue for the casual abuse of the general public… which really means “women.”
Since always, police have been abusing their access to databases, surveillance tech, and government records to do everything from stalk their exes to harass critics and protesters. And yet, we keep giving cops tools that grease the wheels of misconduct.
Flock is the latest, greatest player in the ALPR market. Consequently, the company that’s already engaged in a ton of unforced errors is now the name that comes up most when cops are being arrested and prosecuted for using this tech to further cement their reputations as theUSA’sforemost purveyors of domestic violence.
So, what does this mean in practical terms? Well, it means this, which is super-disturbing and only discusses a cop who was caught using Flock tech to stalk his ex-girlfriend, as detailed by Jason Koebler at 404 Media:
For months during the summer of 2024, Jarmarus Brown, an Orange City, Florida police officer, ran his ex-girlfriend’s license plate through the Flock automated license plate reader (ALPR) system lookup database at least 69 times. He searched for the license plate belonging to her mom at least 24 times, and searched for the license plate belonging to her dad at least 15 times. Brown’s searches were happening so often, and were so commonplace, that even one of his colleagues noticed Brown researching his ex-girlfriend’s whereabouts while the law enforcement officers sat in their police cruisers, according to court records obtained by 404 Media.
[…]
On another occasion, Brown told [fellow officer Sharich] King that he believed his ex was lying about her whereabouts. She “told Jarmarus she was at her house with her mother, but Jarmarus knew for a fact she was not. When questioned by Officer King as to how he knew for a fact she was lying, Jarmarus said he used the Flock system and saw that her vehicle was elsewhere,” the affidavit reads. “Jarmarus then asked Officer King if he wanted to join him on a ‘stakeout’ to try to see where her vehicle was located.”
Horrific enough, but that was combined with other things his ex-girlfriend stated in her testimony, including Officer Jarmarus Brown insisting his girlfriend remain on the phone with him throughout her workday and surreptitiously placing an AirTag on her wallet.
And all of this makes Officer Brown (who served one [1!] day in jail before being released on probation) both the tip of iceberg and the par for the course.
I’m sure some commenters will show up to say stupid things about my sweeping generalizations. But the only reason I generalize is because there’s just so much out there in the public sphere that limiting myself to specific cases is waste of everyone’s time.
Every surveillance product has just made police misconduct more efficient. Name one that hasn’t. I’ll wait.
Accountability tech hasn’t produced better accountability. We get occasional wins from body cams and dash cams, but the fact is cops still have access to on/off switches and law enforcement agencies still retain control of recordings. More to the point: these are not technically “surveillance products.”
Everything else has given cops more options and more information. And far too many cops have chosen to apply the power and ignore the responsibility that’s supposed to come packaged with it.
Flock may still pretend it and its customers are above reproach, but it does at least generate publicly-accessible records that can be used to sniff out police misconduct that may have otherwise flown under the radar.
It is definitely the case that Flock’s audit tools have proven useful in holding police accountable, because journalists, activists, and concerned citizens from around the country have pored through Flock audit logs that they have obtained through public records requests to document abuse.
Hold your applause forever. This isn’t a triumph of transparency or the result of Flock trying to be a better public citizen. It’s the opposite thing: it’s the government doing next to nothing to hold public servants accountable and leaving it to the people with the least amount of power to do the heavy lifting for them:
[M]any cases of abuse have not been detected by police departments themselves but by those private citizens, journalists, and stalking victims who have found patterns of abuse in public records files they have obtained from their local police departments. In most cases of Flock-related stalking reviewed by 404 Media, the abuse occurred over the course of months or years, and the victims were subjected to dozens or hundreds of lookups.
Public leaders are supposed to set the example and make the tough decisions to hold public servants accountable. This demonstrates, yet again, they can’t be trusted to carry out even the most basic prerequisites of their positions. The public does the work and still pays the tab.
No government agency would ever do the sort of work being done by privacy activists, most likely because they’d rather not know just how bad things are in the surveillance state they’ve allowed to flourish. Just being underserved would be bad enough. But we’re getting actively screwed from multiple angles.
In Wisconsin, a stalking victim checked her own license plate on HaveIBeenFlocked.com and learned that City of Milwaukee Police Officer Josue Ayala had searched her license plate more than 100 times. After reporting this alleged abuse to the police, the agency ran its own audit and learned that Ayala had also searched the license plate of a second victim 124 times in a two-month span last year, according to court records. Each time, Ayala simply listed “investigation” as the reason for his search. In another alleged abuse case in Idaho, the police chief used Flock to allegedly stalk his wife using the reason “test” in the Flock system.
This should be so embarrassing that public figures would be calling for immediate reform and termination of Flock contracts. Instead, it usually leads to impasses where one side insists that any amount of surveillance is justified for “public safety” reasons while the other side is expected to spend their own time and money pursuing litigation in state and federal courts. Even when the abuses are obvious, officials pretend it’s a singular problem, rather than a trailing indicator of the expected outcome of giving even more power to people with plenty of power and long history of abusing it.
Flock Safety doesn’t seem to care about anyone. Not its customers, not those captured by its cameras, not even the legislators trying to find a balance between safety and privacy.
Flock started out by pitching its cameras — with built-in license plate readers — to the kind of people with money to blow on unproven tech and the willingness to use it to keep unwanted people (read: not white) out of their neighborhoods. It soon expanded past the gated community market, courting cops who wanted to use the tech to track unwanted people (read: not white) who might be driving around in cars and existing.
As always, both parties (Flock/cops) claimed the tech was essential to capturing the “worst of the worst” — auto thieves, wanted felons, sex offenders, etc. And, as always, real-world use cases were more along the lines of oh, you know, tracking down women seeking abortion options or letting cops keep tabs on their ex-wives.
The problem with Flock isn’t necessarily unique to Flock. It’s a problem almost every third-party contractor creates. When thing go poorly (and they have gone very poorly for Flock recently), no one seems to know who’s responsible for removing the unwanted tech, much less who actually has the authority to shut a surveillance system down.
This has created a problem that has no immediate solution. When Dayton, Ohio shut down its Flock cameras, it had no idea whether contract termination meant the cameras were actually shut off. Worse, law enforcement officials didn’t seem to know either. A fix was needed, and Dayton found a cost-effective way of keeping Flock from operating the unwanted cameras until when (or if!) it decided to roll into town to remove them.
The city of Dayton, Ohio has covered its Flock automated license plate reader cameras with black trash bags in part because police there are unsure whether the cameras are still active and the city also doesn’t seem to know whether it is allowed to take the cameras down. The move comes after months of resident outrage, a scandal in which the city was sharing Flock camera data for immigration enforcement apparently on accident, and a $30,000 audit into how the cameras are being used.
You can see the problem. While the city may have terminated the contract and the PD stating it won’t use the cameras, there’s no real “OFF” switch on the end user side. Because the cameras aren’t truly owned by the city, it has to wait around for Flock to come get its boys. And even though the Dayton PD’s access portal may be dead because it’s parted ways with Flock, that doesn’t mean hundreds of law enforcement agencies around the US don’t have access to the cameras the city has determined can’t be used.
This isn’t speculation. This is something that has already been observed by other municipalities.
Cities are not sure what their contracts state how to extricate themselves from those contracts, or whether the cameras are recording (and where that data is going). This uncertainty highlights the problems associated with using private, third-party surveillance infrastructure. Last week, for example, the mayor of Menominee, Wisconsin said that Flock cameras in the city “have been activated without city council approval.”
That’s some shady shit right there. But it’s not even the shadiest thing Flock has done in terms of (1) supposedly deactivated cameras and (2) garbage bag-covered cameras. Late last year, the city of Evanston, Illinois covered Flock cameras in garbage bags until Flock came to remove them. Then this happened:
The city previously ordered Flock to shut down 19 cameras (18 stationary and one flex camera that can be attached to a squad car) provided by the company and put its contract with Flock on a 30-day termination notice on Aug. 26. The company took down 15 of the 18 stationary cameras by Sept. 8, only to reinstall all of them by Tuesday. This was apparently without authorization from city officials, who sent Flock a cease-and-desist order to take them back down.
What the actual fuck? And yeah, one might be inclined to chalk this up to a simple misunderstanding, but only if one isn’t familiar with Flock’s general disregard for municipal laws:
Company communications with state transportation agencies obtained via public records requests, and interviews with more than half a dozen former employees, suggest that in its rush to install surveillance cameras in the absence of clear regulatory frameworks, Flock repeatedly broke the law in at least five states.
In South Carolina, State Transportation Secretary Christy Hall told Forbes that since spring 2022, her staff has found more than 200 unpermitted Flock cameras during routine monitoring of public roads.
Hence the garbage bags. It appears Flock is willing to activate cameras it’s been instructed to deactivate. And that’s when it’s not installing cameras illegally or thumbing its nose at removal orders by reinstalling cameras it has just removed.
Private companies who pull this sort of shit would be shut down, if not banned, by cities if it involved anything other than cop tech. Somehow, Flock manages to ride this out by claiming to be a cop’s best friend, even as its pretending local laws and regulations don’t apply to it.
I would encourage cities looking to rid themselves of Flock cameras to go one step further: just pry them off the poles and toss them in the nearest dumpster. If Flock wants to retrieve its equipment, it can be directed to the nearest landfill. Or, if cities don’t feel comfortable doing this themselves, they can always host a few foreign exchange students to help ensure Flock cameras remain inoperable until removal.
Flock Safety’s reputation is in tatters, thanks in large part to its own actions. First sold as a high-tech add-on for homeowners’ associations and gated communities, it soon spread to law enforcement agencies and the cities that employ them. Promising plenty of access to an existing network of privately-owned cameras, Flock insinuated — if not actually stated as much — that cities buying its systems would have access to recordings and ALPR records gathered elsewhere in the nation.
That has largely proven to be true. Law enforcement officers with access to Flock’s camera network have used it to do things like track the movements of a Texas woman who was seeking an abortion and allowing federal officers to hunt down migrants to detain and deport.
Flock has been so bad on the PR front that national surveillance powerhouse Ring pulled the plug on its fledgling partnership with Flock following backlash to its heartwarming-except-for-all-the-dystopia Super Bowl ad.
Even before the Big Game debacle, Flock had been shedding customers. The private sector still seems as interested as ever, but cities were either turning down Flock’s overtures or terminating their contracts with the surveillance camera company.
Residents of an Atlanta suburb have been rocked by the revelation that sales employees at Flock have been accessing sensitive cameras in the town to demonstrate the company’s surveillance technology to police departments around the country. The cameras accessed have included surveillance tech in a children’s gymnastics room, a playground, a school, a Jewish community center, and a pool.
While I can understand parents might appreciate cameras being used to protect their kids, they likely never expected that footage of their kids (sometimes clad in revealing clothing) would be used as a sales tool by Flock Safety.
The city’s own audit logs prove otherwise. From the data in this file, just since the start of 2025, 1,271 external agencies have been granted permission to view live streams. 358 external agencies have been granted access to record these streams.
We don’t know who else has been accessing this footage, but the data makes it clear certain Flock sales reps and officials are extremely interested in footage of people in pools, gymnastic classes, and fitness centers.
One Flock employee, Randy Gluck, who lives in Raleigh and is a business development manager for their 911 products, was granted live-view access to our cameras. He looked at 54 cameras, with very strange patterns such as clicking through 5 traffic cameras on July 21st last year before settling on the Dunwoody Library camera. The Flock data does not tell us when he stopped watching that footage, but he didn’t look at anything else for two hours.
Two days later, Randy clicked through 3 private cameras at the JCC before he settled on JCC camera ‘Main Pool Right’. It was over 3 hours later before his next view on traffic cameras.
[…]
This brings me to Bob Carter – Vice President of Strategic Relations and Business Development for Flock. Bob spends a lot of time looking through both our live footage and recorded footage. Just since the beginning of last year, he has done this 185 times.
Bob also has some interesting searches. On September 30th, 2025 – Bob looked at just one camera. This camera is in the gymnastics room of the JCC [Jewish Community Center].
A lengthy apology for all of this was given to the Jewish Community Center by none other than Flock CEO Garrett Langley. And while it’s nice to see an apology being offered, the apology doesn’t include any promises not to do this same sort of thing elsewhere, much less address the very real concerns that a number of Flock Safety employees have unfettered access to live cameras and recorded footage.
“You may have seen that questions have been raised about Flock employees’ access to security cameras near MJCCA property. While there is a lot of misinformation propagated by some of the voices making these allegations, I want to be direct and apologize for our poor judgement.”
[…]
“Because of our relationship with Dunwoody PD as a development partner–meaning we had explicit permission from Dunwoody to use their Flock system for both testing (for product improvement) and demonstration–Flock employees did occasionally access Dunwoody’s devices for those purposes,” Langley added. “I recognize that the choice to use MJCCA, rather than parts of the city, was a poor one on our part. I am cognizant of the additional, well-founded sensitivity of the Jewish community to security concerns at this time. Therefore, I would like to extend a formal apology to you and the entire MJCCA community for this poor decision. Candidly, it is because of the very real security concerns the MJCCA community is feeling that I am so proud of our partnership, and those with Jewish organizations across the country.”
While Flock management is apparently angry that some of its employees are now being called “child predators” following the publication of these access logs, it’s apparently uninterested in curbing access or installing guidelines that might deter questionable viewing habits in the future.
As for the city itself, it doesn’t seem to care that many residents are opposed to further Flock camera use based on what’s been uncovered here. The state’s attorney general took time from his busy running-for-governor schedule to praise Flock and the mayor of Dunwoody for their continued partnership.
When something like this can’t deter cities from continuing to do business with Flock, it makes the allegedly heartfelt apology issued by the company’s CEO look a lot less heartfelt. This isn’t someone offering contrition and promise to do better to a potential customer. This is someone saying the sort of stuff that sounds like contrition but is ultimately meaningless because neither Flock nor the city government actually care what the general public thinks of them.
All the people who have always brushed off concerns about surveillance tech, please come get your kids. And then let someone else raise them.
Lots of people are fine with mass surveillance because they believe the horseshit spewed by the immediate beneficiaries of this tech: law enforcement agencies that claim every encroachment on your rights might (MIGHT!) lead to the arrest of a dangerous criminal.
Running neck and neck with government surveillance state enthusiasts are extremely wealthy Americans. When they’re not adding new levels of surveillance to the businesses they own, they’re scattering cameras all around their gated communities and giving cops unfettered access to any images these cameras record.
Here’s how it plays out at the ground level: parents can’t get their kids enrolled in the nearest school because of surveillance tech. In one recent case, license plate reader data was used to deny enrollment because the data collected claimed the parent didn’t actually reside in the school district.
Just over a year ago, Thalía Sánchez became the proud owner of a home in Alsip. She decided to leave the bustle of the city for a quiet neighborhood setting and the best possible education for her daughter.
However, to this day, despite providing all required paperwork including her driver’s license, utility bills, vehicle registration, and mortgage statement, the Alsip Hazelgreen Oak Lawn School District 126 has repeatedly denied her daughter’s enrollment.
Why would the district do this? Well, it’s apparently because it has decided to trust the determinations made by its surveillance tech partner, rather than documents actually seen in person by the people making these determinations.
According to the school district, her daughter’s new student enrollment form was denied due to “license plate recognition software showing only Chicago addresses overnight” in July and August. In an email sent to Sánchez in August, the school district told her, “Although you are the owner on record of a house in our district boundaries, your license plate recognition shows that is not the place where you reside.”
But that’s obviously not true. Sanchez says the only reason plate reader data would have shown her car as “staying” in Chicago was because she lent it to a relative during that time period. The school insists this data is enough to overturn the documents she’s provided because… well, it doesn’t really say. It just claims it “relies” on this information gathering to determine residency for students.
All of this can be traced back to Thompson Reuters, which apparently has branched out into the AI-assisted, ALPR-enabled business of denying enrollment to students based on assumptions made by its software.
Here’s what little there is of additional information, as obtained by The Register while reporting on this case:
Thomson Reuters Clear, which more broadly is an AI-assisted records investigation tool, has a page dedicated to its application for school districts. It sells Clear as a tool for residency verification, claiming that it can “automate” such tasks with “enhanced reliability,” and can take care of them “in minutes, not months.”
One of the particular things the Clear page notes is its ability to access license plate data “and develop pattern of life information” that helps identify whether those who are claiming they’re residents for the sake of getting a kid enrolled in school are lying or not.
Thomson Reuters does not specify where it gets its license plate reader data and did not respond to questions.
We’ll get to the highlighted sentence in a moment, but let’s just take a beat and consider how creepy and weird this Thomson Reuters promotional pitch is:
The text reads:
Gain deeper insights into mismatched data to support meaningful conversations with families and ensure students are where they need to be. Identify where cars have been seen to establish pattern of life information.
No one expects a law enforcement agency to do this (at least without a warrant or reasonable suspicion), much less a school district. Government agencies shouldn’t have unfettered access to “pattern of life” information just because. It’s not like the people being surveilled here are engaged in criminal activity. They’re just trying to make sure their kids receive an education. And while there will always be people who game the system to get their kids into better schools, that’s hardly justification for subjecting every enrolling student’s family to expansive surveillance-enabled background checks.
And while Thomson Reuters (and the district itself) has refused to comment on the source of its plate reader data, it can safely be assumed that it’s Flock Safety. Flock Safety has never shown any concern about who accesses the data it compiles, much less why they choose to do it. Flock is swiftly becoming the leading provider of ALPR cameras and given its complete lack of internal or external oversight, it’s more than likely the case that its feeding this data to third parties like Thomson Reuters that are willing to pay a premium for data that simply can’t be had elsewhere.
We’re not catching criminals with this tech. Sure, it may happen now and then. But the real value is repeated resale of “pattern of life” data to whoever is willing to purchase it. That’s a massive problem that’s only going to get worse… full stop.
Surveillance technology vendors, federal agencies, and wealthy private donors have long helped provide local law enforcement “free” access to surveillance equipment that bypasses local oversight. The result is predictable: serious accountability gaps and data pipelines to other entities, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), that expose millions of people to harm.
The collection and sharing of our data quietly generates detailed records of people’s movements and associations that can be exposed, hacked, or repurposed without their knowledge or consent. Those records weaken sanctuary and First Amendment protections while facilitating the targeting of vulnerable people.
Cities can and should use their power to reject federal grants, vendor trials, donations from wealthy individuals, or participation in partnerships that facilitate surveillance and experimentation with spy tech.
If these projects are greenlit, oversight is imperative. Mechanisms like public hearings, competitive bidding, public records transparency, and city council supervision aid to ensure these acquisitions include basic safeguards — like use policies, audits, and consequences for misuse — to protect the public from abuse and from creeping contracts that grow into whole suites of products.
Clear policies and oversight mechanisms must be in place before using any surveillance tools, free or not, and communities and their elected officials must be at the center of every decision about whether to bring these tools in at all.
Here are some of the most common methods “free” surveillance tech makes its way into communities.
Trials and Pilots
Police departments are regularly offered free access to surveillance tools and software through trials and pilot programs that often aren’t accompanied by appropriate use policies. In many jurisdictions, trials do not trigger the same requirements to go before decision-makers outside the police department. This means the public may have no idea that a pilot program for surveillance technology is happening in their city.
In Denver, Colorado, the police department is running trials of possible unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for a drone-as-first-responder (DFR) program from two competing drone vendors: Flock Safety Aerodome drones (through August 2026) and drones from the company Skydio, partnering with Axon, the multi-billion dollar police technology company behind tools like Tasers and AI-generated police reports. Drones create unique issues given their vantage for capturing private property and unsuspecting civilians, as well as their capacity to make other technologies, like ALPRs, airborne.
Functional, Even Without Funding
We’ve seen cities decide not to fund a tool, or run out of funding for it, only to have a company continue providing it in the hope that money will turn up. This happened in Fall River, Massachusetts, where the police department decided not to fund ShotSpotter’s $90,000 annual cost and its frequent false alarms, but continued using the system when the company provided free access.
Importantly, police technology companies are developing more features and subscription-based models, so what’s “free” today frequently results in taxpayers footing the bill later.
Gifts from Police Foundations and Wealthy Donors
Police foundations and the wealthy have pushed surveillance-driven agendas in their local communities by donating equipment and making large monetary gifts, another means of acquiring these tools without public oversight or buy-in.
In Atlanta, the Atlanta Police Foundation (APF) attempted to use its position as a private entity to circumvent transparency. Following a court challenge from the Atlanta Community Press Collective and Lucy Parsons Labs, a Georgia court determined that the APF must comply with public records laws related to some of its actions and purchases on behalf of law enforcement. In San Francisco, billionaire Chris Larsen has financially supported a supercharging of the city’s surveillance infrastructure, donating $9.4 million to fund the San Francisco Police Department’s (SFPD) Real-Time Investigation Center, where a menu of surveillance technologies and data come together to surveil the city’s residents. This move comes after the billionaire backed a ballot measure, which passed in March 2025, eroding the city’s surveillance technology law and allowing the SFPD free rein to use new surveillance technologies for a full year without oversight.
Free Tech for Federal Data Pipelines
Federal grants and Department of Homeland Security funding are another way surveillance technology appears free to, only to lock municipalities into long‑term data‑sharing and recurring costs.
Through the Homeland Security Grant Program, which includes the State Homeland Security Program (SHSP) and the Urban Areas Security (UASI) Initiative, and Department of Justice programs like Byrne JAG, the federal government reimburses states and cities for “homeland security” equipment and software, including including law‑enforcement surveillance tools, analytics platforms, and real‑time crime centers. Grant guidance and vendor marketing materials make clear that these funds can be used for automated license plate readers, integrated video surveillance and analytics systems, and centralized command‑center software—in other words, purchases framed as counterterrorism investments but deployed in everyday policing.
Vendors have learned to design products around this federal money, pitching ALPR networks, camera systems, and analytic platforms as “grant-ready” solutions that can be acquired with little or no upfront local cost. Motorola Solutions, for example, advertises how SHSP and UASI dollars can be used for “law enforcement surveillance equipment” and “video surveillance, warning, and access control” systems. Flock Safety, partnering with Lexipol, a company that writes use policies for law enforcement, offers a “License Plate Readers Grant Assistance Program” that helps police departments identify federal and state grants and tailor their applications to fund ALPR projects.
Grant assistance programs let police chiefs fast‑track new surveillance: the paperwork is outsourced, the grant eats the upfront cost, and even when there is a formal paper trail, the practical checks from residents, councils, and procurement rules often get watered down or bypassed.
On paper, these systems arrive “for free” through a federal grant; in practice, they lock cities into recurring software, subscription, and data‑hosting fees that quietly turn into permanent budget lines—and a lasting surveillance infrastructure—as soon as police and prosecutors start to rely on them. In Santa Cruz, California, the police department explicitly sought to use a DHS-funded SHSP grant to pay for a new citywide network of Flock ALPR cameras at the city’s entrances and exits, with local funds covering additional cameras. In Sumner, Washington, a $50,000 grant was used to cover the entire first year of a Flock system — including installation and maintenance — after which the city is on the hook for roughly $39,000 every year in ongoing fees. The free grant money opens the door, but local governments are left with years of financial, political, and permanent surveillance entanglements they never fully vetted.
The most dangerous cost of this “free” funding is not just budgetary; it is the way it ties local systems into federal data pipelines. Since 9/11, DHS has used these grant streams to build a nationwide network of at least 79–80 state and regional fusion centers that integrate and share data from federal, state, local, tribal, and private partners. Research shows that state fusion centers rely heavily on the DHS Homeland Security Grant Program (especially SHSP and UASI) to “mature their capabilities,” with some centers reporting that 100 percent of their annual expenditures are covered by these grants.
Civil rights investigations have documented how this funding architecture creates a backdoor channel for ICE and other federal agencies to access local surveillance data for their own purposes. A recent report by the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (S.T.O.P.) describes ICE agents using a Philadelphia‑area fusion center to query the city’s ALPR network to track undocumented drivers in a self‑described sanctuary city.
Ultimately, federal grants follow the same script as trials and foundation gifts: what looks “free” ends up costing communities their data, their sanctuary protections, and their power over how local surveillance is used.
Protecting Yourself Against “Free” Technology
The most important protection against “free” surveillance technology is to reject it outright. Cities do not have to accept federal grants, vendor trials, or philanthropic donations. Saying no to “free” tech is not just a policy choice; it is a political power that local governments possess and can exercise. Communities and their elected officials can and should refuse surveillance systems that arrive through federal grants, vendor pilots, or private donations, regardless of how attractive the initial price tag appears.
For those cities that have already accepted surveillance technology, the imperative is equally clear: shut it down. When a community has rejected use of a spying tool, the capabilities, equipment, and data collected from that tool should be shut off immediately. Full stop.
And for any surveillance technology that remains in operation, even temporarily, there must be clear rules: when and how equipment is used, how that data is retained and shared, who owns data and how companies can access and use it, transparency requirements, and consequences for any misuse and abuse.
“Free” surveillance technology is never free. Someone profits or gains power from it. Police technology vendors, federal agencies, and wealthy donors do not offer these systems out of generosity; they offer them because surveillance serves their interests, not ours. That is the real cost of “free” surveillance.
Let’s start with Flock, the company behind a number of automated license plate reader (ALPR) and other camera technologies. You might be surprised at how many Flock cameras there are in your community. Many large and small municipalities around the country have signed deals with Flock for license plate readers to track the movement of all cars in their city. Even though these deals are signed by local police departments, oftentimes ICE also gains access.
Because of their ubiquity, people are interested in finding out where and how many Flock cameras are in their community. One project that can help with this is the OUI-SPY, a small piece of open source hardware. The OUI-SPY runs on a cheap Arduino compatible chip called an ESP-32. There are multiple programs available for loading on the chip, such as “Flock You,” which allows people to detect Flock cameras and “Sky-Spy” to detect overhead drones. There’s also “BLE Detect,” which detects various Bluetooth signals including ones from Axon, Meta’s Ray-Bans that secretly record you, and more. It also has a mode commonly known as “fox hunting” to track down a specific device. Activists and researchers can use this tool to map out different technologies and quantify the spread of surveillance.
There’s also the open source Wigle app which is primarily designed for mapping out Wi-Fi, but also has the ability to make an audio alert when a specific Wi-Fi or Bluetooth identifier is detected. This means you can set it up to get a notification when it detects products from Flock, Axon, or other nasties in their vicinity.
One enterprising YouTuber, Benn Jordan, figured out a way to fool Flock cameras into not recording his license plate simply by painting some minor visual noise on his license plate. This is innocuous enough that any human will still be able to read his license plate, but it completely prevented Flock devices from recognizing his license plate as a license plate at the time. Some states have outlawed drivers obscuring their license plates, so taking such action is not recommended.
Jordan later went on to discover hundreds of misconfigured Flock cameras that were exposing their administrator interface without a password on the public internet. This would allow anyone with an internet connection to view a live surveillance feed, download 30 days of video, view logs, and more. The cameras pointed at parks, public trails, busy intersections, and even a playground. This was a massive breach of public trust and a huge mistake for a company that claims to be working for public safety.
Other hackers have taken on the task of open-source intelligence and community reporting. One interesting example is deflock.me and alpr.watch, which are crowdsourced maps of ALPR cameras. Much like the OUI-SPY project, this allows activists to map out and expose Flock surveillance cameras in their community.
Another interesting project documenting ICE and creating a trove of open-source intelligence is ICE List Wiki which contains info on companies that have contracts with ICE, incidents and encounters with ICE, and vehicles ICE uses.
People without programming knowledge can also get involved. In Chicago, people used whistles to warn their neighbors that ICE was present or in the area. Many people 3D-printed whistles along with instructional booklets to hand out to their communities, allowing a wider distribution of whistles and consequently earlier warnings for their neighbors.
There is also EFF’s own Rayhunter project for detecting cell-site simulators, about which we have written extensively. Rayhunter runs on a cheap mobile hotspot and doesn’t require deep technical knowledge to use.
It’s important to remember that we are not powerless. Even in the face of a domestic law enforcement presence with massive surveillance capabilities and military-esque technologies, there are still ways to engage in surveillance self-defense. We cannot give into nihilism and fear. We must continue to find small ways to protect ourselves and our communities, and when we can, fight back.
EFF is not affiliated with any of these projects (other than Rayhunter) and does not endorse them. We don’t make any statements about the legality of using any of these projects. Please consult with an attorney to determine what risks there may be.
It’s no secret that 2025 has givenAmericansplentytoprotestabout. But as news cameras showed protesters filling streets of cities across the country, law enforcement officers—including U.S. Border Patrol agents—were quietly watching those same streets through different lenses: Flock Safety automated license plate readers (ALPRs) that tracked every passing car.
Through an analysis of 10 months of nationwide searches on Flock Safety’s servers, we discovered that more than 50 federal, state, and local agencies ran hundreds of searches through Flock’s national network of surveillance data in connection with protest activity. In some cases, law enforcement specifically targeted known activist groups, demonstrating how mass surveillance technology increasingly threatens our freedom to demonstrate.
Flock Safety provides ALPR technology to thousands of law enforcement agencies. The company installs cameras throughout their jurisdictions, and these cameras photograph every car that passes, documenting the license plate, color, make, model and other distinguishing characteristics. This data is paired with time and location, and uploaded to a massive searchable database. Flock Safety encourages agencies to share the data they collect broadly with other agencies across the country. It is common for an agency to search thousands of networks nationwide even when they don’t have reason to believe a targeted vehicle left the region.
Via public records requests, EFF obtained datasets representing more than 12 million searches logged by more than 3,900 agencies between December 2024 and October 2025. The data shows that agencies logged hundreds of searches related to the 50501 protests in February, the Hands Off protests in April, the No Kings protests in June and October, and other protests in between.
The Tulsa Police Department in Oklahoma was one of the most consistent users of Flock Safety’s ALPR system for investigating protests, logging at least 38 such searches. This included running searches that corresponded to a protest against deportation raids in February, a protest at Tulsa City Hall in support of pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil in March, and the No Kings protest in June. During the most recent No Kings protests in mid-October, agencies such as the Lisle Police Department in Illinois, the Oro Valley Police Department in Arizona, and the Putnam County (Tenn.) Sheriff’s Office all ran protest-related searches.
While EFF and other civil liberties groups argue the law should require a search warrant for such searches, police are simply prompted to enter text into a “reason” field in the Flock Safety system. Usually this is only a few words–or even just one.
In these cases, that word was often just “protest.”
Crime does sometimes occur at protests, whether that’s property damage, pick-pocketing, or clashes between groups on opposite sides of a protest. Some of these searches may have been tied to an actual crime that occurred, even though in most cases officers did not articulate a criminal offense when running the search. But the truth is, the only reason an officer is able to even search for a suspect at a protest is because ALPRs collected data on every single person who attended the protest.
Search and Dissent
2025 was an unprecedented year of street action. In June and again in October, thousands across the country mobilized under the banner of the “No Kings” movement—marches against government overreach, surveillance, and corporate power. By some estimates, the October demonstrations ranked among the largest single-day protests in U.S. history, filling the streets from Washington, D.C., to Portland, OR.
EFF identified 19 agencies that logged dozens of searches associated with the No Kings protests in June and October 2025. In some cases the “No Kings” was explicitly used, while in others the term “protest” was used but coincided with the massive protests.
Law Enforcement Agencies that Ran Searches Corresponding with “No Kings” Rallies * Anaheim Police Department, Calif. * Arizona Department of Public Safety * Beaumont Police Department, Texas * Charleston Police Department, SC * Flagler County Sheriff’s Office, Fla. * Georgia State Patrol * Lisle Police Department, Ill. * Little Rock Police Department, Ark. * Marion Police Department, Ohio * Morristown Police Department, Tenn. * Oro Valley Police Department, Ariz. * Putnam County Sheriff’s Office, Tenn. * Richmond Police Department, Va. * Riverside County Sheriff’s Office, Calif. * Salinas Police Department, Calif. * San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office, Calif. * Spartanburg Police Department, SC * Tempe Police Department, Ariz. * Tulsa Police Department, Okla. * US Border Patrol
For example:
In Washington state, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office listed “no kings” as the reason for three searches on June 15, 2025 [Note: date corrected]. The agency queried 95 camera networks, looking for vehicles matching the description of “work van,” “bus” or “box truck.”
In Texas, the Beaumont Police Department ran six searches related to two vehicles on June 14, 2025, listing “KINGS DAY PROTEST” as the reason. The queries reached across 1,774 networks.
In California, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office ran a single search for a vehicle across 711 networks, logging “no king” as the reason.
In Arizona, the Tempe Police Department made three searches for “ATL No Kings Protest” on June 15, 2025 searching through 425 networks. “ATL” is police code for “attempt to locate.” The agency appears to not have been looking for a particular plate, but for any red vehicle on the road during a certain time window.
But the No Kings protests weren’t the only demonstrations drawing law enforcement’s digital dragnet in 2025.
For example:
In Nevada’s state capital, the Carson City Sheriff’s Office ran three searches that correspond to the February 50501 Protests against DOGE and the Trump administration. The agency searched for two vehicles across 178 networks with “protest” as the reason.
In Florida, the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office logged “protest” for five searches that correspond to a local May Day rally.
In Alabama, the Homewood Police Department logged four searches in early July 2025 for three vehicles with “PROTEST CASE” and “PROTEST INV.” in the reason field. The searches, which probed 1,308 networks, correspond to protests against the police shooting of Jabari Peoples.
In Texas, the Lubbock Police Department ran two searches for a Tennessee license plate on March 15 that corresponds to a rally to highlight the mental health impact of immigration policies. The searches hit 5,966 networks, with the logged reason “protest veh.”
In Michigan, Grand Rapids Police Department ran five searches that corresponded with the Stand Up and Fight Back Rally in February. The searches hit roughly 650 networks, with the reason logged as “Protest.”
Someagencies have adopted policies that prohibit using ALPRs for monitoring activities protected by the First Amendment. Yet many officers probed the nationwide network with terms like “protest” without articulating an actual crime under investigation.
In a few cases, police were using Flock’s ALPR network to investigate threats made against attendees or incidents where motorists opposed to the protests drove their vehicle into crowds. For example, throughout June 2025, an Arizona Department of Public Safety officer logged three searches for “no kings rock threat,” and a Wichita (Kan.) Police Department officer logged 22 searches for various license plates under the reason “Crime Stoppers Tip of causing harm during protests.”
Even when law enforcement is specifically looking for vehicles engaged in potentially criminal behavior such as threatening protesters, it cannot be ignored that mass surveillance systems work by collecting data on everyone driving to or near a protest—not just those under suspicion.
Border Patrol’s Expanding Reach
As U.S. Border Patrol (USBP), ICE, and other federal agencies tasked with immigration enforcement have massively expanded operations into major cities, advocates for immigrants have responded through organized rallies, rapid-response confrontations, and extended presences at federal facilities.
USBP has made extensive use of Flock Safety’s system for immigration enforcement, but also to target those who object to its tactics. In June, a few days after the No Kings Protest, USBP ran three searches for a vehicle using the descriptor “Portland Riots.”
USBP also used the Flock Safety network to investigate a motorist who had “extended his middle finger” at Border Patrol vehicles that were transporting detainees. The motorist then allegedly drove in front of one of the vehicles and slowed down, forcing the Border Patrol vehicle to brake hard. An officer ran seven searches for his plate, citing “assault on agent” and “18 usc 111,” the federal criminal statute for assaulting, resisting or impeding a federal officer. The individual was charged in federal court in early August.
USBP had access to the Flock system during a trial period in the first half of 2025, but the company says it has since paused the agency’s access to the system. However, Border Patrol and other federal immigration authorities have been able to access the system’s data through local agencies who have run searches on their behalf or even lent them logins.
Targeting Animal Rights Activists
Law enforcement’s use of Flock’s ALPR network to surveil protesters isn’t limited to large-scale political demonstrations. Three agencies also used the system dozens of times to specifically target activists from Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), an animal-rights organization known for using civil disobedience tactics to expose conditions at factory farms.
Delaware State Police queried the Flock national network nine times in March 2025 related to DxE actions, logging reasons such as “DxE Protest Suspect Vehicle.” DxE advocates told EFF that these searches correspond to an investigation the organization undertook of a Mountaire Farms facility.
Additionally, the California Highway Patrol logged dozens of searches related to a “DXE Operation” throughout the day on May 27, 2025. The organization says this corresponds with an annual convening in California that typically ends in a direct action. Participants leave the event early in the morning, then drive across the state to a predetermined but previously undisclosed protest site. Also in May, the Merced County Sheriff’s Office in California logged two searches related to “DXE activity.”
As an organization engaged in direct activism, DxE has experienced criminalprosecution for its activities, and so the organization told EFF they were not surprised to learn they are under scrutiny from law enforcement, particularly considering how industrial farmers have collected and distributed their own intelligence to police.
The targeting of DxE activists reveals how ALPR surveillance extends beyond conventional and large-scale political protests to target groups engaged in activism that challenges powerful industries. For animal-rights activists, the knowledge that their vehicles are being tracked through a national surveillance network undeniably creates a chilling effect on their ability to organize and demonstrate.
Fighting Back Against ALPR
ALPR systems are designed to capture information on every vehicle that passes within view. That means they don’t just capture data on “criminals” but on everyone, all the time—and that includes people engaged in their First Amendment right to publicly dissent. Police are sitting on massive troves of data that can reveal who attended a protest, and this data shows they are not afraid to use it.
Our analysis only includes data where agencies explicitly mentioned protests or related terms in the “reason” field when documenting their search. It’s likely that scores more were conducted under less obvious pretexts and search reasons. According to our analysis, approximately 20 percent of all searches we reviewed listed vague language like “investigation,” “suspect,” and “query” in the reason field. Those terms could well be cover for spying on a protest, an abortion prosecution, or an officer stalking a spouse, and no one would be the wiser–including the agencies whose data was searched. Flock has said it will now require officers to select a specific crime under investigation, but that can and will also be used to obfuscate dubious searches.
For protestors, this data should serve as confirmation that ALPR surveillance has been and will be used to target activities protected by the First Amendment. Depending on your threat model, this means you should think carefully about how you arrive at protests, and explore options such as by biking, walking, carpooling, taking public transportation, or simply parking a little further away from the action. Our Surveillance Self-Defense project has more information on steps you could take to protect your privacy when traveling to and attending a protest.
For local officials, this should serve as another example of how systems marketed as protecting your community may actually threaten the values your communities hold most dear. The best way to protect people is to shut down these camera networks.
Everyone should have the right to speak up against injustice without ending up in a database.
“Flock Safety” may be the brand name, but this company’s earliest sales successes had nothing to with safety. Its target audience was homeowners associations and people running gated communities in upscale neighborhoods. The purpose of the cameras (and, eventually, the attached license plate reader tech) was to make sure people who were plenty safe already weren’t annoyed by occasional intrusions by the rest of the world outside of their gates.
Then it went the Ring route, offering cheap cameras to cops. It was just inkjet printers all over again. The cameras were affordable. Subscription fees for access to footage and the company’s search engine were the real moneymaker.
And, much like Ring, Flock has ended up on the wrong side of public opinion. While it hasn’t quite generated the amount of negative press Ring’s cozy relationship with cop shops has (yet!), it’s been getting eyeballed pretty fiercely by people who aren’t fans of its access-it-all-from-anywhere attitude. A report from 404 Media showed Texas law enforcement officers utilizing the nationwide network of Flock ALPR data to hunt down someone who had engaged in a medication abortion. Weeks later, it was discovered this search was performed on behalf of her vengeful boyfriend, who sought to press criminal charges against her.
Other news has surfaced as well, making Flock Safety look even worse. It has placed almost no restrictions on access by anyone from anywhere, which has resulted in a lot of local law enforcement agencies performing searches federal agencies like CBP, US Border Patrol, and ICE can’t perform themselves. In some cases, Flock’s lack of restraint and nonexistent privacy policies has made their cameras pretty much illegal. In other cases, local lawmakers are finally reining in use of this camera network due to its steady abuse by federal officers.
Police departments in Redmond and Lynnwood have temporarily shut down their Flock license plate reader systems following growing public concerns about privacy and system access, according to city officials.
Redmond’s City Council voted unanimously Monday to turn off its Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) cameras after learning that U.S. Border Patrol improperly accessed Auburn’s Flock system last month.
Redmond’s police chief, Darrell Lowe, insists no improper/proxy access has happened on his watch. But that doesn’t mean all that much, because it’s unclear whether or not Flock Safety would inform local cops if these agencies did. For that matter, proxy searches for federal agencies generally have access to any records generated anywhere in the country. So, it’s hardly comforting to assure people your agency hasn’t been approached directly by federal officers.
That was the point Senator Ron Wyden made in his letter to Flock Safety — one in which he pointed out that Flock has zero desire to deter abuse of its camera network, much less engage in good faith discussions about how it could go about siloing its networks so searches are restricted to areas directly overseen by local law enforcement.
The police chief in Lynnwood, however, didn’t try to make excuses. He actually attempted to do something when these concerns were first raised.
“Flock cameras have already proven to be an invaluable investigative tool in solving crimes and keeping our community safe,” Lynnwood Police Chief Cole Langdon said. “However, it’s equally important that we maintain the public’s trust.”
The ALPR program in Lynnwood launched June 29, 2025, with 25 cameras funded through a Washington Auto Theft Prevention Authority grant.
Shortly after implementation, the department learned a vendor-enabled “nationwide search” feature allowed broader access than Lynnwood authorized.
Police said they worked with Flock Safety to disable that feature on July 8.
While Flock pitched in there to respect its customer’s request, it has also gone the other way just as frequently. The company has previously been caught illegally installing cameras. In September, it was caught reinstalling cameras the city of Evanston, Illinois had ordered removed because the network (and Flock’s access options) violated the state’s privacy laws.
Private surveillance vendor Flock Safety reinstalled all of its stationary license plate cameras in Evanston that had previously been removed, apparently doing so without authorization from the city, which sent the company a cease-and-desist order Tuesday afternoon demanding that the cams be taken back down.
The city previously ordered Flock to shut down 19 automated license plate readers (18 stationary and one flex camera that can be attached to a squad car) provided by the company and put its contract with Flock on a 30-day termination notice on Aug. 26.
Predictably, this push-back against Flock is generally occurring in areas already being threatened/invaded on a daily basis by the US military and swarms of federal officers. But that’s to be expected. Those most threatened by federal abuse of local camera networks are always going to be the first to fight back. The reason it’s not happening in “red” states is because the people running those states honestly don’t care what route enables authoritarianism, just so long as it does so while their party still holds power.
More than 80 law enforcement agencies across the United States have used language perpetuating harmful stereotypes against Romani people when searching the nationwide Flock Safety automated license plate reader (ALPR) network, according to audit logs obtained and analyzed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
When police run a search through the Flock Safety network, which links thousands of ALPR systems, they are prompted to leave a reason and/or case number for the search. Between June 2024 and October 2025, cops performed hundreds of searches for license plates using terms such as “roma” and “g*psy,” and in many instances, without any mention of a suspected crime. Other uses include “g*psy vehicle,” “g*psy group,” “possible g*psy,” “roma traveler” and “g*psy ruse,” perpetuating systemic harm by demeaning individuals based on their race or ethnicity.
These queries were run through thousands of police departments’ systems—and it appears that none of these agencies flagged the searches as inappropriate.
These searches are, by definition, racist.
Word Choices and Flock Searches
We are using the terms “Roma” and “Romani people” as umbrella terms, recognizing that they represent different but related groups. Since 2020, the U.S. federal government has officially recognized “Anti-Roma Racism” as including behaviors such as “stereotyping Roma as persons who engage in criminal behavior” and using the slur “g*psy.” According to the U.S. Department of State, this language “leads to the treatment of Roma as an alleged alien group and associates them with a series of pejorative stereotypes and distorted images that represent a specific form of racism.”
Nevertheless, police officers have run hundreds of searches for license plates using the terms “roma” and “g*psy.” (Unlike the police ALPR queries we’ve uncovered, we substitute an asterisk for the Y to avoid repeating this racist slur). In many cases, these terms have been used on their own, with no mention of crime. In other cases, the terms have been used in contexts like “g*psy scam” and “roma burglary,” when ethnicity should have no relevance to how a crime is investigated or prosecuted.
A “g*psy scam” and “roma burglary” do not exist in criminal law separate from any other type of fraud or burglary. Several agencies contacted by EFF have since acknowledged the inappropriate use and expressed efforts to address the issue internally.
“The use of the term does not reflect the values or expected practices of our department,” a representative of the Palos Heights (IL) Police Department wrote to EFF after being confronted with two dozen searches involving the term “g*psy.” “We do not condone the use of outdated or offensive terminology, and we will take this inquiry as an opportunity to educate those who are unaware of the negative connotation and to ensure that investigative notations and search reasons are documented in a manner that is accurate, professional, and free of potentially harmful language.”
Of course, the broader issue is that allowing “g*psy” or “Roma” as a reason for a search isn’t just offensive, it implies the criminalization an ethnic group. In fact, the Grand Prairie Police Department in Texas searched for “g*psy” six times while using Flock’s “Convoy” feature, which allows an agency to identify vehicles traveling together—in essence targeting an entire traveling community of Roma without specifying a crime.
At the bottom of this post is a list of agencies and the terms they used when searching the Flock system.
Anti-Roma Racism in an Age of Surveillance
Racism against Romani people has been a problem for centuries, with one of its most horrific manifestations during the Holocaust, when the Third Reich and its allies perpetuated genocide by murdering hundreds of thousands of Romani people and sterilizing thousands more. Despite efforts by the UN and EU to combat anti-Roma discrimination, this form of racism persists. As scholars Margareta Matache and Mary T. Bassett explain, it is perpetuated by modern American policing practices:
In recent years, police departments have set up task forces specialised in “G*psy crimes”, appointed “G*psy crime” detectives, and organised police training courses on “G*psy criminality”. The National Association of Bunco Investigators (NABI), an organisation of law enforcement professionals focusing on “non-traditional organised crime”, has even created a database of individuals arrested or suspected of criminal activity, which clearly marked those who were Roma.
Thus, it is no surprise that a 2020 Harvard University survey of Romani Americans found that 4 out of 10 respondents reported being subjected to racial profiling by police. This demonstrates the ongoing challenges they face due to systemic racism and biased policing.
Notably, many police agencies using surveillance technologies like ALPRs have adopted some sort of basic policy against biased policing or the use of these systems to target people based on race or ethnicity. But even when such policies are in place, an agency’s failure to enforce them allows these discriminatory practices to persist. These searches were also run through the systems of thousands of other police departments that may have their own policies and state laws that prohibit bias-based policing—yet none of those agencies appeared to have flagged the searches as inappropriate.
The Flock search data in question here shows that surveillance technology exacerbates racism, and even well-meaning policies to address bias can quickly fall apart without proper oversight and accountability.
Cops In Their Own Words
EFF reached out to a sample of the police departments that ran these searches. Here are five representative responses we received from police departments in Illinois, California, and Virginia. They do not inspire confidence.
1. Lake County Sheriff’s Office, IL
In June 2025, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office ran three searches for a dark colored pick-up truck, using the reason: “G*PSY Scam.” The search covered 1,233 networks, representing 14,467 different ALPR devices.
In response to EFF, a sheriff’s representative wrote via email:
“Thank you for reaching out and for bringing this to our attention. We certainly understand your concern regarding the use of that terminology, which we do not condone or support, and we want to assure you that we are looking into the matter.
Any sort of discriminatory practice is strictly prohibited at our organization. If you have the time to take a look at our commitment to the community and our strong relationship with the community, I firmly believe you will see discrimination is not tolerated and is quite frankly repudiated by those serving in our organization.
We appreciate you bringing this to our attention so we can look further into this and address it.”
2. Sacramento Police Department, CA
In May 2025, the Sacramento Police Department ran six searches using the term “g*psy.” The search covered 468 networks, representing 12,885 different ALPR devices.
In response to EFF, a police representative wrote:
“Thank you again for reaching out. We looked into the searches you mentioned and were able to confirm the entries. We’ve since reminded the team to be mindful about how they document investigative reasons. The entry reflected an investigative lead, not a disparaging reference.
We appreciate the chance to clarify.”
3. Palos Heights Police Department, IL
In September 2024, the Palos Heights Police Department ran more than two dozen searches using terms such as “g*psy vehicle,” “g*psy scam” and “g*psy concrete vehicle.” Most searches hit roughly 1,000 networks.
In response to EFF, a police representative said the searches were related to a singular criminal investigation into a vehicle involved in a “suspicious circumstance/fraudulent contracting incident” and is “not indicative of a general search based on racial or ethnic profiling.” However, the agency acknowledged the language was inappropriate:
“The use of the term does not reflect the values or expected practices of our department. We do not condone the use of outdated or offensive terminology, and we will take this inquiry as an opportunity to educate those who are unaware of the negative connotation and to ensure that investigative notations and search reasons are documented in a manner that is accurate, professional, and free of potentially harmful language.
We appreciate your outreach on this matter and the opportunity to provide clarification.”
4. Irvine Police Department, CA
In February and May 2025, the Irvine Police Department ran eight searches using the term “roma” in the reason field. The searches covered 1,420 networks, representing 29,364 different ALPR devices.
In a call with EFF, an IPD representative explained that the cases were related to a series of organized thefts. However, they acknowledged the issue, saying, “I think it’s an opportunity for our agency to look at those entries and to use a case number or use a different term.”
5. Fairfax County Police Department, VA
Between December 2024 and April 2025, the Fairfax County Police Department ran more than 150 searches involving terms such as “g*psy case” and “roma crew burglaries.” Fairfax County PD continued to defend its use of this language.
In response to EFF, a police representative wrote:
“Thank you for your inquiry. When conducting searches in investigative databases, our detectives must use the exact case identifiers, terms, or names connected to a criminal investigation in order to properly retrieve information. These entries reflect terminology already tied to specific cases and investigative files from other agencies, not a bias or judgment about any group of people. The use of such identifiers does not reflect bias or discrimination and is not inconsistent with our Bias-Based Policing policy within our Human Relations General Order.”
A National Trend
Roma individuals and families are not the only ones being systematically and discriminatorily targeted by ALPR surveillance technologies. For example, Flock audit logs show agencies ran 400 more searches using terms targeting Traveller communities more generally, with a specific focus on Irish Travellers, often without any mention of a crime.
Across the country, these tools are enabling and amplifying racial profiling by embedding longstanding policing biases into surveillance technologies. For example, data from Oak Park, IL, show that 84% of drivers stopped in Flock-related traffic incidents were Black—despite Black people making up only 19% of the local population. ALPR systems are far from being neutral tools for public safety and are increasingly being used to fuel discriminatory policing practices against historically marginalized people.
The racially coded language in Flock’s logs mirrors long-standing patterns of discriminatory policing. Terms like “furtive movements,” “suspicious behavior,” and “high crime area” have always been cited by police to try to justify stops and searches of Black, Latine, and Native communities. These phrases might not appear in official logs because they’re embedded earlier in enforcement—in the traffic stop without clear cause, the undocumented stop-and-frisk, the intelligence bulletin flagging entire neighborhoods as suspect. They function invisibly until a body-worn camera, court filing, or audit brings them to light. Flock’s network didn’t create racial profiling; it industrialized it, turning deeply encoded and vague language into scalable surveillance that can search thousands of cameras across state lines.
The Path Forward
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, recently recommended that local governments reevaluate their decisions to install Flock Safety in their communities. We agree, but we also understand that sometimes elected officials need to see the abuse with their own eyes first.
We know which agencies ran these racist searches, and they should be held accountable. But we also know that the vast majority of Flock Safety’s clients—thousands of police and sheriffs—also allowed those racist searches to run through their Flock Safety systems unchallenged.
Elected officials must act decisively to address the racist policing enabled by Flock’s infrastructure. First, they should demand a complete audit of all ALPR searches conducted in their jurisdiction and a review of search logs to determine (a) whether their police agencies participated in discriminatory policing and (b) what safeguards, if any, exist to prevent such abuse. Second, officials should institute immediate restrictions on data-sharing through Flock’s nationwide network. As demonstrated by California law, for example, police agencies should not be able to share their ALPR data with federal authorities or out-of-state agencies, thus eliminating a vehicle for discriminatory searches spreading across state lines.
Ultimately, elected officials must terminate Flock Safety contracts entirely. The evidence is now clear: audit logs and internal policies alone cannot prevent a surveillance system from becoming a tool for racist policing. The fundamental architecture of Flock—thousands of cameras feeding into a nationwide searchable network—makes discrimination inevitable when enforcement mechanisms fail.
As Sen. Wyden astutely explained, “local elected officials can best protect their constituents from the inevitable abuses of Flock cameras by removing Flock from their communities.”
Table Overview and Notes
The following table compiles terms used by agencies to describe the reasons for searching the Flock Safety ALPR database. In a small number of cases, we removed additional information such as case numbers, specific incident details, and officers’ names that were present in the reason field.
We removed one agency from the list due to the agency indicating that the word was a person’s name and not a reference to Romani people.
In general, we did not include searches that used the term “Romanian,” although many of those may also be indicative of anti-Roma bias. We also did not include uses of “traveler” or “Traveller” when it did not include a clear ethnic modifier; however, we believe many of those searches are likely relevant.
A text-based version of the spreadsheet is available here.
