Police are misusing licence plate readers to stalk women. Flock's fixes have big holes in them.
The company behind 120,000 roadside cameras just updated its rules after officers used the system to track women. Critics say the changes don't go nearly far enough.
Key points
- Flock Safety operates a network of roughly 120,000 automatic licence plate readers across the United States, the largest such network in the country.
- MIT Technology Review identified reporting on 50 documented cases of officers misusing Flock and competitor systems, frequently to stalk or harass women.
- One Wisconsin woman's ex-boyfriend, a police officer, searched for her car 179 times using the system.
- Flock's new rule requires officers to enter a case number before running a search, but the company confirmed it does not verify whether those numbers are real.
- Flock was valued at roughly 8 billion dollars; cities are now cancelling contracts and some states are trying to pass laws limiting or banning the technology.
A police officer in Wisconsin searched for his ex-girlfriend's car 179 times using a law-enforcement database. Another woman had no one to report her stalker to, because the stalker was the chief of police. These are not edge cases. According to recent reporting, there are at least 50 documented instances of officers misusing Flock Safety's network of roadside cameras, or those of its competitors, most often to track women.
Flock, the company behind an estimated 120,000 automatic licence plate readers (cameras that photograph passing vehicles, record the plate, and log the time and location) spread across the United States, announced a set of policy changes last week. The headline update: officers must now enter a criminal case number before running a search.
Does the new rule actually stop abuse?
No, not reliably. Flock told MIT Technology Review it does not check whether those case numbers match anything in a police department's real records. An officer determined to misuse the system can type in a made-up number and proceed.
That is the core problem. A stronger version of the same idea would cross-reference the number against the department's own files before allowing a search. Flock has not done that. The company also flags searches that look statistically unusual, but officers have already shown they can work around earlier Flock safeguards.
What broader concern is this really about?
Flock was sold to police departments as a crime-fighting tool. It has become, critics argue, a mass-surveillance network. Officers in one city can search data collected in another. Agencies can keep that data for months or years, even though Flock's own figures show 90 percent of useful searches happen within a week of an incident. The company recently recommended a seven-day retention limit, but individual agencies are free to ignore that recommendation.
Flock's valuation of roughly 8 billion dollars rests on that wide network. Narrowing data retention or restricting cross-city searches would undercut the business model.
Yet the data suggests a narrower system could still do most of the legitimate work. Flock often cites Amber Alerts (emergency broadcasts for missing or abducted children) as its clearest good use. One could design the system so that broad, multi-city searches are only unlocked when an active Amber Alert or similar verified emergency exists. That would preserve genuine value without requiring everyone's daily movements to sit in a searchable database.
What happens next?
Some cities are already cancelling Flock contracts. Others are pausing while residents debate the terms they are willing to accept. State legislatures in several places are drafting bills to limit or ban the technology outright.
The ACLU's senior policy counsel Chad Marlow put it plainly: the best constraint on a surveillance network is law, not a company's own guidelines. Flock CEO Garrett Langley acknowledged he will "probably always have a different view than the ACLU."
For anyone living in a city with Flock cameras, the practical question is whether local government has set firm rules on how long data is kept, who can search it, and what audit trail exists when someone does. Most have not. That is the gap worth pushing elected officials to close.
