NoPanopticon

Flock Safety was founded in 2017 in Atlanta by Garrett Langley. The Georgia Tech graduate says he was inspired to create the product after his Atlanta community experienced a rise in crime. Soon after, he started selling automated license plate readers to homeowners associations, businesses, and other private entities before adding police.

With thousands of customers across the country, Flock has grown rapidly and now offers multiple products—ALPRs, video cameras, gunshot detection (Raven), and drones-as-first-responders (Aerodome)—that perpetuate the criminalization of Black, brown, and poor communities.

Flock is a for-profit company that profits from crime and has no interest in ending it. Flock sells ALPRs and related products to police, HOAs, and businesses. Their profit is driven by fear and the continuation of crime and violence. Spending thousands on ALPRs will never address the root causes of crime, conflict, or violence.

ALPRs have not been conclusively proven to deter or reduce crime. Tracking and tracing cars does not prevent crime, and there is no comprehensive evidence that ALPRs actually reduce crime. Surveillance, in general, does not make people safer.

ALPRs are always on and always recording. They are dragnet surveillance that violates civil liberties and civil rights, especially for Black, brown, and poor people. Everyone is surveilled; a specific group of people are criminalized.

ALPRs are used in ways that reinforce racist police practices. They are routinely deployed in discriminatory ways. “Hot lists” that trigger alerts are often filled with people who have unpaid fines or fees, with no real mechanism for holding police accountable. ALPR data will be used to criminalize people seeking abortions and undermines sanctuary city policies—fusion centers and data sharing allow data to flow to ICE and other agencies despite local ordinances.

TALON (now integrated into FlockOS) is a nationwide database network where license plate scans from every Flock customer are shared with other customers. A car can be tracked as it drives from jurisdiction to jurisdiction across the country; police can access data outside their own jurisdiction. TALON is offered to customers for free.

ALPRs make mistakes. Studies show ALPRs misread plates at least 10% of the time. There are documented cases of mistaken reads leading to dangerous encounters where police pull guns on drivers whose plates were wrongly flagged.

ALPR technology can be used on any image from any camera. The same OCR-style technology can be applied to footage from existing city cameras or doorbell cameras (e.g. Ring), expanding where and how people can be surveilled.

ALPRs:

• Falcon – pole-mounted ALPR cameras; deployed with over 1,500 customers; HOAs were a primary market before police. Cameras cost roughly $2,500 each—significantly less than Motorola’s Vigilant.
• Falcon LR – ALPR cameras for highways
• Falcon Flex – ALPR cameras for temporary installation

Video cameras:

• Condor – video-as-a-service surveillance cameras
• Wing – software that distills hours of footage into searchable frames; used with “Vehicle Fingerprint” technology to identify car features (paint color, roof racks, etc.), not just license plates

Software:

• FlockOS / TALON – real-time crime center software integrating multiple surveillance technologies and shared plate database
• FlockOS 911 – partnership with Prepared for AI integration into 911 calls
• Advanced Search (wrapped into FlockOS) – users can upload still images from non-Flock cameras for review, expanding Flock’s reach beyond its own cameras
• Camera Network Expansion – upload a picture of a vehicle from any source (including Ring) and search to see if Flock cameras have seen it
• Convoy Analysis – enter a plate and find vehicles that frequently travel with it
• Multi-Geo Search – search for vehicles spotted in multiple specified locations

Audio / gunshot detection:

• Raven – gunshot detection technology; highly controversial with little evidence it works as promised. Sold in conjunction with ALPR contracts in some jurisdictions.

Drones:

• Flock Aerodome – “drones-as-first-responders” after Flock purchased Aerodome

Permits and licensing: Flock has repeatedly run into problems with permits and licenses. The company was caught installing ALPR cameras in North Carolina without proper state licensing (2023); a judge in Wake blocked further installations until Flock complied. The Texas Department of Public Safety sent Flock a cease-and-desist in 2024 to stop installations in private homes without a specific state license. Flock installed 200 cameras without proper permits in South Carolina (2024) and submitted error-filled applications to the Illinois Department of Transportation (2022).

Lawsuits: Norfolk, VA residents filed a federal lawsuit with the Institute for Justice against Flock claiming their ALPRs violate the Fourth Amendment (2024). A lawsuit accuses the Illinois State Police and state officials of operating an unconstitutional “system of dragnet surveillance” through license plate reading cameras (2024).

Flock-funded study: Flock funded a study claiming its products are instrumental in solving 10% of crime in the US and touts it to boost sales. After participating, one of the academic researchers has become publicly critical of the study.