Flock Safety cameras blanket US roads: more than 100,000 license plate readers

Flock Safety has become the dominant player in the American vehicle surveillance market: the company makes most of the more than 100,000 license plate reader cameras installed along US roads.

What Flock Safety is

Flock Safety is an American technology company founded in 2017 in Atlanta. Its main product is the automated license plate reader (ALPR): a compact camera mounted on a roadside pole that records every passing vehicle. In a few years, the startup has grown into the industry's dominant player.

According to Engadget, Flock makes the overwhelming majority of the more than 100,000 ALPR devices covering American roads. No other manufacturer in the segment comes close to that market share.

The company runs on a subscription model: local governments, police departments and private sites pay an annual fee for access to the camera network and the data it accumulates.

More than just plate readers

The name "license plate readers" describes only the basic function of these devices. In practice, each Flock camera captures far more about every passing vehicle:

• The license plate, with state and region
• The exact time and GPS coordinates of the pass
• The vehicle's color, make and model
• Distinguishing features: a tow hitch, stickers, body damage
• A match against a database of wanted vehicles

All data is automatically checked against federal and local registries of stolen vehicles and cars tied to active investigations. On a match, police receive a real-time alert.

Flock also sells access to its infrastructure to private residential complexes, homeowners' associations and commercial sites. That means data on a driver's route can be collected not only by government agencies but also by property management companies.

Scale and a regulatory vacuum

A network of 100,000 cameras is a substantial infrastructure. Privacy specialists point out that such a system can reconstruct the route of almost any driver in a large American city over the past several months.

This data collection happens without a court warrant. A police department can request the pass history of a specific license plate directly through the Flock platform, without a formal court order and without notifying the driver.

"We build safe communities without violating anyone's privacy,"

Flock Safety says.

Rights groups categorically disagree with this assessment. The ACLU and other organizations have spent several years pushing for federal limits on ALPR systems. Some states have adopted their own rules, but there is still no single law. The company is growing faster than lawmakers can reach agreement, and it continues to actively attract venture investment.

What this means

Flock Safety is a clear example of a private company building national surveillance infrastructure faster than society can absorb the consequences. One hundred thousand cameras already stand on the roads. As long as there is no federal regulation, their number will keep growing, and so will the volume of data on where, when and how often you drive.