Flock Cameras are Watching Us

Flock Safety is a growing surveillance company. They are growing by selling their mass surveillance camera system to cities around the country. The sales pitch on their website entices cities with, "Join the Largest Fixed LPR [License Plate Reader] Network. With billions of monthly plate reads, Flock connects communities, businesses and law enforcement in a shared network built to stop crime." LPR is a bit of a misleading term. The technology does a lot more than read license plates. Elsewhere in the sales pitch, it says, "No Plate? No Problem. Capture more detail with Vehicle Fingerprint® and Flock FreeForm®. Turn images into actionable evidence — no plate required." Flock's websige even includes a helpful webinar: "How to Speak to City Councils: Meeting the Moment with Confidence." That gives me a sinking feeling that cities across America stand little chance against Flock's smooth-talking salesmen. You see, fighting crime is a higher priority for voters than protecting privacy. Because council members have to, in turn, sell the systems to voters, they end up talking like Flock salesman themselves and maybe even believing the sales pitch wholesale.

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The City of Richardson's Mayor Pro Tem Ken Hutchenrider is a case in point. With Mayor Amir Omar and Council member Jennifer Justice at a town hall meeting May 6, 2026, a question from the audience was about Flock Safety security cameras. "What are your thoughts? I've noticed them on roads nearby in Dallas, and I'm curious on your opinion." The questioner may not have noticed, but the City of Richardson itself is a customer of Flock Safety, as Hutchrider helpfully explains:

I'll take this one because I've been intimately involved, both from the city and then also from the hospital perspective. I'll just speak for myself. I love Flock cameras, and here's why. Flock cameras are designed to look at license plates on vehicles...We installed the Flock camera system that ties to the police department. Again, it doesn't take a picture of you. It doesn't take a picture of, you know, of anything other than it takes your license plate. If the license plate, if it comes up as stolen, if someone commits a crime and they're able to tie to it, it's a huge crime fighting tool. And so I'm a big, big, big proponent of Flock cameras. I know everybody gets a little bit nervous about, okay, what you know is it, you know, are people taking pictures or people taking whatever, etc, etc. It's not. It's limited to police force activity and police force interaction. So at the hospital, we have our own police force, so they tie to Richardson and the two police forces work together to reduce crime. So all across the country, Flock security cameras have been a huge deterrent of specific theft and crime involving motor vehicles, and then also being able to catch people who commit a crime and drive away in a vehicle as well. So does that answer the spirit of the question? Okay, great. Thank you." [emphasis added]

On the other side of this issue, here's a very recent (May 5, 2026) article from PC Magazine that basically says Flock Safety's sales pitch is, well, pardon my French, full of shit ("The Creepy Reality Behind the License Plate Cameras in Your Town").

The cameras see a lot more than just license plates. And they store a lot more than images of license plates. They store enough to identify a car by make, model, color, dents, bumper stickers, etc. They store where that vehicle has been. And that's just when the camera system is being used as intended. There are examples of people having unauthorized access to misconfigured cameras. And examples of people with authorized access misusing the feeds. "Public records requests by [Jason Hunyar of Dunwoody, GA] revealed that Dunwoody police department employees were accessing live video at baseball fields, gyms, libraries, playgrounds, and pools."

I recognize the benefits of using automated license plate readers. But I also recognize that the potential abuses are serious enough that no city should adopt this technology without strong safeguards in place—their own safeguards and independent audits. No city council should take Flock's word about their own safety measures. I don't like having a government representative, who is elected to protect the public interest, sounding like a paid pitchman for a company selling mass surveillance tools. Even if Flock tries to be trustworthy, that doesn't mean its internal controls are always robust. According to that PC Magazine story, after one person "identified a Flock employee who accessed cameras in a children’s gymnastics room at the nearby Jewish community center," Flock responded by saying "the sales employee accessed the camera in a children’s gymnastics room because he was demonstrating the camera's content moderation features to a potential client." Well, OK, then. Is that reassuring to you? I want my council members to be skeptical about sales pitches and to spend their time ensuring that safeguards and independent audits are in place to guard Richardson residents' privacy, not just to spend time repeating the company's sales pitches to the public.

I haven't been able to confirm the situation in Richardson, but elsewhere, many cities don't own the cameras and database. Flock Safety does. Flock installs the cameras and owns the database. The cities just pay a subscription fee for accessing the database. To me, that is an accountability hole.

Flock cameras are watching us. But who is watching Flock? That's the question I want Mayor Pro Tem Hutchenrider to answer.

Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.

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P.S. If you don't attend the mayor's town hall meetings, you miss revealing Q&A like the above. And you miss being introduced to hidden gems in Richardson like the Springhill Retreat Center.

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"License plates are bait.
Now cameras read our lives.
No plate? No problem."
—h/t ChatGPT