Concerns over a "China-like surveillance state" stem from the rapid nationwide expansion of artificial intelligence-powered automated license plate readers (ALPRs) made by private company Flock Safety (commonly referred to as Flock cameras).
The Scale and Capabilities of Flock Networks
• There are roughly 130,000 Flock cameras installed across the United States, operating everywhere from local store fronts and neighborhoods to major highways.
• Every motor vehicle that comes into view is tracked and recorded, capturing license plate numbers, vehicle make, model, color, and bumper stickers, alongside images of individuals.
• Advanced AI integrations let law enforcement search footage using descriptive strings of words—such as "Caucasian man, blue shirt"—rather than just traditional license plate images.
Privacy and Civil Liberty Concerns
• Warrantless Access: Captured data flows into a centralized database that contracting law enforcement agencies can search without a warrant.
• Misuse and Abuses: Investigations by media outlets have documented instances of law enforcement officers using the tool to stalk ex-girlfriends, alongside unauthorized use like a company executive accessing footage inside a children's gymnastics center for a demonstration.
• Immigration Enforcement: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has leveraged the database via local law enforcement channels for immigration tracking, despite company denials of a direct contract with ICE.
• Loophole Exploits: Critics and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) point out that software guardrails designed to block unauthorized or sensitive searches (such as reproductive healthcare data) can be easily bypassed by police typing generic terms like "investigation" into the prompt reason field.
Backlash and Oversight
• Former Pentagon officials and privacy advocates have warned that the unchecked scale of these tools mirrors the early slippery slopes of foreign mass-surveillance models.
• Public protests, community pushback, and state actions—such as Texas Governor Abbott pulling state funding from such cameras pending review—have grown significantly.
• Congressional scrutiny has followed, though executives from Flock and fellow surveillance tech firms recently declined invitations to appear before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing called by Senator Josh Hawley.
”AMERICANS DO NOT like to be watched. Neither, it seems, do the bosses of companies that make surveillance technology. Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri, invited several of them to testify to a subcommittee about their products on September 23rd, amid mounting privacy concerns. All declined.
His request follows months of backlash against Flock Safety, America’s largest operator of automatic licence-plate readers (ALPRs).
Flock’s cameras use AI to track vehicles, aiding police investigations. But officers have also misused them.
The share of Americans opposed to ALPRs in their community has risen from 33% to 46% in under a year, according to YouGov, a pollster. Lawmakers from both parties are mulling bills to limit the technology.
ALPRs are not new: local governments have long used them to collect tolls and enforce traffic laws. More recently, activists on the left protested against their use by federal immigration authorities. Donald Trump, on the other hand, says he likes Flock because it helps law enforcement. Yet the uproar has escalated quickly, echoing the outcry over data centres. ALPRs and data centres have both scaled up quickly and become symbols of anxiety about AI.
Flock, which sells cameras much cheaper than its competitors’, boasts more than 120,000 across the country, each generating millions of images. Owners can share this data with nearby police departments and Flock’s nationwide database, allowing officers to search different cities or states. AI can extract other details about a vehicle, such as its colour, broadening searches beyond licence plates.
Police say this helps them solve crimes such as theft or abductions. Flock claims to have aided 10,000 missing-person cases last year. But its network of ALPRs “goes far beyond what people previously understood the tools to be”, argues Melissa Owen of the National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers.
Cops do not need warrants to look up plates, and state laws vary on how officers log searches, how long data can be stored and whether footage can be sent to other states.
Officers have been caught stalking ex-partners and tracking spouses. Software errors have led to innocent drivers being stopped. A lack of transparency has added to the furore. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital-rights group, analysed search logs and found officers entering nonsensical reasons for looking up plates, including “LOL” and “sexy”.
(Flock has since added a drop-down menu of categories.) The EFF is one of several organisations suing cities for allegedly running thousands of unnecessary searches. The company says it has tightened requirements for searching its database.
However, the uproar has spilled into the midterms. Seth Bodnar, an independent running for the Senate in Montana, recently filmed himself shooting a camera with a shotgun. The backlash is producing more substantive results, too. Greg Abbott, running to be re-elected as Texas’s governor, has paused state funding for Flock. Over 250 cities, towns and schools ended their contracts with Flock in August and September, according to a tracker by Secure Justice, an anti-surveillance group. In the same two months last year it was five.” [1]
1. What the Flock? The Economist; London Vol. 460, Iss. 9518, (Sep 26, 2026): 34.
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