Saturday, September 05, 2026

FLOCK GROUP, INC. d/b/a "FLOCK SAFETY"

"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -- Benjamin Franklin, 1755.  

From Wikipedia:


Flock Safety

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Flock Group Inc.
TypePrivate
IndustryTechnology
Surveillance
Founded2017 (9 years ago)
FoundersGarrett Langley
Matt Feury
Paige Todd
Headquarters3284 Northside Parkway NW, Atlanta, Georgia[1][2], 
US
Area served
United States
Key peopleGarrett Langley (CEO)
ProductsAutomated license plate readers
CCTV cameras
Gunfire detection systems
Software
Revenue$300 million[3]
Number of employees
1,500 (2025)[4]
Websiteflocksafety.com

Flock Group Inc., doing business as Flock Safety,[5] is a privately held American manufacturer and operator of surveillance hardware and software, particularly automated license plate recognition (ALPR), mass video surveillance, gunfire locator systems, and supporting software to integrate the data gathered by these technologies. Founded in 2017, Flock operates such systems under contract with law enforcement agencies, neighborhood associations, and private property owners. As of 2025, Flock says that it operates in over 5,000 communities across 49 US states, and performs over 20 billion scans of vehicles in the US every month.[6][7][8] Flock Safety's network consists of cameras, image recognition, and machine learning, which share data with police departments.

Flock markets their services to law enforcement, homeowner associations and similar community organizations as tools for crime prevention and investigations. Flock has been described by critics as an example of mass surveillance, and their efficacy and effects on privacy and other civil liberties are the subject of public scrutiny, debate, and litigation.[9]

Corporate history

Flock was founded in 2017.[5][10][11] It was co-founded by three Georgia Tech alumni: Garrett Langley, Paige Todd, and Matt Feury.[12][13] It began as a side project in which the three co-founders built their first video surveillance cameras by hand around Langley's dining room table.[12] When a DeKalb County detective told Langley that his camera product had helped with solving a home break-in, Langley called the two other co-founders and told them to quit their jobs.[12]

By 2024, Flock's fixed cameras had been installed in over 4,000 cities across 42 states.[14][15][16] By April of that year, Flock employed over 900 people.[13]

In June 2024, a judge in the Norfolk, Virginia, Circuit Court ruled that collecting location data from the city's 172 Flock ALPRs constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment and cannot be used as evidence in a criminal case when collected without a warrant. The ruling likened ALPR location databases to tracking devices, whose use by police was previously found unconstitutional without a warrant in United States v. Jones.[17] Following this ruling, the company began to receive additional pushback from communities concerned about the legality of their operation.[18][19][20] That October, Flock acquired Aerodome, a manufacturer of drones for law enforcement, and announced plans to introduce its own line of drones.[21]

As of 2025, Flock is used by over 6,000 municipalities in the United States.[22] The company had raised a total $950 million in venture funding, with a $7.5 billion valuation.[23][24] Much of Flock's initial investment came from private venture capital funds associated with Peter Thiel, who has been criticized for his anti-democratic views and support for surveillance technologies.[25][26][27][28] Some cities have stopped working with Flock over the use of its data in immigration enforcement and for community privacy concerns, while others did so due to the company acting without the consent of the city.[29]

In October 2025, Flock Safety announced a partnership with Amazon's Ring security products, where residents with Ring cameras would have the option to share video data to public safety agencies in legal investigations.[30][31] The plan came under scrutiny after Amazon ran an ad during Super Bowl LX that depicted the Ring's "Search Party" function for finding missing or lost pets, enhanced with AI surveillance. A joint decision was made to cancel the planned integration.[32][33]

Products

Typical Flock ALPR, mounted to a pole
Flock camera located on a hiking trail

Falcon and Sparrow

The Falcon and Sparrow are automatic license plate readers(ALPRs) that monitor traffic and photograph the rear of all passing vehicles. Their software uses computer vision to read the vehicles' license plates and identify other distinguishing visual characteristics, sending that information to a central server via an LTE cellular network.[34][35] Flock's servers then log the identifying data, with the time and location of the scan, in a searchable database and compare all results with the National Crime Information Center, as well as state and local police watchlists of cars that are reported stolen or otherwise of interest to the police, instantly alerting nearby officers upon a match.[36][37]

ALPRs like Flock's differ from traffic enforcement cameras in that they are intended for surveillance and criminal investigations and do not perform any autonomous enforcement of traffic laws,[38][39][40]though data from Flock cameras was previously used by police to issue a ticket.[41][42] According to Jill Walker Rettberg, the cameras are designed to not be noticed in an urban environment.[43] In July 2026, Flock cameras began being installed hidden inside the backs of speed readers to avoid vandalism.[44][45]

Flock said that its system's ability to identify vehicles' visual features, which it calls "vehicle fingerprint technology", is unique among ALPR systems; they state that the system can identify vehicles' make, model, and color, as well as other distinguishing attributes such as mismatching colors, bumper stickers, dents, and temporary license plates, allowing investigators to search for recorded vehicles based on these characteristics.[16][46][47] Flock said that its ALPRs can capture images of vehicles traveling at up to 100 miles per hour (160 km/h) at distances of up to 75 feet (23 m), regardless of lighting.[38]

Flock says its ALPRs "focus on vehicles, not people", and are intended to help police identify vehicle details, not personal information.[48] Flock additionally provides a tool called FreeForm, which allows police to search for anything in a scene with natural language. Public records requests showed that police were searching for characteristics of individuals, including by race, gender, clothing, height, tattoos, and perceived political affiliation.[49]

Most Flock devices are powered by solar panels and rechargeable batteries,[43] allowing them to operate in locations without access to utility power.[50] Many are mounted on manufacturer-supplied poles, while others are affixed to existing lampposts or telephone poles.[50][51] Flock also offers mobile trailers, which contain two PTZ cameras, one panoramic video camera, and deterrent devices such as flashing lights and a speaker.[52]

Flock's primary competitor in the ALPR market is Motorola Solutions.[36][53]

Flock offers software which integrates its ALPR and vehicle identification software into existing video camera systems, including IP cameras[54][55][56] and Axon dashcams widely used in police vehicles.[57][58] Jill Walker Rettberg stated Flock's network can be integrated into predictive policing platforms like Palantir.[43]

Condor

An individual being automatically tracked by a Flock PTZ camera
Multiple individuals being tracked by a PTZ camera

Flock's Condor cameras are pan–tilt–zoom (PTZ) surveillance cameras primarily marketed as a method to avoid blind spots from fixed-angle cameras while having a wider scope than just ALPR functionalities, such as automatically tracking people.[59][60][61]Condor cameras can automatically zoom in on cars, people, faces, phone screens, and other objects nearby.[62] According to marketing material on Flock's website, they can also be controlled manually.[62]

Nova

In May 2025, Flock was developing a new product called Nova that the company referred as a "public safety data platform", which would supplement ALPR data with information from data breaches, public records, and commercially available data in order to track specific individuals without a warrant.[63] As of May 2025, Nova was already in use by law enforcement in an early access program.[64] The Electronic Frontier Foundation described Flock Nova as a "dystopian panopticon".[65] After 404 Media reporting, the company decided not to include information from data breaches in Nova.[66]

Raven

Launched in 2021, the Flock Raven is an audio gunfire locator, similar in function to ShotSpotter.[67] The Raven records audio in 5-second increments, using artificial intelligence to analyze the sound clips for audible gunfire. When a gunshot is detected, the device estimates its location and alerts police.[68] Like the ALPRs, they can be mounted on manufacturer-supplied poles and powered by solar panels.[69] The company claims at least 1,200 gunshots have been detected by their system, with false positive and false negative rates below 1%.[70]

In October 2025, Flock announced that their Raven devices would begin listening for "human distress", with advertisements showing police being alerted when the device picks up on screaming.[71]

Alpha

Flock produces a drone marketed as a "Drone as First Responder" system. It has one hardware variant named "Alpha". Drones can be stored in remotely-located "docks", then deployed to a given location with a remote trigger, including manual direction to GPS coordinates, or automated deployment to the location of license plate reader or gunshot detection alerts. The drones have both regular, thermal, and night-vision cameras, and can fly up to 60 miles per hour (97 km/h).[72] The drones are equipped with license plate reader technology[73] and can see plates from up to 2,000 feet (610 m) away.[74][75][72]

The drones are marketed as a reactive rather than proactive solution, and they are intended to only leave their dock when deployed by a human or automated alert.[76] The drones have been criticized for mass surveillance risks[77][76][73] and militarization, as well as for collecting a more expansive set of data than traditional fixed-location cameras.[75][78] The Electronic Frontier Foundation stated the drones could "capture footage from areas typically inaccessible to a casual patrol officer" such as people's backyards, roofs, and through windows.[79]

OS Investigate

In August 2026, Wired reported that limited prompts and code from an AI and text search-based Flock software tool called OS Investigate, previously known as Nightshift,[80] were leaked via publicly accessible Flock login pages. Wired stated other leaked code from Flock's website contained a list of tools available to OS Investigate, including the ability to correlate Flock-native data such as license plate scans and camera metadata, police department data such as arrest records and dispatch logs, and commercial databases including private personal data such as Social Security numbers and birth dates, as well as emails, phone numbers, and relatives or associated individuals.[81]

Wired stated that the leaked prompts commonly involved searches based on area, time, or behavior, rather than searching based on an individual by license plate, including behavior such as someone visiting three or more retail locations within 3 days, or someone driving their car within a neighborhood in a given time frame. It also included the capability to do a "workup", which Flock describes as a "one-command background check" that can list a subject's name, date of birth, owned vehicles, and police records, as well as personal contact details, relatives, and online accounts.[81][82]

Flock's CEO Garett Langley stated that Investigate OS was like a crime analyst that was "always awake, always watching out for you" and stated that investigators who try it get "addicted". Flock stated the product is currently being tested with a "small group of law enforcement partners", and that it is still being developed.[81]

Business model

Flock owns and operates all of its devices,[83] leasing them to various categories of customers.[10][84][85]Competitors primarily market their products to law enforcement agencies, but Flock also markets its products to community organizations and private entities.[43] Some customers share data from their systems with police agencies.[86][87]

Marketing materials center on efforts to reduce crime, and the company uses bird-themed product names.[43]Until 2026, the sales team conducted surveillance demos in Georgia using a real youth gymnastics center, playgrounds, schools, and a pool.[88]

Flock has developed relationships with several mayors.[89][failed verification][90] After the Denver city council voted to end the city's relationship with the company, the mayor negotiated a free six-month extension of the contract, for which no approval was required.[89]

Efficacy

Some law enforcement agencies have said that the technology is "helpful at generating investigative leads and solving crimes that may have otherwise gone unsolved", with some additionally claiming a deterrent effect.[38]

In 2024, Cyrus Farivar, writing for Forbes, questioned a statistic crediting Flock Safety's technology with an 80% reduction in residential burglaries in San Marino, California, in early 2021 compared to the same period in 2020. Farivar asserted that burglaries actually slightly increased, and that serious crimes remained nearly unchanged.[91] Farivar also questioned similar claims from Flock regarding Fort Worth, Dayton, and Lexington.[91]

A 2021 study of Flock's Falcon camera by "surveillance research firm IPVM ... found a 10% error rate in the camera output". Flock then halted sales to IPVM and disputed the accuracy of IPVM's findings.[92]Inaccuracies in Flock's cameras have resulted in wrongful arrests in several cities.[92][93]

In 2025, a series of vulnerabilities in Flock cameras was identified, including hardcoded credentials[94][95] and connection details, cleartext storage of code,[96] and an enabled debug interface.[97] Flock stated these vulnerabilities would require physical access to the device to exploit.[98] Later in 2025, a separate cybersecurity flaw was found by researchers, which allowed anyone to access live camera feeds and other data from the Flock Condor line through publicly exposed live streams and administrator control panels. Flock stated the issue involved a limited number of devices caused by a misconfiguration and said it had been remedied.[62]

In 2026, Business Insider reported that a driver in Roseville, California, had been repeatedly stopped by police due to Flock misidentifying a character on his license plate. An analysis by the local police department stated that 71% of the 1,427 stolen or used-in-felony vehicle alerts sent to them by Flock in 2023 and 2024 were incorrectly identified plates, and Flock had also repeatedly not identified passing vehicles that were used in crimes. Flock stated that Roseville had a "particularly unique deployment" of cameras that were set up to only capture the rear of passing vehicles to avoid capturing people's faces, and that they were using older hardware and cameras placed higher up than Flock usually recommends. Flock refused to comment on if it independently tests its cameras' accuracy.[99]

Controversies

Flock's products have generated bipartisan controversy and backlash across the political spectrum.[100][101][102] Flock cameras have been stolen, vandalized, and purposefully obstructed.[103][104][105][106]

In October 2024, Colorado activist Will Freeman created a crowdsourced searchable online map of the United States showing locations of Flock cameras called DeFlock.[107] In January 2025, Flock sent a cease and desist letter to the project.[108]

On their website, DeFlock lists dozens of jurisdictions that have ended contracts with Flock or deactivated their cameras.[109][110] When the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) announced it would not renew its contract with Flock Safety, set to expire in June 2026, the department explicitly cited civil liberties and privacy concerns[111] and public backlash.[112] The LAPD's chief information officer stated they wanted more contractual terms and protections, and that a new contract was being drafted. Flock said they believed the LAPD's decision was based on "misconceptions" and hoped to resume service soon.[113]

Privacy concerns

Privacy concerns have been raised with respect to ALPRs generally, including Flock's systems.[27][114][115][9][116]Additionally, Flock's surveillance model has spurred debate.[117][118][119][115] Flock's surveillance technology has been criticized for its broadening of public surveillance and effect on civil liberties, as described by privacy experts and organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The EFF argues that ALPRs create more problems than they solve.[120]

In March 2022, the ACLU released a report criticizing Flock Safety's business model and products.[121] In 2023, the ACLU acknowledged some uses of ALPRs could be acceptable, but emphasized the need for careful controls:[36]

There's no reason the technology should be used to create comprehensive records of everybody's comings and goings—and that is precisely what ALPR databases like Flock's are doing. In our country, the government should not be tracking us unless it has individualized suspicion that we're engaged in wrongdoing.[36]

In an interview, CEO Garrett Langley said he believed there were two types of activists raising concerns about Flock, praising the ACLU and EFF for their methods and approaches but comparing the DeFlock project to terrorists and Antifa.[122] He later apologized for these comments and called them a mistake.[123][124]

In October 2024, the Institute for Justice filed a federal lawsuit against the Norfolk Police Department on behalf of two local residents, asserting that the department's use of Flock ALPRs constituted illegal surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment.[19][125][126] In California, state law prohibits sharing license plate reader data with federal agencies, but in 2025 it was reported that several state and municipal law enforcement agencies nonetheless did so.[127]

In December 2025, 404 Media reported that Flock left at least 60 of its Condor cameras "around the country exposed to the open internet, where anyone could watch them, download 30 days worth of video archive, and change settings, see log files, and run diagnostics".[62]

In April 2026, 404 Media reported that Flock Safety representatives had conducted product demos using video from a Jewish Community Center in Dunwoody, Georgia, that included feeds of a children’s gymnastics room, a playground, a school, and a pool.[88][128] In response, Flock CEO Garrett Langley formally apologized to the community center, acknowledging "poor judgment," and the company promised increased transparency and updated privacy guardrails.[129] The company stated: "Claims of inappropriate conduct by our employees are false."[130]

In many cases, Flock usage is secret to protect the integrity of ongoing investigations. Some agencies provide public logs, and the website haveibeenflocked.com aggregates known logs so potential victims of privacy violations can make inquiries.[131]

Misuse by law enforcement

A law enforcement officer is alleged to have searched Flock products on behalf of a suspect in an ongoing drug investigation.[132]

In 2026, a review of media reports since 2024 by the Institute for Justice revealed 28 cases of law enforcement officers from across the United States abusing Flock and other ALPR systems to stalk former romantic partners.[133] Some of these cases were discovered by private citizens and journalists through noticing patterns of abuse in public records from police departments, raising concerns about underreporting and lack of oversight by authorities.[134] Incidents include:

  • A Sedgwick, Kansas, police chief who used Flock Safety license plate readers to track his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend’s vehicles 228 times over more than four months, and used his police vehicle to follow them.[135][136]
  • A Kechi, Kansas, police lieutenant who used Flock Safety license plate readers to track his estranged wife.[137][138]
  • A Bonner Springs, Kansas, detective who used Flock license plate readers to stalk his wife.[139]
  • A Sumter County, Florida, detective who falsified records to search for her husband's ex-wife.[140]
  • The police chief of Braselton, Georgia, who was arrested and charged after the Georgia Bureau of Investigation concluded he had misused Flock to stalk and harass several individuals, including an ex-girlfriend.[141][142][131]
  • A Pasadena, Texas, sergeant who used Flock to "track and stalk a female officer".[143]
  • A supervisor with the Conyers, Georgia, police department who used Flock to track her domestic partner's location.[144]
  • Two Greer, South Carolina, officers who were terminated for misusing Flock, one to track a former partner.[145]
  • A Niceville, Florida, officer who used Flock to track a fellow officer and that officer's spouse.[146]
  • A Menasha, Wisconsin, officer whose ex-girlfriend filed a complaint alleging he used Flock to stalk her.[147]
  • The police chief of Holiday Hills, Illinois, who used Flock to track several people he knew.[148]
  • The sheriff of Jerome County, Idaho, who used Flock to search for his wife's vehicle hundreds of times.[149]
  • A Cherry Valley, Illinois, officer's ex-wife who filed a restraining order after accusing him of stalking her with Flock cameras.[150]
  • Three Richmond County, Georgia, police officers who were terminated for allegedly misusing Flock products.[151]
  • A Milwaukee police officer who used Flock to track a woman he was dating and her ex-partner nearly 180 times over a two-month period.[152]
  • A Louisville, Kentucky, officer who was charged with multiple felonies after allegedly using the city’s Flock system to track an ex-partner and her friends hundreds of times over two months.[153]
  • A Kenosha County, Wisconsin, sheriff's deputy who misused Flock over 40 times.[154]
  • A Mooresville, North Carolina, officer who used Flock to track her boyfriend's ex-wife 31 times.[155]
  • Five police officers in Albany, Georgia, who were arrested for using Flock for purposes unrelated to law enforcement.[156]
  • Two officers from Reynoldsburg, Ohio, who resigned before they were scheduled to be interviewed by an internal affairs investigation after repeatedly searching the same license plates unrelated to law enforcement.[157]
  • A Brevard County deputy sheriff, who stalked his ex-girlfriend using Flock while on and off-duty. He resigned after the investigation which also included incidents of speeding, racism, a Nazi salute, and abuse of his girlfriend, among other incidents, rather than being terminated.[158][159]
  • An Alpharetta, Georgia, officer who stalked his ex-romantic partner and her friend, both employed as police in the same department, by using Flock 56 times.[160]

In August 2026, Flock's CEO Garrett Langley stated that "we knew this was a risk nine years ago", and claimed that it was the reason for originally implementing audit logs,[161] which was opt-in until August of 2026, when Flock stated their "Audit Assistance" tool would be mandatory by the end of the year.[162] Only about one third of police department customers used Audit Assistance prior to the announcement, and privacy advocates had previously asked for audit features to be made mandatory.[131]

The Audit Assistance feature flags suspicious activity, such as repeated queries on the same vehicle, and queries made by officers outside of working hours. It also provides a now-mandatory feature that requires a criminal case number for each query. As of August 2026, 13 states make auditing mandatory, and 8 make misuse of such systems a standalone crime as opposed to a possible element of stalking or harassment.[131]

A "network audit" obtained by local media demonstrated that some of Flock's transparency features could be circumvented with simple button mashing,[163] and the ACLU has claimed that the effectiveness of Flock's Audit Assistance tool had not been independently verified, and thus should be assumed to be ineffective or "window dressing".[164]

False arrests and detentions

Innocent people have been pulled over, detained, held at gunpoint, or jailed as a result of mistakes in Flock systems:[165]

  • A Plymouth, Minnesota, car blogger and his wife were detained by police in a parking lot because Flock misread his dealer plate.[166][167]
  • A Cherry Hills Village, Colorado, driver was wrongly detained repeatedly after officers mistakenly put his license plate number on a Flock hotlist.[168]
  • A Sherwood, Arkansas, couple was pulled over and ordered from their car at gunpoint after a Flock camera misread a digit on their plate.[169]
  • A 23-year old Volusia County, Florida, woman is suing the Florida Highway Patrol after she was wrongfully arrested and detained for 13 days, including several spent in solitary confinement.[170][171] A Flock Safety ALPR misidentified her vehicle's color and misread her tag, wrongly flagging her as a suspect in a hit and run which killed three people. According to her attorney, photo evidence shows her vehicle without damage, contradicting the arrest report citing damage on her vehicle consistent with the accident.[172] A different motorist who had been driving the same model vehicle in a different color was later arrested and charged.[173]
  • A San Diego man was wrongly jailed for nearly a month after Flock mistook his plate for one that was at the scene of an attempted carjacking.[174]
  • A York County, South Carolina, motorist was detained at gunpoint after Flock misread a character on his license plate, flagging the car as stolen.[175]
  • Two Morristown, Tennessee, grandparents were detained at gunpoint while their three-year-old granddaughter watched from the car after a Flock camera misread an "O" on their plate as a "0".[176]
  • Toledo, Ohio, police detained an innocent driver at gunpoint, sicced their dog on him, and jailed him for several hours after a Flock camera misread a "7" on their plate as a "2".[176]
  • Sedgwick County, Kansas, sheriff's deputies detained an innocent couple at gunpoint because a Flock camera failed to distinguish between temporary and permanent license plates with the same number.[177]
  • In two separate incidents, three Española, New Mexico, high school students were detained at gunpoint after a Flock camera misread their plates.[178]
  • A man from Jackson Township, Stark County, Ohio, is suing Flock Safety after he was pulled over and detained because officers failed to remove a license plate from a hotlist.[179]

Use by ICE

In 2025, it was reported that Flock data had been queried for use in immigration enforcement.[180] A pilot program of investigation with Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security Investigations was initiated to help combat human trafficking and fentanyl distribution. Flock halted the program in August because of "confusion and concerns" about the purpose of the investigations.[181] Local governments shared the data by either blindly approving the inquiries or unknowingly signing onto the national sharing option.[29]Langley falsely stated that Flock did not have federal contracts.[92][182][183]

In November 2025, the City of Verona voted to not renew its contract with Flock, which would expire in April and July 2026.[184] Prior to the expiry date, Verona mayor Luke Diaz stated Flock did not remove the cameras despite multiple requests from the city since the vote.[185] Flock later reached out to the city with a sales team, trying to sell a new contract.[186] Flock objected to the city removing the cameras themselves when asked in early January, after which the city covered the cameras with trash bags. The cameras were later removed by Flock on February 4. Flock stated that the cameras could be remotely deactivated at any time and that they were not operating during the time they remained installed.[186] Flock added that they have a "standard offboarding process" for camera removal and that "mid-term contract cancellations follow a separate process".[187]

Officials in the town of Littleton, Massachusetts, also alleged five Flock Safety cameras were switched back on by the company without informing the town after the town temporarily disabled the cameras.[188]

In late June 2026, ABC affiliate WEWS-TV in Cleveland reported that after a Flock contract with the city of Cleveland expired following a 3–1 vote against renewal, the cameras remained on and were still being used by local police. Cleveland Police sergeant Freddy Diaz stated that the cameras would remain operational "at minimum" until July 15, when another meeting with the city council would take place to allow for a secondary review of the contract. Local activists called the situation "incredibly disappointing" and called the police department's support for the technology "not compelling".[189][190]

In June 2026, WSLS-TV reported that a Flock device, identified as a Flock Raven upon inspection by a police officer, was installed on a Roanoke, Virginia, homeowner's yard without prior notice. The Roanoke City Council had voted in April to approve 75 installations[191] of Flock Raven devices, but her address was not on the approved list, and no installations were scheduled to take place until July.[192][193] The Flock Raven was later removed from her property, and the city later determined that 30 of the 41 devices installed up to that point were placed in unapproved locations.[194]

Use to investigate women seeking abortion services

In at least one state, law enforcement officers queried Flock products in an abortion investigation.[195][196][197]According to a sworn affidavit by a detective in Johnson County, Texas, deputies initiated a "death investigation" of a "non-viable fetus", logged evidence of a woman’s self-managed abortion in response to a report from her alleged romantic partner, and consulted prosecutors about possibly charging her. The death investigation remained open for weeks, with detectives interviewing the woman and reviewing her text messages about the abortion.[197] Johnson County's query included 83,000 Flock cameras nationwide, including cameras in states where abortion is legal and collecting such data is explicitly prohibited by law.[196]Johnson County sheriff Adam King denied that the investigation was related to an abortion, and Flock Safety falsely characterized it as a missing person investigation in a statement on their website, directly contradicting the sworn affidavit.[195][196][197][198]

In Wisconsin, a police officer allegedly misused Flock to see if his ex-girlfriend had gone to an abortion clinic.[131]

False and misleading statements

The city council of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, voted to rescind its contract with Flock in August 2026 after finding its representatives had made "false statements" about its products to the council.[199] Later in the month, the Sheboygan, Wisconsin, police department asked the city to cover its cameras with obscuring bags and revoke its Flock contract, due to actions by the company which they felt untrustworthy and not meeting the city's terms.[200] Later reporting revealed that a Flock sales representative contacted the Sheboygan engineering department offering to sell the city five years worth of traffic data.[201]

A senior Flock publicist falsely claimed in a LinkedIn post that Flock had partnered with the ACLU of New Mexico. A Flock representative also claimed that "Flock has worked with groups like the ACLU to design an ALPR system that takes considerations they have into account" before a meeting of the Urbana, Illinois, city council.[202] This statement was denied by the ACLU, which said, "Neither the ACLU nor any of our affiliates have ever partnered with Flock Safety or worked with them to design any ALPR system."[202]

In August 2026, 404 Media claimed that Flock CEO Garrett Langley had lied about their reporting on usage of Flock to track a woman seeking an abortion in Texas. In a call to Ohio law enforcement and government officials, Langley called 404 Media's article "entirely false" and stated that the woman could not have been under investigation for having an abortion as the practice is legal in Texas, despite local authorities discussing if they could charge her with a crime. 404 Media also claimed that after information regarding her alleged abusive relationship was identified, police released a retroactive justification claiming the investigation was for the woman's safety.[203][204]

References

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