Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based company that operates approximately 120,000 automatic licence-plate reader cameras across the United States, announced a series of policy changes on Thursday in response to reported misuse of its surveillance system by law enforcement officers, including allegations of stalking and harassment of women.
Flock Safety tightens data policies amid cross-partisan backlash over licence-plate camera misuse
Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based company that operates approximately 120,000 automatic licence-plate reader cameras across the United States, announced a series of policy changes on Thursday in response to reported misuse of its surveillance system by law enforcement officers, including allegations of stalking and harassment of women.
Flock's cameras capture images of vehicles and licence plates, storing the data in a searchable database used by police departments, local governments, and private groups such as neighbourhood watch committees. The company told the New York Post that its technology supported more than one million criminal investigations and public-safety incidents in 2025, was used in 20 percent of solved cases in jurisdictions that deploy the cameras, and helped locate more than 10,000 missing people that year.
The company came under renewed scrutiny after the Washington Post published an investigation earlier this month, according to Al Jazeera, revealing that at least 46 law enforcement officers across the country have been accused of using the cameras for unauthorised tracking. The Institute for Justice, according to the New York Post, reports 39 cases of romantic stalking by police via Flock cameras in the past five years alone. In one case described by the New York Post, former Deputy Jaquarius Yarbrough of Richmond County, Virginia, allegedly used the system to track a woman he was having an affair with 1,639 times over several months.
Among the changes Flock announced, the company said it is reducing the recommended default data retention period for images from 30 days to 7 days, and introducing an 'evidence mode' permitting longer storage windows in exceptional cases. Law enforcement agencies will also be able to add offence-based filters restricting which data other agencies may access — for example, allowing searches only for stolen vehicles, missing persons, or violent crimes while blocking immigration-related queries. Flock will additionally make mandatory an audit feature documenting all searches and flagging abnormal activity, and will lock out users who display abnormal behaviour pending further review. Case codes will be required for all law enforcement searches by the end of 2026.
According to the New York Post, there are currently no uniform national rules governing how data collected by Flock cameras can be accessed or used, and retention periods vary widely across police departments. Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the New York Post: 'What we're talking about are cameras that are documenting everywhere your car goes. There are databases where police can type in your license plate and see everywhere you've gone.'
Opposition to the cameras has drawn participants from across the political spectrum, according to the New York Post. Grassroots organisations such as DeFlock and DeFlock Idaho have formed, staging rallies and pressuring city councils to reject the technology. Brian McKellar, a self-identified conservative from Idaho Falls, Idaho, told the New York Post he launched DeFlock Idaho after learning of his local police department's use of the cameras through a town hall complaint. McKellar described a growing coalition of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents opposing the cameras in his area. According to the Guardian, as cited by the New York Post, Flock cameras have been vandalised, damaged, or destroyed at least 33 times across 23 states, with some individuals facing criminal charges as a result.
- None of the sources establish whether any of the 46 law enforcement officers accused of misuse have faced criminal charges or disciplinary action.
- The sources do not indicate whether Flock's newly announced policies are legally enforceable or merely voluntary recommendations to client agencies.
- It is not established whether individual police departments are required to adopt Flock's new default settings or can opt out.
- The sources do not detail the outcome of most vandalism cases, aside from a single arrest mentioned in the New York Post.
- The sources do not address whether federal or state legislative action is under consideration in response to these concerns.
- No response from the specific police departments implicated in stalking cases is included in any source.
- Al Jazeera English — original — by Erin Hale
- New York Post — by Rikki Schlott
Read the original at Al Jazeera English