Flock Safety

Industry	Technology, Surveillance
Founded	2017 in United States
Founders	Garrett Langley, Matt Feury
Headquarters	Atlanta, Georgia
Products	Automated Licence Plate Readers
Website	flocksafety.com

Flock Safety is an American company that sells Automated License Plate Recognition technology (ALPR) to law enforcement agencies and neighborhood associations. Flock's systems allow matching and searching, raising both business interest in the form of significant venture funding as well as numerous privacy concerns.

Technology

Flock's cameras read license plates and send instant alerts to law enforcement officers when the cameras identify license plates that match those on "hot lists" of cars that are stolen or otherwise of interest to the police. Private citizens, home owners associations, and businesses can also use Flock's cameras, with their own hot lists.^[1]

Unlike other ALPR systems, Flock cameras allow searches based on the car's color and other visual features.^[2][3] Flock Safety "allows law enforcement officers to query for various characteristics of a suspect vehicle, including make and model, color, paper plates, and attributes...like a specific bumper color," reported Flock investor Andreesen Horowitz.^[4]

Business

Flock was founded in 2017.^[5] By 2022 Flock's fixed cameras had been installed in over 1,500 cities and 40 states across the US.^[6][7] Flock has raised $380 million in venture funding, with a $3.5 billion valuation in 2022.^[8]

Privacy

There are privacy concerns about Flock's systems.^{[9][10][11][12]} The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that ALPRs like Flock create more problems than they solve.^[13] There are concerns that Flock's system may cause harm, especially to minorities.^[14]

Privacy expert Jodi Daniels warns Flock's technology "creates an environment where individuals may feel as though they are under constant surveillance. This can lead to a chilling effect on free speech and other civil liberties, as people might become hesitant to express themselves or participate in certain activities due to the fear of being recorded and possibly monitored by law enforcement."^[15]

The American Civil Liberties Union released a report in March 2022 criticizing both Flock Safety's business model and its products.^[16] In 2023, the ACLU acknowledged some uses of ALPRS could be OK, but emphasized the need for careful controls:^[17]

We don't find every use of ALPRs objectionable. For example, we do not generally object to using them to check license plates against lists of stolen cars, for AMBER Alerts, or for toll collection, provided they are deployed and used fairly and subject to proper checks and balances, such as ensuring devices are not disproportionately deployed in low-income communities and communities of color, and that the "hot lists" they are run against are legitimate and up to date. But 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.

Flock states its cameras and technology only captures data from vehicles, and the machine learning is specifically designed not to identify people. Flock has defended itself against "myths" about license plate readers.^[18] Although Flock Safety claims their cameras reduce crime, opponents argue that there is no clear evidence for this.^[19] In 2023, Atlanta police (Cobb County) credited a Flock license plate recognition system for helping them track down a gunman.^[20]

Flock's surveillance model has also brought debates into towns between supporters and opponents of the technology.^{[21][22][23][24]} Menlo Park, California opted out of a contract in 2023, bucking trends of nearby cities.^[25]

Flock investors tout its surveillance power:^[26]

"What magnifies the power of Flock Safety even more is that the digital evidence can be pooled across different law enforcement agencies for a short period of time, making it more powerful as adoption scales within a community and across the U.S. more broadly...The power of Flock Safety is in its network. The more devices deployed, the more evidence there is to solve crimes."

Meanwhile, a report by the University of Michigan found:^[27][28]

"Recent studies examining the accuracy of ALPRs show that they often misread license plates, leading to disastrous real-world consequences, including violent arrests of innocent people. ALPR errors arise not only from shortcomings internal to their technology but from the hot lists they depend on to provide matches.

Even when ALPRs work as intended, the vast majority of images taken are not connected to any criminal activity. As most jurisdictions have no policies regarding retention limits, many agencies keep these scans on innocent people indefinitely. This can allow the government to maintain an overarching and potentially unconstitutional level of surveillance and can lead to abuse.

In some instances, officers have misused confidential databases 'to get information on romantic partners, business associates, neighbors, journalists and others for reasons that have nothing to do with daily police work.' Professional abuse includes targeting religious minorities and communities of color. Reproductive rights advocates are now raising alarms about the ways police and others could use ALPRs for the targeting of abortion clinics in the wake of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade."

References