# i investigated Flock “Safety” Technology, What i Found is Concerning…
# Direct D — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuNaBdbagFM

Today we're going to be discussing Flock
cameras. I'm going to talk about the
Flock surveillance camera.
The brighter areas are where the really
high density of Flock cameras are.
Flock says that their goal is to help
investigators solve serious crimes while
protecting civil liberties.
The use of Flock cameras
they say is a concerning form of
surveillance.
Pulling out of your driveway, heading to
work, picking up groceries, every time
you drive past one of these, it might be
logging you and everywhere you go. And
these are Flock safety cameras,
automatic license plate readers or
ALPRs, now installed in thousands of
communities across America and probably
in one near you.
So, as I was making this video, I only
intended to inform and be knowledgeable
about Flock cameras cuz I haven't
[music] made content like that yet. And
once I started like doing my
investigation and research into Flock
and what they're really about, I found
this website and it turned the entire
video into something completely
different. So, I wanted to start the
video with that context so you don't
think it's [music] just some other drone
video cuz I'm actually part of it now, I
guess. If you go to this website that
we'll talk more about, I've been
Flock'd. This [music] is my license
plate and if you enter my license plate
into this website, it shows me [music]
that two specific police officers,
specifically Andre Feelin
and Roger Kaylee,
have been uh tracking me using uh the
Flock technology.
So, this video is kind of dynamic in the
sense where I'm going to inform you
about Flock technology, but I've also
kind of
[music]
been a target of it myself.
So, there's that.
So much for American freedoms, right?
And cut.
Now, they were marketed as a simple
crime-fighting tool. Critics from like
the ACLU, the Electronic Frontier
Foundation, and grassroots [music]
groups say they're building something
far more powerful and insidious. A
nationwide mass surveillance [music]
network that tracks your movements
without a warrant.
Well, first it has to be said that this
technology is incredibly powerful. It's
incredibly powerful to catch suspects
and to convict criminals of crimes. It's
used every single day, and it's so
powerful, it's actually changing the way
policing is conducted. It is allowing
investigators to generate leads and then
follow up on those leads to quite
literally catch rapists, murderers, and
then to convict these suspects of those
crimes. But, it's powerful in anyone's
hands. It's powerful in the hands of a
good cop, and it's powerful in the hands
of a bad cop. And this isn't
hypothetical. They're getting arrested
virtually every week. There's a new case
where they're using it to stalk their
exes or a love interest, and even going
back in time to track their movements
using their official police login to
this database.
We're going to get into how they skip
around the Fourth Amendment here. In
this video, I'm going to break it all
down into four parts. Exactly what these
cameras capture, who controls and
operates the systems, the serious
constitutional questions they raise, and
some practical ways you and your
community can attempt to push back.
We're just trying to keep you safe.
The system has helped them arrest
violent offenders and recover stolen
cars.
they say is priceless.
Just helped them get a dangerous man off
the street.
They tracked his car down using Flock
cameras.
The cameras take a picture of every car
that drives by.
All day is just reading tags.
They're continuously recording.
This is a tool to help us catch
criminals. We're going to catch
everyone. We have cameras everywhere in
that town. You can't get a breath of
fresh air in or out without us knowing.
Now, let's start with what they actually
[music] are. Flock safety cameras are
not traditional traffic or security
cameras. They are specialized automated
license plate readers designed to
capture detailed information about every
vehicle that passes within view, not
just suspected criminals. When a car
drives by, the motion-activated camera
rapidly takes multiple still images,
between [music] six and 12, I think, and
it focuses on the rear. It reads the
license plate and uses AI to create what
Flock [music] calls a vehicle signature
or vehicle fingerprint. This includes
make, model, color, distinguishing
[music] features like roof racks,
trailers, toolboxes, bumper stickers,
dents, scratches, wheel type, and more.
A lot of critics are pointing out that
this goes far beyond [music] basic plate
reading. The system can identify
vehicles even without visible plates
using these unique characteristics.
And recent expansions make it even more
powerful. Flock has added capabilities
for short video clips or even live feeds
in some deployments, plus AI-powered
natural language search. Instead of just
typing a plate number, officers can
search for things like white truck with
ladder rack, or descriptions that might
include occupants [music] or bystanders.
Data is uploaded to the cloud, typically
AWS, and stored for a default of 30 days
before, they say, it's automatically
deleted, unless the local police or
policy extends it. The cameras are often
solar-powered and cellular-connected,
making them easy to deploy almost
anywhere in America. You probably have
one near you. The company Flock
emphasizes that they focus on vehicles
in public view and do not perform facial
recognition on people. However, privacy
advocates argue the combination of plate
data plus vehicle fingerprint plus
location plus time creates a detailed
record of people's daily movements and
associations, effectively tracking
individuals without ever needing to
identify their faces. Basically, they
find a workaround to say, "No, we're not
recognizing anybody's face." This is the
foundation critics call a dragnet
surveillance system, [music]
not targeted policing.
Sounds like targeted policing to me.
We have cameras everywhere in that town.
You can't get a breath of fresh air in
or out without us knowing.
Krissana Elzer learned the power of
Flock firsthand.
You were in town from 11:50 to until
12:09, exactly. Like I said, nothing
gets in or out of the town without us
knowing.
When a Colorado police officer showed up
at her door holding Flock snapshots of
her truck.
And here's when you left
at 12:09. That's when you left town.
To get
No, to stop at Ridge Trail.
Wait a minute.
And take a package. Well, there's no
shushing. I don't need to be
I need to know where this is.
The first thing he pulled out on the
body cam is that Flock picture, the
clear photograph of your car.
But here's your vehicle in the
neighborhood many, many times,
apparently casing houses cuz you just
can't drive through for work or visit
other businesses. You can only be casing
houses.
It is her. It is 100%. It is locked in.
There is zero doubt. I wouldn't have
come here unless I was 100% sure. 100%.
It is certain. It is on video. You're
obviously welcome to go to court.
Crisanna was charged with [music]
stealing a package, but it wasn't her.
The porch pirate was somebody else.
Multiple times you tried to show him
your video evidence. He didn't want to
see it.
No, even when I called him back, he
said, "That's not my job."
You looked at the time of the crime. You
saw my vehicle entering in the Flock
camera.
No, no, what I did was I did an
investigation.
You called my wife a liar. You ruined
this track.
I have video evidence. I don't know what
you want me to say.
The charges were dropped after Crisanna
spent weeks trying to get the police
chief to look at her evidence. [music]
Time-stamped video from her truck and a
neighbor's doorbell camera showing she
wasn't at the scene of the crime.
What does it say about where we are that
you feel you have to have more cameras
than the police had in order to make
sure you can prove yourself innocent?
It sounds like it flipped the script to
you're guilty until you prove yourself
innocent.
Without a Flock camera, that detective
would not have been at her door. By his
own admission, he pulled out the Flock
picture of her car. Do you want to
apologize to Crisanna Elzer for what
happened to her?
misusing the tools?
Another important question to ask is who
runs this. Flock Safety is a private
company. It's Atlanta-based, founded in
2017,
that sells the hardware, software, and
maintains the cloud platform. They have
contacts with police departments,
sheriff's offices, homeowners
associations, businesses,
[music]
and private property owners now
operating in over 5,000 communities
across 49 [music] states in the United
States.
That's a lot. And here's the key part to
highlight about all this. While local
agencies own the data from cameras
[music] in their area, it gets uploaded
into Flock's centralized nationwide
network. What this means is police in
one small town can potentially search
data from cameras hundreds or thousands
of miles away. Flock provides real-time
alerts when a vehicle on the hot list,
[music] like a stolen, wanted, or Amber
Alert, passes a camera. The system also
integrates with nationwide databases
like the NCIC.
[music]
Critics, including the ACLU and EFF,
warn of mission creep and misuse, such
as data being used for immigration
enforcement with local police assisting
ICE. [music] EFF analysis of audit logs
show dozens of agencies running hundreds
of searches tied to protest activity.
Searching terms like protest [music]
or no kings or specific activist groups.
Documented cases included Texas officers
searching nationwide for a woman who had
an abortion and reports of officers
misusing the system for personal
stalking. One Kansas chief reportedly
ran hundreds of searches on his ex.
[music] The Electronic Frontier
Foundation found over 80 agencies using
language with harmful stereotypes, like
some against the Romani people. Flock
also has a business network, allowing
private [music] companies to contribute
to hot lists and share insights. And
this raises significant fears [music] of
corporate-driven surveillance. The
company provides transparency portals in
audit logs in many places, but critics
say oversight [music] is inconsistent
and the private company model outsources
accountability all the time.
Yeah, the crowd's the product. We are
the product.
Jason Hunnicutt lives in Dun- woody,
Georgia. The Atlanta suburb was an early
Flock customer with cameras all over
town.
Dunwoody shares with uh over a thousand
external agencies all of our data.
So, he filed records requests with the
city for Flock's audit logs.
Despite 30 records requests, you don't
know who's watching you and your family
in Dunwoody in other agencies and what
they're looking for.
Correct.
Every time somebody logs in and tries to
perform a search in Flock, it is
cataloged and that's there in an audit
log that's immutable. So, you there's
public accountability on this.
They gave you an estimate of over a half
million dollars for you as a resident of
Dunwoody to see records of the system
they're using to surveil you.
Yes, yes. Just to see
just to see who is looking at our data.
Who monitors the camera footage?
Kouniar went to city council with the
limited Flock audit records Dunwoody
gave him.
And there's two agencies that are on
there that are literally labeled delete
and do not use.
Nobody from Flock Safety is accessing or
monitoring your footage. Once again, I
have evidence of Flock employees looking
at parks, schools, playgrounds
The audit logs also showed Flock
executives watching private cameras
inside the city's Jewish Community
Center, which the mayor confirmed.
And this brings us to the biggest legal
fight of all of this.
[music]
Does this violate the US Constitution at
all? The Fourth Amendment protects
against unreasonable searches and
seizures [music] and requires warrants
based on probable cause. Critics argue
Flock's system creates persuasive
warrantless tracking of people's
movements on public roads, something the
Supreme Court has increasingly
scrutinized. In Carpenter v. United
States, a 2018 case, the court ruled
that accessing historical cell site
location data, which reveals movement
over time, is a search requiring a
warrant. The Institute for Justice
lawyers and others argued Flock's dense
network of cameras do something similar.
They can reconstruct long-term movement
patterns of ordinary people without any
suspicion. Another federal lawsuit in
Virginia, filed by the Institute of
Justice, alleged that the city's large
Flock deployment violated the Fourth
Amendment by indiscriminately tracking
residents. The case survived an early
motion to dismiss with the judge noting
[music] similarities to Carpenter.
However, later rulings in that case and
others, including Virginia appeals, have
generally [music] upheld ALPR's use on
public roadways, saying there is no
reasonable expectation of privacy in
license plate visibility to anyone.
[music] And frankly, I'd have to agree
with that, but the problem isn't just
license plate visibility, it's the
cameras tracking [music] your movement
and creating a pattern of things like
that for the government to use. It's not
just a license [music] plate, it's the
aggregate data across the network that
creates a comprehensive dossier of
someone's life. Where they go, who they
associate with, and their routines.
The Institute for Justice has filed a
federal lawsuit against the city over
its prolonged warrantless surveillance
of the entire driving public.
So, two people are involved in this, Lee
Smith and Crystal Arrington, live in and
around Norfolk, Virginia. Like most
ordinary people, they've got daily
routines, work, church, trips to the
store, visiting family, school pickups,
and so on. And like most regular people,
they don't like the thought of somebody
following them around and watching their
entire move. Now, the cameras aren't
following them, but the cameras are, as
we say, ubiquitous. They're everywhere.
So, when you go around in that town, the
cameras are recording what you're doing
and and and taking note. So, in 2023,
the city installed over 172
cameras
around town.
These are not your standard traffic
cameras, they're strategically placed to
capture everybody's daily travel.
Straight-up surveillance.
Set to watch 24/7 as people go about
their lives.
As the police chief explained, it would
be difficult to drive anywhere, any
distance, without running into a camera
somewhere.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and
the ACLU have documented searches tied
to protest monitoring and argue the lack
of a warrant requirement for database
queries enables fishing expeditions, and
I have to agree with that. Flock and
many courts maintain that capturing
publicly visible information on public
roads is constitutional and that the
technology helps solve serious [music]
crimes.
The debate continues in courts,
legislatures,
and communities with some [music] states
passing limits on retention, sharing, or
requiring warrants for certain uses,
which is good.
Now, if you're concerned, you're not
alone, and there are some concrete steps
people are taking [music] successfully
that I found online. One of them is map
and avoid them.
[music]
You can use deflock, deflock.org or
maps.deblock.org.
It's a crowdsourced map of tens of
thousands of these cameras. You can plan
privacy-friendly routes around them, and
there's even an app for [music]
reporting new ones if you're really
paranoid. And you can check to see if
you've been searched. Visit
haveibeenflocked.com
to see audit logs and trends and how the
data is being used against [music] you.
Oh, sitting here in post-production, and
I'm actually looking up some of these
websites that I'm going to leave in the
description for you, so you have some
resources, and I got curious myself
about
haveibeenflocked.com.
So, I went to haveibeenflocked.com,
and wouldn't you know it, I have been
flocked,
like a lot.
Here, let me show you. Here is the
haveibeenflocked website, and there's a
nice little toolbar on the side. You can
check some things out over here, but go
to plate look up,
[music]
and click right here. My license plate
used to be a direct
D.
[music]
Go there, and you type in my license
plate.
And oh
four results of 14 total.
Check this out.
We have the Gilbert, Arizona Police
Department looking me [music] up as
recent as 6 3 25. That's great. Gilbert
Police Department again in 2024.
Oh, then we have the Maricopa County
Sheriff's Office looking me up in 2024.
And in 2023. [music]
Yeah. So, this is very real. The police
are using this non-governmental
business
to search for you.
That should alarm you. I would suggest
that you get on this website. There's a
link for it down in the description.
Look your license plate up. See if you
have cops tracking you.
You can thank me in the comments for
putting you on to this website and
making you more aware. You're welcome.
You can demand transparency. [music] You
can file public records requests for
contacts, use statistics, audit logs,
and search [music] reasons. Attend city
councils and police oversight meetings
at a minimum.
And then there's always legislative
pressure. You can contact your local
representative about bills limiting
ALPRs uses. Some states like Washington
have already added some safeguards. And
if you're going to contact them, you
should probably reference [music] that
there are already states doing that.
I was kind of not a fan to see the Flock
cameras come into my own town,
especially like near my own house.
The big concern, the cameras being used
to track people and an invasion of
privacy. The Sheriff's Office says
though that was never their use or
intention and said the only thing they
could be used for were specific cases.
The deputy is required to have a case to
justify the search.
And there are two um and I will review
that
uh every 3 months and to make sure that
the justification is there.
Undersheriff Tracy Wyckoff championed
the idea and used county funds and grant
money to have them installed.
For us, yeah, it's been it's been
successful.
He said they've been used to help solve
crimes or locate a missing person. The
images were only available by request
and approval to Washington agencies, not
federal and not the public. But a recent
Washington State Superior Court ruling
changed everything, declaring that the
Flock camera images are public records.
That means anyone from anywhere can
request them.
The concern with the public here is that
they feel like their information is
being exposed to us unnecessarily, but
now people can do records requests for
any reason from anywhere
and get the same information we had. And
that's that's concerning to us because
we're trying to keep this
information secure and safe.
The Sheriff's office says the cameras
have been turned off, but will remain in
place for now. Kate Bertash, who lives
at the east end of the county, has been
a vocal opponent since day one.
I'm often really worried that companies
like Flock Safety are just looking to
use small communities like ours to get
recurring revenue from, that they don't
really offer a service that is going to
meet our needs.
And says she's happy to see them turned
off.
I am definitely very happy to see them
turned off. I hope it's also a great
opportunity for us to revisit together
kind of like what it is we expect from
public safety, but also from privacy and
how we can guarantee that to each other
instead as members of the community.
Resources like stopflock.com and
alpr.watch
track meetings and provide action
guidance.
[music]
Grassroots wins are happening. Cameras
are being removed or heavily restricted
in multiple [music] places when
communities actually do get organized.
So in conclusion, Flock cameras
represent a powerful new layer of
surveillance infrastructure here in the
United States. [music]
One that a lot of people say quietly
erodes privacy while promising safety,
which is the classic trope that the
United States government has always
perpetuated on us, its people. Whether
you see them as essential tools or
dangerous overreach, the technology is
here and it's expanding fast. But, I
want to know what you think about all of
this.
[music]
Do you think that they're helpful or
harmful? Have you seen these in your
area?
[music]
Tell me in the comments. I'll be down
there reading. I'm curious to see
[music]
how prevalent these cameras are.
And if you made it this far in the video
and you haven't used the like button
yet, I would appreciate it if you did
that.
Thanks for watching.
I hope you [music] have a good day.
[music]