In the United States, billions of license plates are read monthly using license plate readers (LPR) like the Flock LPR cameras. License plates are read by the cameras, as well as additional data, such as the make and model of your car, bumper damage, etc. The data is kept in a large, searchable database, and according to Flock’s website, you can search the vehicle, plate or no plate.

Seemingly “harmless”, it’s only for safety and security purposes, right?

Lucy, whose last name has been retracted for privacy purposes, is an activist, consultant and college graduate with a bachelor’s degree in digital privacy who has a mission to share the truth. 

“[Flock cameras] feed into a large-scale database that has historically been accessible to many parties and has been abused by such parties. They have also proven rather insecure with their information storage and rolled out before fixing glaring security vulnerabilities [such as] allowing entirely unauthorized access to their feeds [and] storage,” Lucy said.

The parties who would have unauthorized access to Flock camera feeds and storage include organizations such as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Flock website presents itself as having “agency-controlled access,” claims it does not work with ICE, and includes a disclaimer at the end stating:

“ICE does not have direct access to Flock cameras, systems, or data, unless the agencies that control their data expressly and deliberately allow it,” The Flock company said.

Essentially, Flock and ICE work together if your agency allows it, which is a vague statement as that could mean law enforcement such as local police, or even private entities such as HOAs, depending on who purchased the camera. Through connections with other agencies, ICE or other Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agencies could access the footage. 

This excessive and unnecessary surveillance and access to footage has been proven by multiple lawsuits. One such case is the residents of San Jose suing their city due to the “unconstitutional mass surveillance system” that the almost 500 cameras had posed to the city. In the U.S. alone, there are over 80,000 AI-powered cameras.

In the San Jose case, the attorney representing the city’s residents, Daniel Woislaw, provided  information on what Flock cameras have actually been used for. Despite what they may say on their website, the reality of these cameras is completely different.

“Officers can run searches based on a hunch, idle curiosity, or even personal animus. Around the country, officers have been caught using [automated license-plating reader] databases to stalk their ex-partners, monitor protestors and even track down a woman who reportedly had an abortion,” Woislaw said in an interview with KQED.

DeFlock is an app and website with a crowdfunded map that shows where each Flock camera is in any city across the world. The AI-powered LPRs are being used across the globe in multiple continents. 

“The problem here lies with the fact that it is not the only surveillance tool that is actively deployed against the population. Thus, all of the information collected by Flock can be cross- referenced with any of the other surveillance infrastructure. This poses a major danger, since profiling, social graphing, and other strategies of targeting community members becomes relatively trivial with enough datapoints,” Lucy said.

Ultimately, Flock cameras and the normalization of AI-powered and plain surveillance infrastructure partnered with everyone being surveilled without their consent every day, pose a worrying outcome to everyone and their freedom.

Flock cameras having searchable footage used by ICE contributes to more violent oppression within marginalized communities specifically. The cameras are simply a new development in this surveillance state, where surveillance has always been the case, these cameras only create an even more dangerous system today.