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Flock Safety
American license plate recognition company From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Flock Group Inc., doing business as Flock Safety,[1] is an American manufacturer and operator of security hardware and software, particularly automated license plate recognition (ALPR), video surveillance, and 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, and as of 2024, claims to operate in over 5,000 communities across at least 42 U.S. states.[2][3][4] Flock Safety's network of cameras, utilizing image recognition and machine learning, can share data with police departments and can be integrated into predictive policing platforms like Palantir.[5]
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Flock differs from its competitors in that it markets their services not just to law enforcement, but also to communities as tools for crime prevention. They claim that their systems are effective at aiding criminal investigations; however, they are widely described by critics as an example of mass surveillance, and their efficacy and effects on privacy and other civil liberties are the subject of extensive public scrutiny, debate, and litigation.[6]
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Corporate history
Flock was founded in 2017.[1][7][8] It was co-founded by three Georgia Tech alumni: Garrett Langley (chief executive officer), Paige Todd (chief people officer), and Matt Feury (chief technology officer).[9][10] 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.[9] 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.[9]
Flock has raised $380 million in venture funding, with a $3.5 billion valuation in 2022.[11]
By 2024, Flock's fixed cameras had been installed in over 4,000 cities across 42 states.[2][12][13] By April of that year, Flock employed over 900 people.[10] That October, Flock acquired Aerodome, a manufacturer of drones for law enforcement, and announced plans to introduce its own line of drones.[14]
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Products
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Automatic license plate readers
Flock's most popular products, the Falcon and Sparrow, are cameras which monitor traffic and photograph the rear of all passing vehicles. Their software uses artificial intelligence to read the vehicles' license plates and identify other distinguishing visual characteristics, sending that information to a central server via cellular network.[15] Flock's servers then log this 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.[16][17][18]
ALPRs like Flock's differ from traffic enforcement cameras in that they are used exclusively for surveillance and criminal investigations, and do not perform any enforcement of traffic laws.[19][20][21] In a 2023 case, for example, it was reported that Flock Safety cameras had helped to locate a missing 83-year-old woman in Alabama by identifying the location of her vehicle.[22]
Flock claims 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.[13][23][24] Flock claims that its ALPRs can capture images of vehicles traveling at up to 100 mph, at distances of up to 75 feet, regardless of lighting.[19]
Most Flock devices are powered by solar panels and rechargeable batteries,[5] allowing them to operate in locations without access to mains electricity.[25] Many are mounted on manufacturer-supplied poles, while others are affixed to existing lampposts or telephone poles.[25][26] Flock's primary competitor in the ALPR market is Motorola Solutions.[16][27]
Integration with other camera systems
Flock offers software which integrates its ALPR and vehicle identification software into existing video camera systems, including Axon dashcams widely used in police vehicles.[28][29]
Person lookup tool
In May 2025, 404 Media reported that 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, and which as of May 2025 was already in use by law enforcement in an Early Access program.[30]
Gunshot detector
Launched in 2021, the lesser-known Flock Raven is an audio gunfire locator, similar in function to ShotSpotter.[31] 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.[32] Like the ALPRs, they can be mounted on manufacturer-supplied poles and powered by solar panels.[33]
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Business model
While companies in this space tend to primarily target law enforcement as customers, Flock Safety markets its products to both police agencies and community organizations, emphasizing crime prevention and family safety.[5] The company's marketing centers on efforts to reduce crime community security, while naming its products after birds, assertedly to reinforce the theme of watchfulness.[5] Flock owns and operates all of its devices,[34] leasing them to law enforcement agencies,[35] homeowners' associations,[36] schools,[37] retailers,[38][39] and commercial and residential property managers.[39][40][41] Private customers are able to create customizable watchlists in the system,[36][42] and many share data from their systems with police agencies.[43]
Major clients
Major private Flock customers include:
Efficacy
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Flock claims that their technology significantly reduces crime where deployed; in 2024, the company claimed that its devices were involved in 10% of successful criminal investigations in the United States.[47]
Flock's investors tout its surveillance power:[13]
"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."
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, with Farivar's piece asserting that burglaries actually slightly increased, and that serious crimes remained nearly unchanged.[48] Farivar further questioned Flock Safety's claims in Fort Worth, Dayton, and Lexington.[48] However, one community in Fort Worth, an HOA, used to experience two to three vehicle robbery and other property crime incidents a month and currently, they are down to less than five each year in the past two years with a record of several arrests by the Fort Worth Police Department of criminal actors who entered the neighborhood using stolen vehicles or those with warrants attached to their vehicles.[19] Some law enforcement agencies have said that the technology is "[h]elpful at generating investigative leads and solving crimes that may have otherwise gone unsolved", with some additionally claiming a deterrent effect.[19]
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Privacy concerns
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Privacy concerns have been raised with respect to ALPRs generally, including Flock's systems.[49][50][51][6] Flock's surveillance technology is often criticized for its broadening of public surveillance, and lead to a chilling effect on civil liberties, as described by privacy experts and organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties Union. The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that ALPRs create more problems than they solve.[52]
In March 2022, the American Civil Liberties Union released a report criticizing Flock Safety's business model and products.[53] In 2023, the ACLU acknowledged some uses of ALPRS could be acceptable, but emphasized the need for careful controls:[16]
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.[54] Flock Safety claims their cameras reduce crime, though some opponents question the clarity of the evidence for this claim.[55] In 2023, Atlanta police (Cobb County) credited a Flock license plate recognition system for helping them track down a gunman.[56]
Flock's surveillance model has also spurred debates between supporters and opponents of the technology.[57][58][59][60] Menlo Park, California opted out of a contract in 2023, bucking trends of nearby cities,[61] but revisited the question and approved Flock cameras in 2024.[62]
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.[63] Later, in October 2024, the Institute for Justice filed a federal lawsuit against the Norfolk Police Department on behalf of two local residents, similarly asserting that the department's use of Flock ALPRs constitutes illegal surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment.[64][65][66]
In May 2025, a Texas sheriff's department reportedly used a nationwide Flock database to search for a woman who had had a self-induced abortion,[67][68] with the search including at least two states where abortion is legal.[67]
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References
External links
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