FLOCK flock safety
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Flock Safety
retrieved 2026-07-11
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Flock Group Inc., doing business as Flock Safety, 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. As of 2025, Flock says that it operates in over 5,000 communities across 49 US states, and perform over 20 billion scans of vehicles in the US every month. Flock Safety's network consists of cameras, image recognition, and machine learning, which share data with police departments.
Flock differs from its competitors in that it markets their services not just to law enforcement, but also to homeowner associations and similar community organizations as tools for crime prevention. They claim that their systems aid 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.
== Corporate history ==
Flock was founded in 2017. It was co-founded by three Georgia Tech alumni: Garrett Langley, Paige Todd, and Matt Feury. 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. 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.
By 2024, Flock's fixed cameras had been installed in over 4,000 cities across 42 states. By April of that year, Flock employed over 900 people.
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. Following this ruling, the company began to receive additional push back from communities concerned about the legality of their operation.
That October, Flock acquired Aerodome, a manufacturer of drones for law enforcement, and announced plans to introduce its own line of drones.
As of 2025, Flock is used by over 6,000 municipalities in the United States. The company had raised a total $950 million in venture funding, with a $7.5 billion valuation. Some cities have stopped working with Flock over the use of its data in immigration enforcement and for community privacy concerns, while others did so due to the company acting without the consent of the city.
In October 2025, Flock Safety announced a partnership with Amazon's Ring security products, where residents with ring cameras have the option to share video data to public safety agencies in legal investigations. The plan came under scrutiny after Amazon ran an ad during Super Bowl LX that depicted the "Search Party" function for finding missing or lost pets across enhanced with AI surveillance. A joint decision was made to cancel the planned integration.
== Products ==
=== Automatic license plate readers ===
According to The Center for Human Rights and Privacy, Flock's products, the Falcon and Sparrow, are cameras that monitor traffic and photograph the rear of all passing vehicles. Their software uses computer vision to read the vehicles' license plates and identify other distinguishing visual characteristics, sending that information to a central server via cellular network. Flock's servers then log these 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.
ALPRs like Flock's differ from traffic enforcement cameras in that they are for surveillance and criminal investigations, and do not perform any enforcement of traffic laws. According to Jill Walker Rettberg, the cameras are designed to not be noticed in the urban environment.
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. Flock claims that its ALPRs can capture images of vehicles traveling at up to 100 miles per hour (160 km/h), at distances of up to 75 feet (23 m), regardless of lighting.