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ACLU — Fight Creepy ALPR Cameras (Get the Flock Out campaign)
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Fight Creepy ALPR Cameras
Last updated on July 10, 2026
Automatic license plate reader (ALPR) companies like Flock Safety are quietly trying to build a nationwide mass surveillance system. If there are Flock cameras in your city, they are tracking, logging, and sharing your movements without a warrant. But we're not powerless. More and more communities are rejecting these creepy cameras — and yours can be one of them!
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Fast Facts
80,000 – 100,000
Flock cameras are currently installed in both urban and rural areas on highways, in neighborhoods, and outside your local hardware store.
scanned by ALPRs are connected to any crime or wrongdoing.
1-in-10
license plates scanned by Flock license plate readers misread the state.
Flock's ALPR cameras aren't like your normal traffic cameras. This surveillance technology records and tracks every car that comes into view, and then an AI algorithm catalogs the make, model, color, license plate number, bumper stickers, and even scratches. This personal information is then uploaded into a nationwide database that any law enforcement agency with a Flock contract can search — with few regulations or oversight on how they use what they find.
What the Flock?
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Flock provides one of the most widely used ALPR systems, but they aren't the only company trying to make a buck by spying on us. Axon, Vigilant Solutions (a subsidiary of Motorola Solutions), Genetec, PlateSmart, Innova Systems, Rekor, ELSAG, Perceptics, and Jenoptik are a few of the other leading companies selling ALPRs to police, private companies, and others.
It doesn't matter which company has its creepy cameras in your neighborhood; they all have the same problems: a lack of transparency, oversight, and regulation into how they collect, store, and use our data, and how to hold public and private actors accountable if they abuse it.
Just think about how much someone could learn about your life if cameras constantly tracked where you drove. They could find out which doctors you visit, what house of faith you worship at, who you visit or drive around with — even which political meetings and protests you attend.
And we've already seen how this mass surveillance tool can be weaponized and abused by law enforcement. ICE and CBP have repeatedly used Flock to go after immigrants without warrants. Kansas police used them to pursue a man who wrote a critical op-ed about the department, while a Colorado police officer wrongfully accused a woman of theft based on a Flock hit and then refused to look at evidence proving her innocence. A mother and her children were held at gunpoint because ALPR cameras wrongly flagged their car as stolen.
Tell Flock Safety to Get the Flock Out!
This unprecedented spying is terrifying, but there's good news, too. Communities across the country are fighting back against these creepy cameras and winning.
Cities and police departments are canceling their contracts with Flock in response to public pressure. ACLU affiliates are supporting — and passing! — legislation in the states to regulate how ALPR cameras are used. But we need your help.
Read our local advocacy toolkit and join the movement to tell Flock and other ALPR companies: "Get The Flock Out!"
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ALPR cameras are not triggered by any specific action or event. Instead, ALPR cameras are constantly recording and tracking the movements of everything that enters their field of view and logging it into a mass surveillance database.n","image_video_field_group":{"image_video_options":{"value":"image","label":"Image"},"image_group":{"image":false,"caption":"","credit":"","link-settings":"none","url":""},"video_group":{"video":false,"cover_image":false,"video_orientation":"standard"},"youtube_group":{"oembed-url":"","cover-image":false}}},{"title":"What happens to the data Flock collects? ","content":"
Very few states have laws regulating how the data collected by Flock and other ALPR companies is collected, how long it is saved, how it is stored, and how it can be used. Most of the time, it depends on the contract that local governments have signed with the company providing the ALPR cameras.n
Cities and police departments that contract with Flock can choose to share the license plate data they collect with no other departments, with some specific departments, with all departments in their state, or with the entire nationwide Flock network. Flocku0027s system incentivizes maximum data-sharing: If a police department chooses to share their data with the entire nationwide network, that department can also search the entire nationwide network. Some cities have discovered that despite thinking they had turned off out-of-state sharing, Flock was still enabling access for law enforcement agencies across the country.n