Why license plate cameras are a problem
Americans have a right to privacy. DeFlock volunteers have mapped more than 140,000 license plate cameras on American streets, and each one logs the cars that pass with the time and place. Drivers have no way to opt out. Sources are linked under each paragraph.
What the cameras record
An automated license plate reader is a camera on a pole, a streetlight or a police car. It reads the plates of passing cars and uploads a photo with the time and place to a central server. Police can search those records later, and agencies can share them with thousands of others. EFF notes that the vast majority of people in the records have not been accused of a crime.
About 4 in 5 of the cameras DeFlock volunteers have mapped are Flock Safety’s. Motorola Solutions, Genetec and Axis make many of the others. Flock says its network handles 20 billion vehicle scans a month, and in 2025 it told Sen. Ron Wyden that three in four of its police customers had joined its national lookup tool. If your department is one of them, an agency thousands of miles away can search a scan from your street.
Misuse and security failures
The Washington Post has counted at least 100 police employees charged with or accused of misusing plate readers. In 46 of the first 50 cases it reported, the system belonged to Flock, the company with the most mapped cameras. In 26 of those 50, investigators or prosecutors said officers used the cameras to watch wives, girlfriends, ex-partners or women they wanted to meet. One Kansas police chief ran his ex-girlfriend’s plate 164 times, logging reasons like “missing child.”
Washington PostWashington Post, Sept 23Wichita Eagle404 Media
Protesters. EFF went through 12 million Flock searches and found more than 50 federal, state and local agencies running hundreds of them tied to protest activity. In most of them, officers didn’t name a crime.
Immigration enforcement. In 2025, immigration agents got Flock data from local police searches, from departments that shared cameras with Border Patrol, and from Flock pilot programs that Flock says had ended by August 2025. In a year of records reviewed by VCIJ, police ran nearly 3,000 immigration-related searches of Virginia’s Flock cameras, about 9 in 10 from out of state.
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Abortion. A Texas deputy searched more than 83,000 cameras across 6,809 networks for a woman after a self-managed abortion. The reason entered for the search: “had an abortion, search for female.” The sheriff later called it a welfare check and Flock called it a missing-person search, but court records obtained by EFF show deputies discussing criminal charges with prosecutors. The district attorney’s office told them she could not be charged.
Racial profiling. More than 80 agencies ran hundreds of searches using slurs and stereotypes for Romani people, often with no crime listed.
Misuse can be hard to spot. In audits reviewed by the ACLU of Massachusetts, police often typed vague reasons like “investigation” or “susp.” In at least 15 of the first 69 cases the Post reported, someone outside the department spotted the possible misuse first. Flock now makes officers pick an offense type and says it will require case numbers by the end of 2026, though Tech Times reported that officers can still type any case number.
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Security. In November 2025, the security researcher GainSec published 51 security findings in Flock hardware and software. In December 2025, Benn Jordan and 404 Media reported at least 60 Flock video cameras streaming live to the open internet, one of them showing children at a playground. Flock called it a limited misconfiguration and said it was fixed.
Who controls the records
At least 18 states have set up audits, reporting rules or other oversight for plate readers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, and the rules vary widely from state to state. Police generally search the records without a warrant. EFF has long argued they should need one.
Private owners install them too. An HOA or a store can put up a Flock camera and share it with police, including agencies far away.
Flock keeps adding ways to search. Police can already search Flock video for people by description, and a 2025 leak showed Flock building a tool called Nova to link plates to people through data brokers. Flock says it has no plans for facial recognition on its plate readers.
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Flock’s own safeguards are company policies. On August 13, 2026, after a year of news reports on misuse, it cut its recommended retention default from 30 days to 7 for new police customers. Existing customers kept their current settings. EFF warned that nothing stops Flock from reversing these changes if police customers start leaving for another vendor.
In August 2025, Reps. Raja Krishnamoorthi and Robert Garcia opened a congressional investigation into Flock over surveillance they said threatens “the privacy, safety, and civil liberties of women, immigrants, and other vulnerable Americans.”
Do they reduce crime?
In 2013, the Justice Department’s research clearinghouse rated plate readers “Ineffective” as a crime deterrent, based on randomized trials of older car-mounted readers.
Flock’s marketing says crime in San Marino, California fell 70% after its cameras went in. Forbes found residential burglaries went from 60 in 2019 to 63 in 2023, and the police chief acknowledged the 70% figure was inaccurate. Flock’s website still uses it. In four places Flock often cites, Forbes found the company had picked short time windows or single neighborhoods.
Flock also says its cameras help solve 10% of reported crime in America. Six criminal justice scholars who spoke to Forbes found problems with the study behind it. CBS News found the 10% figure is not in the white paper at all, and Flock’s CEO told CBS, “there’s no peer-reviewed study.” In March 2024, Johnny Nhan, one of the two academics named on the study, told 404 Media the police data was “too varied and incomplete” for meaningful statistical analysis.
What to do
Get your town to cancel its contract. More than 150 communities have canceled, rejected or switched off plate reader systems since 2021, more than 100 of them this year, according to DeFlock. Many acted after residents spoke at council meetings. DeFlock’s guides explain what to say at a meeting and how to file public records requests.
Until your town cancels, you can drive around the mapped cameras. The FlockHopper app plans a route around them, with turn-by-turn directions.
