A public education project
Flock Safety cameras take a picture of every car that drives past, including yours, and store the record in a searchable nationwide database. Most people have no idea it's happening in their town. FlockU explains how the system works, shows you the cameras mapped near your home, and helps you speak up before your town signs the next contract.
The short version, for anyone who just found out these cameras exist.
These cameras don't wait for a warrant. They record every plate that passes and keep the record, usually for 30 days. String enough cameras together and you have a map of a person's life: where they work, worship, get medical care, and who they visit. Police in other states can search it, and officers have already been caught using it to track ex-partners.
Most Flock contracts pass as a line item in a police budget or arrive through an HOA board, with no public hearing and no vote. Many residents only learn the cameras exist when a reporter or a neighbor points one out, sometimes years after they went up.
Flock leases its cameras at roughly $3,000 apiece per year. A city with 100 of them spends around $300,000 a year to record where its own residents drive. That money comes out of the same budget as roads, parks, and libraries, and the contract renews unless someone objects.
Plain answers with sources you can check. This is how the system actually works.
Flock Safety is a private company that sells automated license-plate readers (ALPRs) to police departments, HOAs, and businesses. The pitch is finding stolen cars and wanted suspects. If you understand the sales pitch, you can answer it at a council meeting.
Each camera photographs every passing vehicle and logs its plate, make, model, and distinguishing details with a timestamp. Your daily routes get recorded whether or not you're suspected of anything, and the records are typically kept for 30 days.
Agencies can share access across a nationwide network, meaning a search by one department can sweep cameras in thousands of towns. Documented misuse includes officers tracking ex-partners and out-of-state agencies searching for people seeking reproductive care.
Enter an address to see every volunteer-mapped license-plate camera within 10 miles, or drag and zoom the map to browse anywhere in the country. The data comes live from OpenStreetMap, the same community registry behind DeFlock. Nothing you type is stored or logged.
Lookups run through our server with no logging. No account, no tracking, no history of what you searched.
Volunteer-mapped data. If your area looks empty, cameras may simply not be reported yet. Here's how to add one you've spotted.
Knowing where cameras are is legal, and so is choosing your route.
Cameras sit at fixed points: main intersections, neighborhood entrances, highway on-ramps. Check the map before routine trips and you'll know your area's layout within a week.
Community tools like DeFlock offer camera-aware directions. A two-minute detour on a routine drive keeps your daily pattern out of the database.
Spotted one that isn't on the map? Add it to OpenStreetMap or submit it through DeFlock. Every report makes the map better for everyone.
Flock grows town by town, budget line by budget line. That's also how it's stopped.
File a public-records request for your town's Flock contract, audit logs, and search history. Our template letter takes five minutes to send and the results often speak for themselves.
Camera contracts renew on budget cycles and pass quietly when no one comments. Three minutes of prepared public comment has ended contracts in cities like Austin, TX and Evanston, IL. We provide the script.
You're rarely the only one concerned. Our action kit has talking points and links to groups already working on this, so you can show up as a group instead of alone.
Documented misuse, stalking cases, lawsuits, and towns pushing back. This feed updates itself from trusted reporting several times a day.
An occasional email: new cameras mapped near you, contracts up for renewal in your state, and one thing you can do this month. No tracking pixels, one-click unsubscribe.
Yard signs for council-meeting season, laptop stickers, and printable posters. Priced at cost and fulfilled by a third party, so nobody's home address (yours or ours) is part of the deal.
