Flock Safety Network Expands to 5,000+ Police Departments Performing 20 Billion Monthly Vehicle Scans

Flock Safety’s automated license plate recognition network reaches unprecedented scale, with more than 5,000 law enforcement departments across the United States using interconnected cameras that perform over 20 billion scans of vehicles every month. The company now operates in more than 5,000 communities across 49 U.S. states and over 2,000 cities in at least 42 states.

The massive surveillance infrastructure represents a fundamental transformation in government tracking capabilities. Unlike traditional police work requiring individualized suspicion, Flock’s system photographs and tracks every vehicle that passes its cameras, using AI to create comprehensive profiles of Americans’ movements that can be searched by thousands of police departments without warrant requirements.

More than 75% of law enforcement agencies using Flock opt into the company’s nationwide data sharing network, effectively creating a national vehicle tracking database accessible to police departments across state lines. This network effect amplifies privacy risks exponentially—a single camera installed in one jurisdiction can feed data accessible to thousands of departments nationwide, enabling cross-jurisdictional surveillance and enforcement.

The ACLU and Electronic Frontier Foundation warn that Flock’s technology creates a “single point of failure that can compromise the privacy of millions of Americans simultaneously” and leads to a “chilling effect on civil liberties.” Privacy experts note that the comprehensive location tracking enabled by ALPR databases can reveal sensitive information about Americans’ religious practices, political activities, medical appointments, and personal associations—all without judicial oversight.

Civil liberties organizations document how Flock’s system has been used for immigration enforcement, abortion surveillance, and tracking protesters, demonstrating how mass surveillance infrastructure built for one purpose inevitably gets repurposed for political enforcement. Community pushback grows as residents discover their local police departments have deployed Flock cameras without public input or democratic accountability.

The scale of deployment represents venture capital’s successful transformation of American cities into surveillance networks. What began as a neighborhood HOA security product has evolved into the most comprehensive automated tracking system ever deployed in the United States, operating largely beneath public awareness until controversies force disclosure.