Flock has tens of thousands of cameras operating across almost all American states. It's now giving those devices live streaming capability, making them significantly more powerful.

Flock Safety, the $7.5 billion car surveillance company, has already built a sizable AI-powered camera network, with tens of thousands of smart license plate readers monitoring roads in 49 American states. Soon its cameras are going to capture a lot more.

In the fall this year, cops will be able to turn their Flock license plate readers into something more akin to traditional surveillance cameras. While Flock cameras today take photos of vehicles, flagging any car that’s on a hotlist of suspected vehicles to cops or private industry customers like FedEx or mall provider Simon Property, those same customers will soon be able to request either live feeds or 15 second clips from around the time a vehicle passed through a camera’s field of vision.

Garrett Langley, Flock CEO, told Forbes that the update should give cops more “situational awareness.” Police will be able to pull up feeds from Flock cameras when a 911 call comes in, for instance, Langley said. “We will just open up the five nearest cameras in real time and say, here's what's happening right now,” he said. There will also be the option to upgrade to a camera where the angle can be adjusted, for a wider purview.

“If it helps us get to our North Star of solving every single crime that happens in America, then it's a cost worth bearing.”

For years, civil liberties experts have worried about Flock’s expansion. Last week,

© Forbes