Surveillance

Flock Safety's New Privacy Rules Do Little To Ease Concerns Over ALPR Surveillance

The company’s attempts to protect Americans’ privacy “will do nothing to protect innocent people from warrantless mass surveillance,” says an Institute for Justice attorney.

Autumn Billings | 8.14.2026 1:01 PM

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(Illustration: Midjourney.)

Amid mounting public backlash, Flock Safety, the largest provider of automatic license plate readers (ALPR) in the United States, released a statement on Thursday touting new policies "strengthening privacy, accountability, and security." But the changes still fail to address the constitutional concerns held by civil liberty and privacy advocates. 

Over the last few weeks, debate over ALPR systems has reached a new high. Privacy and data security concerns over the mass surveillance technology have prompted an anti-Flock movement, including websites that map more than 130,000 ALPR cameras across the country and a search engine that can find whether a particular license plate number has been looked up in Flock's database. In at least 23 states, activists have resorted to destroying the tech, according to The Guardian. And in July, over 20 local jurisdictions cancelled their contracts with Flock Safety entirely. 

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