At least 100 cities have deactivated cameras or canceled contracts
In Crystal, Minnesota, Brady O’Rourke walks a few times a week to the busiest street near his house carrying a large metal pole with a bright yellow sign taped to one end — a roof rake he has repurposed to block a Flock camera at the intersection. The automated license-plate reader would normally record every vehicle that passes. Instead, O’Rourke lifts his sign into the air and waves at passing cars while obstructing the camera’s view.
“I don’t want to pay to be surveilled,” O’Rourke told NPR. “My tax dollars are funding cameras at the end of my block. I don’t want to live like that. I don’t think anybody should have to live like that.”
O’Rourke said he was inspired by a man in Florida who used a pool skimmer for the same purpose. His actions are part of a growing movement against automated license plate readers that escalated this week as Flock Safety, the Atlanta-based maker of the cameras, held its annual conference amid intense backlash.
According to Flock, more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use the company’s technology. More broadly, the advocacy group DeFlock — which maintains a crowdsourced tracker — counts more than 130,000 AI-powered automated license-plate readers on American streets. Every month, those cameras capture billions of license plates along with details about vehicles including makes, models, colors, and modifications, allowing police to reconstruct where drivers have been over time.
Clare Garvie, deputy director of technology law and policy at New York University’s Policing Project, described the surveillance reach in detail. “They monitor, quite simply, when we go to and from work, where we go to the doctor, where we drop our kid off at daycare,” Garvie said. “What we’ve enabled in practical reality is law enforcement to go back and look at where any of us was at any given point in time.”
Police leaders counter that the technology solves real cases. Jeff Potts, executive director of the Minnesota Chiefs of Police Association, said there is no question the readers can help law enforcement. “There’s no question that license plate readers can be very helpful tools for law enforcement,” Potts said. A recent preliminary study suggests Flock cameras can deter car theft, and law enforcement agencies say the readers help locate stolen vehicles and missing people.
But the technology has been misused, according to Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. Some officers have used it to stalk ex-partners, Stanley said, and others have accessed the data for immigration enforcement without a local government’s consent. A sheriff’s office in Texas used the cameras to track a woman who may have had an abortion, Stanley said.
“The potential for police fishing expeditions is unlimited,” Stanley said. “What a lot of these AI, big data techniques do is they try to boil the ocean, to reduce huge amounts of data down to various people who they think could be involved. The problem with that, of course, is it sweeps up potentially enormous numbers of innocent people.”
The data is also sometimes wrong. A 2024 analysis by a police department in California found that Flock misread license plates in 71% of the alerts it sent to police, according to NPR.
Garvie said the indiscriminate nature of the data collection raises concerns that the cameras violate the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches. “We did not set up a system of governance in this country that says, ‘Just don’t do anything wrong and you won’t have anything to worry about,’” Garvie said. “What we said is, ‘No, actually, law enforcement is affirmatively restricted against getting up in our business as we go about our daily lives.’”
Last week, Flock changed some of its features to help prevent abuse, including shortening how long it recommends data be stored and cutting off access to officers who appear to be misusing the tool, NPR reported. CEO Garrett Langley said the company does not own or sell the data it collects. “We are so transparent about the business,” Langley said. “We don’t own this data. We don’t sell this data. Cities have control over how long it’s stored. And who it’s shared with.”
The vandalism has spread across dozens of states. According to NPR’s review of local news reports, people have stolen Flock cameras, sawed them down, crashed into them with cars, covered them in paint and stickers, and shot at them. Social-media platforms are filled with tongue-in-cheek how-to videos, including instructions on how to saw through a metal pole, NPR found. Comments on local news stations’ Facebook posts about the vandalism include praise: “Not all heroes wear capes,” one commenter wrote.
Langley said the people carrying out the vandalism are being misled about the consequences. “These are people being amped up to go do something,” Langley said. “And I don’t think they’re being given the level of information they should that they’re also committing a felony.” Langley added that residents with concerns about Flock’s technology should take the issue to their city councils.
Many have. According to DeFlock, at least 100 cities have deactivated the cameras or canceled contracts with Flock or similar companies.
DeFlock organizers are holding a National Week of Action through Saturday. They said more than 25,000 people are registered for events around the country — protests and education sessions intended to give people a legal outlet for their concerns.
Stanley said the breadth of the opposition sets it apart. “We’re seeing opposition from the left. We’re seeing opposition from MAGA Republicans. We’re seeing opposition from mainstream Republicans, from centrists,” Stanley said. “And so it really is a nonpartisan issue.” He added: “This grassroots uprising is just really remarkable. At the end of the day, it’s not like anything I’ve seen in my 20 plus years as a privacy advocate.”
MSI previously reported on the documented incidents of vandalism targeting Flock cameras, and on the broader backlash to AI surveillance infrastructure as the controversy expanded.