A Mother Jones investigation found 19 police agencies in ten states spent nearly $1 million of opioid settlement money on automatic license plate readers from companies like Flock and Axon. The funds were originally allocated to help communities devastated by the opioid crisis, but state distribution agencies instead routed portions to police departments, which pitched surveillance tech as a crime-fighting tool.
A YouGov survey of 20,000 Americans shared with The Washington Post found 46% now oppose police license plate reading cameras made by Flock Safety, versus 38% in favor—a reversal from last year's majority support. Most respondents also said the cameras don't make them feel safer. The findings come amid mounting controversy over Flock, including a doxxing campaign against its CEO Garrett Langley and an Ohio grand jury's refusal to indict a man who destroyed one of the company's cameras.
A Wall Street Journal report on the rapid expansion of Flock Safety's AI-powered license-plate reading cameras drew sharp reactions from readers, who split between viewing the systems as vital crime-fighting tools and warning they enable mass surveillance. The debate centers on how widely law enforcement and communities are adopting the technology and what oversight, if any, governs its use.
A YouGov poll of 20,000 Americans shared with The Washington Post found 46% oppose license plate reader surveillance in their communities, versus 38% in favor, flipping last year's majority support. Flock, which operates over 120,000 such cameras nationwide, has faced backlash after reports of police misuse, prompting several communities to drop or reject contracts.
Across the US, people who disable or destroy Flock automatic license plate reader towers are being celebrated online rather than condemned, with social media posts backing vandals over police who install the surveillance cameras. In one case an Ohio grand jury declined to indict a man caught on video destroying a Flock camera, and public backlash has pushed some Wisconsin towns to drop their Flock contracts after a neighboring city ended its own.
The Austin suburb's city council voted unanimously on August 25 to terminate its agreement with Flock Safety, cutting off access to its automated license plate reader system. City staff had already begun covering the 28 cameras installed around town earlier that day, ending a relationship with the vendor that dated back to 2020.
Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based startup that sells AI-powered license-plate-reading cameras to police departments, cities, and businesses, has rapidly grown from a niche security vendor into a widely recognized name. That visibility has come largely through controversy, as the company's surveillance technology has drawn public scrutiny and criticism rather than praise.
Public records show that Alpharetta, a small Atlanta suburb with about 120 officers, has built a license-plate surveillance network through Flock Safety cameras that now exchanges data with over 2,000 outside organizations, including colleges, airports, fraud investigators and federal inspectors. In exchange, Alpharetta receives data from more than 1,300 other entities, some of which have already faced scandals over misuse of the same technology. The network has grown sharply in the past year, with outgoing data-sharing partners up 42 percent and incoming partners up 125 percent since June 2025.
Public records show former Alpharetta, Georgia patrolman Dustin Bozzo ran 56 unauthorized searches on a fellow officer's license plate—his ex, whom he had been secretly dating in violation of department policy—between March and May, then tracked a second officer's car 29 times after noticing it near hers. He was placed on leave in July and resigned in August as the department opened an internal probe that has since become a criminal investigation.
New outline renders shared by leaker Ice Universe suggest Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S27 Pro will adopt the same iPhone 17 Pro-style camera plateau expected on the Galaxy S27 Ultra, replacing Samsung's traditional vertical camera island. However, the Pro model appears to omit the S Pen slot and has the speaker grille and microphone positions swapped compared to the Ultra.
An Oviedo, Florida man, Evan Meyer, was charged with three felonies after cutting down and smashing what turned out to be a decoy Flock Safety camera. Police had installed the cheap 3D-printed replicas after real license-plate-reading cameras were stolen from a corridor between late July and early August, hoping to lure and catch vandals.
A Georgia Bureau of Investigation probe found that three Savannah police officers and one community service specialist improperly used the city's Flock automatic license plate reader system to track personal acquaintances and family members. All four were arrested last week, and two other employees had already been fired for similar conduct. Mayor Van Johnson publicly condemned the abuse, calling it a breach of public trust.
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