GoKawiil
Tech News
Flock Safety, valued at $8.4 billion, is expanding its drone-for-police program even as its automated license plate readers face vandalism and municipal bans across the country. Cities have blacked out, painted over or wrapped the company's cameras in protest, citing surveillance concerns, while the company pivots growth toward aerial surveillance tools for law enforcement.
Tyler Murkerson has filed a lawsuit against Flock Safety, Coweta County, Sheriff Lenn Wood, two named deputies, and three unidentified operators, alleging deputies used Flock's automated license plate reader network to track his vehicle while he had a separate civil rights suit pending against the sheriff's office. Audit records cited in the suit show a 197-day surveillance period on his car and five searches spanning over 6,000 camera networks nationwide, two of which are tied to named deputies. The suit seeks class-action status on behalf of others whose vehicles were searched without documented investigative justification.
Public records show Covington, Georgia paid Flock Safety $40,000 in 2020 to maintain 20 license-plate cameras, a figure that rose to $113,225 by 2024 and roughly $201,000 through just the first eight months of 2026. The increases stem from new camera installations, added software products, and a multi-year maintenance agreement for its expanding fleet. WIRED gathered similar records from a dozen Flock customers nationwide to examine how costs have grown across different cities.
Reporting has raised questions about whether companies other than Flock Safety operate similar automated license plate recognition networks that collect and share vehicle location data. The discussion centers on how widespread such surveillance infrastructure may be across the industry, not just at one vendor.
Canadian software engineer Anthony Sistilli built a $180 automatic license plate recognition camera designed specifically to detect and photograph police vehicles, using AI tools to build the software. After he posted videos of the project to YouTube, two Peel Regional Police officers visited his home, expressing concern that tracking officers' movements could expose their routines. Sistilli said the system remains an unreliable prototype, capturing only two readable images of police vehicles during an hour-long test.
Elgin Community College installed six Flock Safety surveillance cameras in April 2025, but asked the company to remove them in October after learning Flock had shared Illinois camera data with federal immigration authorities and after ICE detained a student on campus. Flock rejected the removal request, and when the college offered in December to pay out the remaining five months of the contract just to have the cameras taken down, the company did not respond.
Elgin Community College sought to end its contract with Flock Safety and began covering the company's surveillance cameras with trash bags and zip ties to stop them recording. According to facilities director Heinrich, unmarked vehicles believed to belong to Flock repeatedly removed the coverings during routine servicing visits, leading to a prolonged standoff between the school and the vendor.
Software engineer and YouTuber Anthony Sistilli built his own automatic license plate recognition camera designed specifically to track police vehicles, modeling it on networks like Flock Safety's. After he posted videos detailing the build and demonstrating it in use, two Peel Regional Police officers visited his home in Brampton, Ontario, to question him about his intentions.
As public backlash grows against Flock Safety's automatic license plate readers, police departments are increasingly adopting Axon's Fusus platform, which merges feeds from body cameras, dashcams, 911 calls, gunshot detectors, drones and CCTV into a single dashboard. Law professor Andrew Guthrie Ferguson told NPR these 'real-time crime centers' already combine far more surveillance tools than ALPR cameras alone, including video analytics with retroactive search capability.
Chrisanna Elser is suing Flock Group, two Colorado towns, and two police officials after a Flock automated license plate reader wrongly linked her Rivian to a $25 package theft, resulting in a criminal summons. The lawsuit, filed in federal court on behalf of Elser and other Coloradans whose plates Flock has logged, alleges intrusion upon seclusion and negligent design, claiming Flock sold searchable location data without requiring a warrant, case number, or supervisor approval before officers could search it.
Flock Safety, maker of AI-powered surveillance cameras and license-plate readers used by police departments, is reportedly cutting several hundred jobs, according to people familiar with the matter. The layoffs come as the company faces mounting criticism over privacy concerns tied to its surveillance technology.
Flock Safety plans to lay off about 270 employees, roughly 18 percent of its 1,500-person workforce, effective at the end of October, according to sources cited by Reuters. The cuts follow a recent employee buyout program reported by WIRED, and it remains unclear how many departures are voluntary versus involuntary layoffs.