GoKawiil
Tech News
A federal jury sided with Alek Schott in his lawsuit against Bexar County and its sheriff, awarding him $76—one dollar for each minute he was detained. Schott was pulled over in March 2022 on a pretextual claim of lane drifting, but the real trigger was a WhatsApp tip from a contact with access to automated license plate reader data, who flagged his travel pattern as suspicious.
A former police officer argues that Flock Safety's automated license plate recognition cameras have replaced guesswork with instant, precise identification of stolen vehicles. The Atlanta startup, founded in 2017, installs solar-powered roadside cameras that photograph passing cars, log identifying details, and check plates against the FBI's national database in real time, alerting officers to matches.
San Francisco officials say car-related crime has fallen sharply in the city, pointing in part to the deployment of Flock Safety's automated license-plate-reading cameras. The report examines how much of that decline can be attributed to the camera network versus other factors like policing strategy and broader crime trends.
An investigation into Flock Safety's automated license-plate camera system argues that its core design, not isolated misuse, allows police and other agencies to query cameras they never purchased or deployed. The report cites a case in Georgia where a woman's ex-boyfriend appeared to track her movements via the network, suggesting data from local cameras can flow well beyond their intended jurisdiction.
Lexington, Kentucky police surrounded the home of Will Penn and Robin Pen at 4 a.m. with guns drawn after automatic license plate reader data from Flock Safety flagged Penn's truck as resembling a vehicle described in a felony assault case. Officers confirmed the couple had no connection to the crime, but the raid occurred while Penn's 94-year-old grandmother was in the house.
Federal judge Sara Hill ruled that a Tulsa County deputy's warrantless search of Flock's nationwide license-plate reader database violated the Fourth Amendment, suppressing evidence of roughly 91 pounds of methamphetamine found during the stop. The case began when a deputy tailed a car solely because of its out-of-state plates, then used Flock's database to review over 50 prior sightings of the vehicle before searching it. Separately, Senators Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have introduced legislation to ban license plate reader networks like Flock's nationwide.
Senator Bernie Sanders introduced the Ban Flock Act, which would prohibit federal agencies from operating automatic license plate reader systems or accessing data from such systems run by local police or private vendors like Flock. The bill allows exceptions only for toll collection and future congressional approvals capped at 48-hour data retention, and would cut federal grants to state and local governments that fail to comply, while allowing lawsuits and enforcement by state attorneys general.
Officials in St. Lucie County, Florida discovered 11 license-plate reader cameras installed along roads without any permits or links to local or state agencies. Authorities say they have not determined who installed the devices or where the collected data has been going.
After canceling its Flock contract, St. Lucie County, Florida discovered 66 license-plate-reading cameras installed instead of the 52 it had authorized. The sheriff's office admitted to owning three of the extras without explaining their deployment, leaving 11 cameras that no local police agency has claimed. The county has wrapped the unclaimed devices in plastic with notices stating they will be removed within 30 days.
After St. Lucie County, Florida decided to stop using Flock surveillance cameras and began removing them, officials discovered 14 devices beyond the 52 they believed were installed. The Sheriff's Office later claimed three of those unpermitted cameras without explaining the lack of paperwork, leaving 11 cameras whose owners remain unidentified.
According to 404 Media's review of public records and court documents, the Trump administration is using the decades-old HIDTA anti-drug trafficking grant program to require cities to send automated license plate reader data from Flock, Axon and other vendors to federal servers. That data is accessible to multiple federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, and in some cases is further shared with the DEA's National License Plate Reader Program.
Cybersecurity researcher Joshua Michael published a map based on Flock Security's own leaked location data, identifying more than 170,000 cameras and 130,000 related devices, including 27,000 acoustic sensors, across the US. That total roughly triples the 120,000-camera figure Flock had publicly cited this summer, and the findings were referenced during a Senate Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism hearing on the company.