Tag: mass surveillance

Senate Probes Flock Safety Over 20 Billion Vehicle Scans

The US Senate has joined a host of other actors in putting pressure on Flock Safety, a maker of automated license-plate readers, over misuse of its technology by law enforcement and others.

The Senate’s scrutiny came in the form of a letter that was sent by Republican Senator Josh Hawley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, on August 26.

The senator gave Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley until September 8 to answer a series of questions and produce documents.

We obtained a copy of the letter for you here.

The investigation targets the scale of the operation, the retention of data collected from the more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states that Hawley said the company has, as well as customers’ search capabilities.

Hawley’s letter says the cameras produce more than 20 billion vehicle scans every month. The scans are then turned into records that can be searched by customers.

Hawley’s concern is that this is turning the act of driving a vehicle into a record that can be searched – and he said that Congress has never authorized the creation of such a network.

“But Americans do not surrender their privacy rights when they drive to work, drop their kids off at school, or go to church,” the senator wrote. “Congress never authorized the network your industry has built.”

The letter seeks information on whether customers can run statewide or nationwide searches of vehicle or driver data, and if this is the default option. The retention periods, both default and maximum, are also of interest to Hawley, as is the number of confirmed misuse cases since January 1, 2021.

Hawley also wants to know what information customers must provide to justify a search, what restrictions Flock imposes, and what the accuracy is when it comes to complete and correctly attributed vehicle identification. The frequency of incorrect alerts is also a question.

Flock is also asked to provide details about the data the devices capture, whether the data is linked to any outside source, and whether multi-factor authentication is required of all users.

And in a question that goes beyond the plate readers, Hawley wants to know if Flock has the capability to biometrically track people.

The request for documents includes contracts with governmental customers, prices and fee schedules, information about pilot programs, discounted or donated equipment, and help given to customers to secure federal, state, or private grant funding.

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Flock CEO Garrett Langley Targeted as Address Shared Online

Critics of Flock Safety are circulating an address they say belongs to company founder and CEO Garrett Langley, marking an escalation in the widespread backlash the surveillance technology company is facing amid concerns over privacy and potential police misuse.

Numerous posts sharing an address purportedly belonging to Langley have circulated on X, with many users responding to a viral post that quoted Langley as saying Americans must “compromise” on their privacy.

Some shared what they said was a blurred image of Langley’s home on Google Street View, with one X user saying the “compromise apparently doesn’t apply to him.”

Newsweek has not verified the address and is not publishing or linking to it. Newsweek has contacted Langley for comment via an email to Flock Safety.

The renewed attention came after Langley recently appeared on Fox News’ Saturday in America, where he called for a “compromise” between public safety and privacy.

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Sanders Vows to Introduce Legislation to Stop Flock’s “AI Mass Surveillance”

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has pledged to introduce legislation aimed at reining in the mass adoption of AI-powered video surveillance via companies like Flock Safety, as the camera networks being erected in communities across the U.S. face fierce backlash.

Sanders said that the widespread adoption of AI-powered Flock cameras that monitor peoples’ every activity outside of their homes is edging the U.S. closer to a system of totalitarianism. The company says that its cameras are already in place in over 6,000 communities across the U.S.

“You may not know it, but you may already be being tracked by artificial intelligence,” Sanders wrote on Monday. “Flock, a surveillance company backed by Big Tech oligarchs like Marc Andreessen and Peter Thiel, has installed more than 120,000 AI-powered surveillance cameras across America.”

“What does that mean for you? It means that if Flock is in your community, every time you leave your house, a Flock camera records and tracks you,” Sanders went on. “If you are dropping your kids off at school, Flock knows. If you are going to a doctor, Flock knows. If you are going out on a date, Flock knows.”

Sanders said that he is soon introducing legislation to “stop Flock and AI mass surveillance.”

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Police officer arrested after using Flock cameras 717 times to track ex-wife

A police officer faces two criminal charges after being accused of using Flock cameras to track his estranged ex-wife over 700 times while on and off duty.

Christopher Goodson, an officer in Haines City in central Florida, was found to have looked up his ex-wife’s license plate number in the Flock database 717 times between Sept. 1, 2024, and June 30, 2026, according to an affidavit. Goodson told a supervisor he had looked up his ex-wife’s car to keep track of his children’s location.

Goodson has been charged with one count of offenses against users of computers and electronic devices, and one count of official misconduct, according to a Haines City Police Department news release.

The officer has indicated that he plans to resign due to the investigation, according to police.

Goodson’s arrest is part of a growing number of documented abuses of the Flock camera surveillance system by police.

A man in North Manchester, Indiana, who has repeatedly criticized his local government and the police at town council meetings, told the press that he noticed he was being frequently followed by police. “It started to be more than a coincidence; it kept happening more and more,” Bob Sklar told WWSB. “I didn’t understand why.”

He then realized that Flock cameras were being used to track him. Sklar said he is not aware of any legitimate reason he is being tracked.

Currently, there are over 116,000 such surveillance cameras, placed mostly at intersections in urban and suburban neighborhoods.   

Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, supervisor Andy Parrish is fighting Flock camera surveillance locally and nationally through his online campaigns. 

“People are being hurt. There are young women whose lives have been changed forever,” Parrish told LifeSiteNews. “We’ve got 80 women stalked and terrorized.”

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4 Former Savannah Police Employees Arrested for Misusing Flock Cameras

Four Savannah department employees, including three former officers, were arrested after an internal audit discovered they had been using Savannah’s Flock powered license plate reader system for reasons outside of normal department law enforcement investigations. Dillard, Phillips, Rich, and Thomas, a civilian department employee, were arrested after investigators discovered their misuse of the system.

Dillard, Phillips and Rich each are charged with two counts of misuse of a license plate reader system, and one count of violation of their oath of office, while Thomas is charged with two counts of misuse of a license plate reader system, reported Fox5 Atlanta.

As the case is currently under investigation by the GBI, it will be completed by them and then sent to the Eastern Judicial Circuit District Attorney’s Office to be handled by the proper prosecutors. Savannah Police Chief Lenny Gunther states that his department will not tolerate such misconduct.

The real question is why Flock cameras exist at all; they are surveillance without informed consent.

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Debate Over Flock Surveillance Cameras Takes Unexpected Turn in SoCal As ‘Darth Vader’ Weighs In

Well here’s some fun Saturday night nuttery for you.

We’ve written on the ongoing debate in this country about Flock license-plate reading cameras. They’ve been used to thwart mass terror attacks — but they’ve also been used by unscrupulous law enforcement officers to keep an eye on their exes. Creepy.

One thing you might not have expected, however, is for Darth Vader to come down from space and weigh in on the matter at a San Diego City Council Public safety meeting Wednesday. I have to say, the guy’s got Mr. Vader’s breathing sounds down perfectly, and his voice work is pretty solid too.

If whoever was behind the spot was trying to get attention, he achieved his goal, because the clip has been viewed millions of times. 

His little speech was way out there, but it would seem he was using the occasion to mock the city’s 500 Flock cameras installed on streetlights. Several of the folks in attendance appeared to struggle to contain their laughter.

The council member who announced that it was his turn to speak didn’t seem to flinch in the slightest when she introduced him. “Thank you,” she said to a citizen who had just finished her remarks. “Darth Vader?”

Maybe they’re used to this kind of thing on the Left Coast:

The Emperor is a fan of Flock, and we must continue utilizing Flock technologies so that we can follow and surveil the Rebel scum as they move from playground to playground, from playground to pool, from pool to gymnasium, because we all know that the Flock cameras are not only following the license plate readers… They are following children in parks and gymnasiums, and we need this.

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The Flock Camera Backlash Is A Very Good Sign

In a year as chaotic, violent, and economically destructive as this one has been, it is interesting that, to many Americans, the great villain of 2026 is turning out to be a traffic camera.

But, indeed, we are seeing visceral, cross-partisan opposition to so-called Flock cameras—named after the leading manufacturer of these automated license plate readers—take hold in communities across the country. And that opposition is, to be sure, entirely legitimate.

Flock’s camera networks are based on the idea that, while it would obviously be illegal and unconstitutional for law enforcement at any and all levels to put GPS trackers in everyone’s cars, it would be legal for a cop standing on some street corner to report that they had seen a specific vehicle drive by if it later turned out that that car had either been stolen or used to commit a crime.

But, taking that idea that public observations are not violations of privacy, Flock and similar companies help set up networks of cameras that record and register the license plate, make and model, and identifiable details of every single passing vehicle into a timestamped and searchable national database. And, as more and more of these cameras are added to streets and parking lots all over the country, and they, therefore, get harder and harder to avoid, the data the government has access to becomes essentially indistinguishable from what they would have if there were government GPS trackers in all of our cars.

There are currently around 120,000 of these cameras across 49 states, with more being added every day. And the American people are not happy about it.

In a genuine grassroots movement spreading primarily through local Facebook groups and the like, with little coverage outside local media, concerned citizens are doing everything from pressuring local lawmakers to rescind their contracts with Flock Safety to donning masks and cutting the cameras down with electric saws.

And this opposition is starting to have some success. More than 50 jurisdictions have ended their relationships with Flock after local backlash. And, after Flock tried and failed for months to get the wider public to view organizations that track the location of these cameras as terrorists because some have used those locations to avoid, disable, or destroy some, the company announced last week that it was implementing several changes to try and defuse the public anger.

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Peter Thiel-Funded Company Anduril to Triple the Number of Autonomous Surveillance Towers Along the US-Mexico Border

In June, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a new report that detailed how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has contracted with Anduril Industries—a Peter Thiel-funded company—to nearly triple the number of surveillance towers along US borders. The report outlines the plan to increase the number of surveillance towers from 830 to 2,300 by 2034.

The new GAO report describes the “Integrated Surveillance Towers” (IST) program that currently consists of “803 fielded towers located along US borders that detect items of interest, such as people or vehicles.”

The IST program includes towers from four legacy systems, including Autonomous Surveillance Towers (AST). An AST is a solar-powered surveillance tower that the DHS says can “provide autonomous surveillance operations 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.” The towers are equipped with radar, optical, and thermal cameras.

According to the GAO report, in August 2024, DHS approved the purchase of up to 42 additional ASTs. DHS had previously approved Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) request to purchase up to 133 additional towers between 2022 and 2023. The report states that the program should be completed by March 2034, with 2,300 deployed by that date.

The GAO was established in 1921 to serve as an independent and nonpartisan agency that audits the federal government. The GAO releases annual reports on key issues and details its findings to Congress.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to digital privacy and rights, called the expansion of border surveillance a “digital dumpster fire for human rights and civil liberties.”

“It’s not just surveillance towers; drones, aerostats, surveillance vehicles, ground sensors, game cameras, and license plate readers are also part of the vast taxpayer-funded infrastructure that threatens all those who live, work, or seek refuge in the borderlands,” the EFF wrote in response to the GAO report. “This technology isn’t exclusive to U.S. federal agencies: it’s also deployed by state and local law enforcement, and even by governments on the Mexican side.”

The EFF also noted that these rapidly expanding surveillance technologies place residential neighborhoods in Arizona within the sight of the towers, making them “capable of spying on homes on both sides of the border.”

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‘Have I Been Flocked’ Website Lets You Check If Police Searched for Your Car Using Flock Camera System

A new website allows drivers to find out whether their license plate has been photographed and searched through law enforcement agencies’ Flock camera systems.

The new website, “Have I Been Flocked,” compiles Flock camera audit logs and lets users see if their plate number has been run through the Flock application by a system operator.

If a person’s license plate appears in the database, it means not only that the plate was photographed, but that someone using the Flock system actively searched the database for that plate, according to the site. Included in the audit log is the stated reason someone in law enforcement gave for looking up the plate.

The site notes several limits to what its records show. The database does not reveal when or whether a vehicle passed one of the Flock Safety cameras. Those searching Flock databases are not necessarily police officers, and appearing on the site does not mean a person was under investigation.

The database of audit logs was built through FOIA public records requests filed with 6,586 different agencies across the country. Organizers caution that some information may be outdated or incomplete.

“The dataset is incomplete; few governments provide easy access to these logs, and the records we obtain are often redacted,” organizers of the site warn.

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Cop Fired After Allegedly Using Flock Cameras to Stalk Former Boyfriend – She Abused System 166 Times

A South Carolina police officer has been fired for allegedly using a Flock camera system to check on an individual with whom she had had a relationship.

Ellie Anna Hammond, 24, was fired on Aug. 3, the Mauldin Police Department said, according to KOCO-TV.

A department representative said no comment on the action would be coming, because it’s “a personnel matter.”

Hammond was fired due to alleged misconduct between March and July, according to documents from the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy.

During that period, Hammond was accused of accessing the Flock camera system 166 different times to track a vehicle that belonged to an individual with whom she once had a relationship.

Every time the system was accessed, a reason was provided, but the documents said those reasons were bogus.

The reasons were variously listed as a warrant check, traffic infraction, or welfare check.

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