The Flock Network

An information page · Updated May 11, 2026

Your car may be creating a searchable map of your life.

Flock Safety cameras photograph passing vehicles, read plates, attach time and place, and feed those records into a database that can be searched later. By 2025, that system covered roughly 5,000+ communities in 49 states, with public reporting putting the camera count near 90,000. This page explains, in plain English, how ordinary driving can become location history, how local camera data can be searched nationally, and why civil-liberties groups are alarmed about tracking protesters, drivers, immigrants, and people seeking reproductive or gender-affirming care.

  • ~90,000 Flock cameras reported nationally as of July 2025 [ACLUM]
  • 5,000+ Law-enforcement agencies as customers (late 2025 / early 2026) [NPR]
  • 49 U.S. states with Flock deployments [Wikipedia]
  • 12M+ Flock searches reviewed by EFF from Dec 2024 to Oct 2025 [EFF]

Note on data: Flock Safety is a private company and does not publish complete deployment counts. Numbers below come from company announcements, investor coverage, public-records reporting by groups like the ACLU and EFF, and news outlets. Years marked “reported” reflect the figure as stated at the time, not a verified national audit.

This site is for independent analysis, rights education, and local-government accountability. It does not provide doxxing help, evasion instructions, or guidance for interfering with public infrastructure.

The scary part is not the camera. It is the lookup network.

A single plate read is one dot. Thousands of cameras, years of retention policies, and national search access can turn those dots into a pattern of where people live, worship, protest, work, receive medical care, and spend the night.

Searchable later

A routine drive can become evidence.

ALPR systems record plate number, time, location, and vehicle details, creating records that can be queried after the fact rather than only watched in real time. [EFF]

Shared beyond town

Your local camera may not stay local.

Public-records reporting found cross-agency access through Flock's network, including examples where outside agencies queried local systems for immigration or abortion-related investigations. [404 Media] [EFF]

Minimal friction

A typed reason may be enough.

EFF's review of more than 12 million searches found that many queries did not require a warrant, only a logged reason or offense type. [EFF]

What data a Flock camera collects

A Flock camera is a small, pole-mounted device — usually solar-powered — that photographs every vehicle that passes. Software then reads the license plate and records the plate number, time, location, vehicle make/color, and other identifying details (a roof rack, a bumper sticker, a missing hubcap) into a searchable database [EFF].

Unlike a normal traffic camera pointed at one intersection, an ALPR record can become a location-history clue: a plate, a place, and a timestamp. That is why privacy advocates focus less on any single camera and more on retention periods, audit logs, warrant rules, and who can run searches later.

How local data becomes national

The core civil-liberties issue is sharing. By default, a local department's reads can be queried by other agencies on Flock's national lookup network unless local policy or contract settings narrow access. In one widely reported case, a single search by a Texas-area sheriff's office in 2024 hit 83,345 cameras across 6,809 networks — close to the entire system at the time [EFF].

Flock sells cameras as a turnkey service: the company installs and maintains them on an annual subscription, and HOAs or businesses can also buy cameras and share feeds with local police [Flock Safety]. The result is a public-private network that grew faster than many local policy debates around it.

Timeline of major milestones

Key product, business, and policy events. Sources are cited inline; descriptions paraphrase the source. Reporting after 2024 includes more critical coverage from civil-liberties groups.

  1. 2017

    Flock Safety is founded in Atlanta.

    Garrett Langley and Matt Feury build the first LPR camera prototype, aimed initially at neighborhood HOAs. [Y Combinator] [Flock]

  2. 2019

    First police customer signs on.

    Jersey Village, TX police become Flock's first law-enforcement customer, signaling a pivot from HOA to municipal sales. [Flock]

  3. Aug 2020

    ~700 cities; national lookup network launches.

    Flock publicly describes operating across roughly 700 U.S. cities and introduces a cross-agency lookup feature that lets departments query each other's plate data. [Flock]

  4. Jul 2021

    Series D round; 1,200+ cities.

    Andreessen Horowitz leads a $150M Series D. Flock reports operating in more than 1,200 cities. [Flock]

  5. Feb 2022

    Series E at $3.5B valuation; 1,500 cities.

    Tiger Global leads a $150M Series E. Flock reports active deployments in 1,500 cities and ~500 cases solved per day, up from ~185 a year earlier. [Built In]

  6. Oct 2022

    2,000+ cities, 1,500+ police agencies.

    Flock reports working with more than 2,000 cities and 1,500 law-enforcement partners, and says its network reaches 5,000+ “communities” (including HOAs and businesses) across 45+ states. [Flock]

  7. 2024

    ~40,000 cameras across ~4,000 cities and 42 states.

    By 2024, Flock's fixed cameras are installed in over 4,000 cities across 42 states, with around 40,000 cameras nationally per third-party tallies. [Wikipedia] [Rutherford]

  8. Mar 2025

    $275M round at $7.5B valuation.

    Andreessen Horowitz leads another round and the company announces a 100,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility in Georgia to keep up with demand. [Hypepotamus]

  9. May 2025

    404 Media: ICE tapping into Flock data via local agencies.

    Reporting shows federal immigration officers gained indirect access to local Flock cameras through search-sharing with police partners. Flock later says it does not directly sell to or share with ICE. [404 Media] [Flock]

  10. Jul 2025

    ~90,000 cameras, ~7,000 networks, 4,000+ agencies.

    The ACLU of Massachusetts, drawing on public-records work and Flock's own materials, reports nearly 90,000 cameras in use nationally and roughly 7,000 local networks. [ACLUM]

  11. Dec 2025

    EFF: 12M+ searches across 3,900 agencies in 10 months.

    EFF obtains datasets covering more than 12 million searches logged between December 2024 and October 2025, including hundreds of queries tied to political protests and at least one search related to a person seeking an abortion. [EFF]

  12. Feb–Mar 2026

    Pushback accelerates: 53 cities in 20 states deactivate or reject Flock.

    NPR and others document a wave of cancellations and moratoriums in cities including Flagstaff (AZ), Cambridge (MA), Eugene (OR), Santa Cruz (CA), and Hillsborough (NC). [NPR]

  13. Apr 2026

    Valuation reported at $8.4B amid civic protests.

    The Information reports a new private valuation of roughly $8.4 billion even as cities continue debating cancellations. [The Information]

How the network scaled

There is no single official tally of Flock cameras. The chart below shows the reported counts at specific points in time, drawn from company statements and outside reporting. Treat each point as the figure stated by the cited source on that date — not a continuous national audit.

Reported Flock deployments by year

Two series: cities served (company-reported) and cameras installed (third-party tallies). Each value is the publicly reported figure at that date.

Sources: Flock Safety blog (2020, 2021, 2022); Built In, 2022; Wikipedia (citing Flock and reporting); ACLU of Massachusetts, Oct 2025.

Funding rounds and reported valuation

Each bar marks a publicly reported private valuation. Funding pace tracks closely with the deployment growth above.

Sources: CB Insights; Hypepotamus, Mar 2025; The Information, Apr 2026.

Where the cameras actually are

Deployments range from a handful of cameras in a small town to dense networks in big metros. A few representative examples, drawn from local reporting and public records, show the variation. These are not exhaustive — they are illustrative.

Reported Flock camera counts in selected jurisdictions

Counts as reported by local news or public-records work; deployments can change quickly.

Sources: Atlanta Journal-Constitution / Rutherford (Metro Atlanta, Gwinnett, Nov 2023); CBS 6 Richmond (Feb 2026).

Metro Atlanta

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported in November 2023 that there were more than 7,400 Flock cameras across metro Atlanta, with 835 in Gwinnett County alone. Flock is headquartered in the region. [AJC via Rutherford]

Richmond, VA

By early 2026, Richmond police had deployed 99 Flock cameras across the city, prompting a local debate about effectiveness and oversight. [CBS 6]

Massachusetts

The ACLU of Massachusetts identified more than 80 police departments in the state with Flock contracts, many tied into Flock's national lookup network. [ACLUM]

Mt. Juliet, TN

A Nashville suburb of about 50,000 people that Flock highlights as a flagship “safe city” — citywide LPR coverage and a reported 56% drop in burglary year-over-year. [Flock]

Civil-liberties and oversight concerns

Independent investigations have documented several recurring issues with how Flock's network is used in practice. The common theme is not one isolated misuse; it is nationwide search access with minimal local visibility.

Searches without warrants

EFF's review of more than 12 million searches logged by ~3,900 agencies between Dec 2024 and Oct 2025 found that most queries do not require a warrant — only a typed reason. [EFF]

Cross-agency data sharing

By default, local data flows into a national lookup pool. Several California cities discovered their data was shared with Flock's national network without explicit local approval. [NPR]

Protests and protected activity

EFF identified hundreds of searches tied to political demonstrations in 2025 and at least one search referencing a person seeking an abortion. Rights groups warn that broad ALPR sharing can chill protest, worship, clinic visits, and other protected activity. [EFF] [MRSC]

Indirect federal access

404 Media documented federal immigration officials querying local Flock data through partner agencies, even where Flock says it does not sell directly to ICE. [404 Media] [Flock response]

Expanding sensor scope

Flock has rolled out gunshot detection and, in 2025, microphones designed to flag “human distress.” Critics raise wiretapping and false-alert concerns. [EFF]

Public-records access

A Washington state court ruled in 2025 that Flock-captured data is a public record subject to disclosure — a precedent that could affect transparency elsewhere. [EFF]

Reproductive and gender-affirming care

Public-records investigations and advocacy groups have warned that cross-state ALPR searches can expose people seeking reproductive or gender-affirming care, especially when local data is accessible to agencies in states with different laws. [UW Center for Human Rights] [ACLU-CT coalition]

Rights education: what residents can ask for

The safest public-interest angle is oversight, not evasion. Residents, journalists, and civic groups can ask local officials to explain exactly what is being collected, how long it is kept, who can search it, and what safeguards prevent sensitive uses.

Questions for a city council or police department

  • Inventory: How many cameras are deployed, who owns them, and where are they generally placed?
  • Sharing: Is national lookup enabled, and which agencies can query local reads?
  • Retention: How long are plate reads, images, hotlist hits, and audit logs stored?
  • Access rules: Are warrants, case numbers, offense types, or supervisory approvals required?
  • Protected uses: Are searches barred for protest monitoring, immigration enforcement, reproductive care, gender-affirming care, worship, schools, courts, or food banks?
  • Audits: Who reviews search logs, how often, and are violations reported publicly?

Documents worth requesting

  • Contracts and amendments: Especially terms governing data ownership, sharing, retention, and vendor licenses.
  • Policy manuals: Local rules for ALPR use, training, approval, and discipline.
  • Audit logs: Search reasons, outside-agency access, and rejected or deleted searches.
  • Data-sharing settings: Lists of agencies with direct or network access.
  • Council materials: Staff reports, procurement memos, grant applications, and meeting minutes.
  • Impact data: Claimed crime reductions, false hits, arrests, complaints, and documented misuse.

This is not legal advice. If you are contacted by law enforcement, involved in a protest case, seeking sensitive medical care, or worried your movement data may be used against you, consider speaking with a qualified attorney or a local civil-liberties organization.

The pushback (2025–2026)

Beginning in early 2025 and accelerating through 2026, dozens of city councils began re-examining their Flock contracts. Below is a non-exhaustive list of communities that have deactivated cameras, ended contracts, or rejected proposals.

  • Flagstaff, AZ — deactivated [NPR]
  • Cambridge, MA — deactivated [NPR]
  • Eugene, OR — deactivated [NPR]
  • Santa Cruz, CA — reduced sharing; data was previously shared nationally without consent [NPR]
  • Hillsborough, NC — contract terminated Oct 2025 over data-sharing language [NPR]
  • 53 cities across 20 states — collectively reported by EFF and trade press as of Mar 2026 [EFF]

Washington state passed new legislative restrictions on ALPR data sharing in early 2026, and other states are debating similar bills. [MRSC]

Key takeaways

  1. Scale is real, even if the exact count is fuzzy. The most reliable third-party number is the ACLU of Massachusetts's July 2025 figure: roughly 90,000 cameras across ~7,000 local networks. [ACLUM]
  2. The growth was fast — about a 10× increase in cities between 2020 and 2022, then deeper densification in each city through 2024–25. [Flock]
  3. The defaults matter more than any single deployment. Because local data feeds a national lookup pool by default, the policy question isn't “does my town have cameras?” — it's “who can search them?”
  4. Rights education is the useful lane. The practical work is documenting public records, explaining risks clearly, and helping residents ask local governments for enforceable limits — not teaching evasion, doxxing, or interference.
  5. The civic conversation is finally catching up. Public-records reporting, court rulings, and city-council reversals all clustered in 2025–26, several years after the underlying network was already built.

Sources used on this page

All claims above link to one of the following sources. This page is a synthesis, not original reporting.