Learn more
We'd rather you check for yourself than take our word for it. These are the groups and reports the whole country relies on for the facts on license-plate surveillance.
Understand the technology
- EFF, Street-Level Surveillance: Automated License Plate Readers The clearest plain-language explainer of what ALPRs are, how they work, and the risks.
- ACLU, "You Are Being Tracked" The report that first documented how widely these cameras log ordinary drivers.
- DeFlock camera map A crowdsourced map of known ALPR camera locations. Check your town.
- EFF Atlas of Surveillance Search what surveillance tech your local police use.
The claims on this site, and where they come from
- "Only about 0.05% of the data is relevant to a crime" EFF, Data Driven 2, analysis of 63 California agencies.
- "As many as 1 in 10 reads came back wrong in independent tests" Institute for Justice, documenting wrongful stops from misreads.
- "More than 20 billion scans a month across 5,000+ communities" ACLU, citing Flock's own figures.
- "Shared with ICE, used against abortion seekers" EFF and ACLU, on data sharing under legal challenge.
The full claim-by-claim source list lives in our public repo: claims-register.md.
Reporting on what's gone wrong
- Malwarebytes: what's happening with license-plate readers A plain overview of the technology and why it's controversial.
- InvestigateTV: Flock says its cameras don't track people; its own training videos say otherwise
- Institute for Justice: innocent drivers pulled over, held at gunpoint, or jailed over camera errors
- Denver7: a Black family detained after a plate-reader error
- KWCH: a Kansas officer charged with using the system to stalk someone
- NPR: cities cancel contracts over immigration-surveillance concerns
- UW Center for Human Rights: a state's plate data exposed to immigration enforcement
- Central Current: one city's data searched 4.4 million times, then cancelled
- EFF: security holes make the whole network a public-safety risk
- ACLU: Flock has repeatedly misled city councils and the public
These are for understanding the record, not a call to any illegal action. We win by changing policy, in the open.
What communities are doing about it
- ACLU, "How to Fight Deployment of Flock in Your Community" The playbook, including model resolutions and model bills you can hand your officials.
- State of Surveillance, the running list of cities that canceled Proof this is winnable, town after town.
- Fight for the Future, "FLOCK Out" A national campaign to get these cameras out of communities.
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