OPINION:
Earlier this year, Josue Ayala, 33, a Milwaukee, Wisconsin, police officer, suspected that his girlfriend was cheating on him with her ex.
So, to confirm his suspicions, he ran her license plate number 124 times through the city’s Flock Safety camera program, and her ex’s plates 55 times. Flock cameras use artificial intelligence to identify and track license plates. The technology can detect vehicles up to 75 feet away, integrate with other companies’ technology platforms and store data for up to 30 days.
More than 7,000 organizations — mostly local and state law enforcement — have contracts with Flock to help catch suspected criminals, with more than 120,000 cameras installed across the U.S. that scan 20 billion plates a month.
Mr. Ayala insisted to the authorities that he was using the Milwaukee Police Department’s Flock cameras for an “investigation,” not personal reasons. His girlfriend’s ex learned he was being tracked by using the website haveibeenflocked.com, which shows people if their license plate has been flagged in the system.
A complaint was filed and Mr. Ayala was charged with attempted misconduct in public office. He was suspended from the Milwaukee police force.
Flock cameras are a gross violation of our personal privacy and are ripe for misuse. Mr. Ayala is not alone. Just this past weekend, it was reported that six former Savannah Police Department employees are under criminal investigation after being fired for allegedly misusing Flock security cameras.
Last week, a North Carolina police officer was arrested for allegedly using the cameras to track her boyfriend’s ex-wife.
Law enforcement has declared Flock cameras a “crime-fighting star,” but in many municipalities, there are no guardrails on who can have access to the technology, whether the data collected can be shared with federal authorities and which other technology systems it can be linked to.
This creates a massive digital dragnet that can infringe on law-abiding Americans’ constitutional rights well beyond illegal search and seizure.
Last Sunday, a Daytona Beach lawyer found Flock cameras at his local public gun range and posted footage of the cameras, along with his outrage, on social media. Flock cameras have been installed on bike paths, nature trails, public parks, golf courses, community pools, gyms, reproductive clinics, schools and preschools. It’s not plate tracking; it’s people tracking.
And sometimes the algorithm gets it wrong.
Over the weekend, police shut down I-94 in Waukesha County, Wisconsin, after a Flock camera flagged a silver SUV as “connected to a homicide.” Police boxed the car on the freeway and held its two occupants at gunpoint.
Yet it was the wrong driver and the wrong car. Its occupants were innocent, as the alert was outdated and the authorities had forgotten to remove it.
The Institute of Justice has reported at least 26 cases since 2018 of innocent motorists detained at gunpoint or jailed because of Flock errors, with most occurring since 2022. The Business Insider reported in 2024 more than a dozen instances where “misreads by Flock’s automated license plate readers, or a lack of verification by officers, resulted in people who hadn’t committed crimes being stopped at gunpoint, sent to jail, or mauled by a police dog, among other outcomes.”
Less than 1% of cars scanned by Flock are connected to any crime or wrongdoing.
A grassroots group called DeFlock, along with other anti-surveillance organizations, has formed to raise awareness about the cameras and map their locations. Many vigilantes nationwide are using this information to sabotage Flock cameras in their communities.
In July, Wesley Jackson, a 20-year-old from West Virginia, was arrested and charged with felonies after allegedly destroying his town’s Flock cameras. The case went viral on Facebook, with tens of thousands of users offering fake alibis to defend him. There are at least 33 documented cases of deliberate sabotage to Flock cameras nationwide, and that number is growing.
As a result, nearly 100 localities nationwide have deactivated their cameras or canceled contracts with companies supplying them. Ring, the Amazon-owned home security company, ended its partnership with Flock amid outrage from private citizens over a collaboration that would’ve allowed homeowners to share their footage with local police.
Although vandalizing Flock cameras may feel good, it’s a bad solution — one that leads to legal prosecution and the city spending more of your dollars to replace the cameras. Federal policies must change to protect us from this mass surveillance.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is lobbying against Flock cameras, saying they “create a warrantless mass surveillance network, track innocent people, and lack strict oversight.”
U.S. Rep. Tim Burchett, Tennessee Republican, has introduced a bill to ban federal agencies from purchasing or operating Flock and to block state and local governments from using federal funds to acquire them. Rep. Thomas Massie, Kentucky Republican, has pursued legislative efforts to strip federal funding from police departments deploying them.
And a bipartisan amendment was offered to a federal highway bill that would have blocked Flock programs nationwide. Sadly, it was voted down in the House committee markup.
More must be done at the local and national levels. Laws need to be changed to either outlaw these government-connected plate readers altogether or at least hold law enforcement accountable for their use and limit data retention and connectivity to other government databases.
Changing the law to regulate Flock camera use is the only way to protect our constitutional rights from bad actors and prevent these cameras from becoming permanent infrastructure.
• Kelly Sadler is the commentary editor at The Washington Times.
Follow the author
Please read our comment policy before commenting.