The police's terrifying new cameras

0:00 Sometimes I can't stop thinking about all the cameras.

0:02 Step out of my door, security camera, head down the street,

0:05 police camera, movies, camera, shopping,

0:07 camera, grocery, subway, doorbell, camera.

0:11 I've noticed this for years.

0:13 And then I found a website that lets me search for all of them.

0:16 And I got obsessed.

0:18 (lively music) And as I looked around,

0:21 there was one type of surveillance camera that kept coming up again and again,

0:26 ALPR, automated licence plate readers.

0:29 They're cameras that automatically record the licence plate number, make,

0:33 model, and features of every vehicle that comes into view.

0:37 This is, at its core, not a new technology.

0:40 Search on newspaper archives, and you can see that we've been talking

0:43 about automatic licence plate readers since the eighties.

0:46 What's new, I've started to learn, is how they're used in 2025.

0:52 This camera system is unbelievable.

0:54 Cameras just started popping up everywhere.

0:56 There's still the questions of who has access to these.

0:58 We are very sensitive to public concern around privacy.

1:02 This is definitely the ingredients or what we call police state.

1:05 This is probably the biggest invasion of privacy that has ever hit America.

1:09 [Christophe] More and more these systems aren't just cameras.

1:11 They're storing data, compiling lists, and with enough ALPRs,

1:15 law enforcement essentially has real-time surveillance

1:18 of every vehicle in their area.

1:21 We're talking about mass surveillance.

1:23 Mass surveillance, in the sense that they collect data on everyone.

1:26 You can basically see where everyone is at any point in time.

1:29 These are some of the people I've talked with over the last few

1:31 weeks as I tried to learn as much as I can about ALPRs,

1:35 because I got a little obsessed.

1:36 (door thudding) (starter clicking) I even started looking

1:38 them up every time I went somewhere new.

1:41 Found it.

1:42 There's another one.

1:44 And pretty quickly I noticed a few things.

1:46 I think that has to be one.

1:48 I see another one.

1:50 First, the map was an underestimation.

1:53 I'm definitely noticing that there are a lot

1:55 of these that are not labelled on this map.

1:59 And second, almost all of the unmapped ALPRs looked identical,

2:05 a pole with a solar panel on top, a camera right below, and this logo.

2:13 Flock Safety is a surveillance tech company

2:16 that says its mission is simple: eliminate crime.

2:20 Do you envision a future with a Flock camera on every street corner?

2:24 I envision that, and I envision an America where crime no longer exists.

2:28 And part of why so many of the Flock cameras I found might not be

2:31 labelled on open source maps yet is because

2:33 of just how quickly the company has grown.

2:36 In the eight years since its founding, Flock's revenue has skyrocketed.

2:40 It's now valued at over $7 billion.

2:42 Flock says that its cameras are used by more than

2:45 5,000 of the 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the US,

2:49 and more than 1,000 private customers,

2:51 like homeowners associations, schools, shopping malls.

2:55 And while only 20,000 of its cameras have been reported,

2:58 watchdogs estimate that the real number is over 90,000,

3:02 taking billions of photos every month.

3:06 I'm sure I've been photographed driving past one of Flock's cameras.

3:09 And if you drive a car in the US, you probably have too.

3:14 I set out to make a video about automated licence plate readers in general,

3:19 but pretty quickly it became a video about just one company.

3:23 I wanna tell you about that company,

3:24 why its camera spread to almost every corner of the United States,

3:28 and how it's quietly reshaped our relationship with being watched.

3:33 (lively music) By the way,

3:40 before I dive in, if you wanna learn more about how ALPRs work,

3:43 and the technology behind them,

3:45 Benn Jordan has an amazing video about this that goes super in depth.

3:48 In this video, I wanna talk about why Flock in particular has been so

3:52 successful at this, and what the real

3:54 world implications are of their particular model.

3:57 (traffic roaring) (upbeat music) Okay, I know it's somewhere around here.

4:02 This is a confusing area,

4:03 because there are so many cameras, like, all over the place.

4:06 It's hard to tell which one is an ALPR.

4:09 Actually, I think that might be it.

4:13 Even though we still call these things licence plate readers,

4:15 they can do a lot more than just read licence plates.

4:18 On Flock, you don't even need a licence plate to track down a vehicle.

4:21 With their AI-powered search tools,

4:23 you could just look up "silver Mercedes station

4:27 waggon with bumper stickers" and find all the matches.

4:30 But the real change in what a ALPRs are capable

4:32 of, isn't about the details that these cameras can record.

4:36 It's about the quantity of cameras recording.

4:39 Yeah, years ago you'd see licence plate readers in some cities on some roads,

4:43 but there weren't enough of them to put

4:46 together a big picture of where you actually,

4:49 like, live, where you work, where you go every day.

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6:04 Okay, let's get back to the story.

6:06 One ALPR might not be a huge deal,

6:08 but with enough ALPRs law enforcement can figure

6:10 out where you are at any point in time,

6:12 where you might be headed, based on your travel patterns,

6:15 and who you might know, based on who goes to the same places you go.

6:19 You can actually create a traceable path of the car moving through

6:23 the city as long as it's being picked up by the Flock cameras?

6:27 [Officer] Correct.

6:28 Correct.

6:29 And it would be difficult to drive anywhere

6:32 of any distance without running into a camera somewhere.

6:37 So how did Flock get enough ALPRs on streets

6:39 to have a full picture of where everyone is?

6:43 Part of the answer is that it doesn't sell ALPRs.

6:45 It sells a subscription to ALPRs.

6:48 It's presented to something that's really affordable,

6:50 'cause like if you want to buy ALPRs, and deploy, like, a hundred of them,

6:55 before Flock, it would cost a lot,

6:58 and most cities wouldn't be able to do it, 'cause they don't have the money.

7:00 But if you, if you lease them,

7:02 then you can add as many as you want and you can still afford it,

7:04 and it's cheaper than hiring police officers and things like that.

7:09 [Christophe] But the other part of the answer is

7:11 that Flock made it incredibly easy to share ALPR data.

7:15 Law enforcement agencies can share their ALPR

7:17 data one-on-one with other agencies that use Flock.

7:21 And any private company that subscribes to Flock can

7:24 choose to share their data with law enforcement too.

7:26 For a law enforcement agency,

7:28 being able to share ALPR data is a valuable feature.

7:32 If that agency is tracking a vehicle that drives out of the range of its ALPRs,

7:36 getting access to another agency's ALPRs

7:39 can help identify where that vehicle is.

7:41 It allows them to cast a wider net.

7:45 Giving customers the ability to share ALPR data isn't new.

7:49 Vigilant Solutions, an American ALPR manufacturer acquired by Motorola in 2019,

7:54 did something similar a decade ago.

7:57 So this used to be the unique thing for Vigilant Solutions.

8:00 Vigilant Solutions had a thing called the Learn Network.

8:03 The actual phrase on Vigilant Solutions website was something like,

8:07 "Adding another agency to your share list is as easy

8:10 as adding a friend on social media." And sure enough,

8:13 you'd have like a police department in California

8:15 that's adding like 1,000 or 2,000 agencies, sharing its data with them.

8:21 And it'd be like you'd have like a police department in, like,

8:24 Pennsylvania, or something, sharing data with police officers in Honolulu.

8:29 [Christophe] But Flock created a new way

8:31 for law enforcement to share a LPR data, not just to one customer at a time,

8:36 but to an entire network of other law enforcement Flock customers.

8:40 That created a powerful network effect.

8:43 It's the same principle behind how any major social media company succeeds.

8:47 The more people who join Instagram, for example,

8:49 the more content you see, and the more friends you can connect with.

8:52 Each new member directly increases the value for everyone else.

8:57 As more customers joined the Flock network,

8:59 the more valuable it became for other law enforcement agencies to buy in too.

9:03 Law enforcement customers could choose to join a statewide network,

9:06 or a national network.

9:08 Every law enforcement authority that contributed its ALPR data could

9:11 access the ALPR data of every other authority in the network,

9:15 including private contributors.

9:17 Flock Safety, part of the way it challenged

9:20 Vigilant Solutions was it started going to homeowners associations.

9:23 It started going to companies to get in that way,

9:26 and then it would go to a police department, and say,

9:28 like, "Hey, you don't have to buy our cameras,

9:30 but the homeowners associations have installed them, so you can use their data,

9:34 or the companies have installed them,

9:35 and you can use their data." And so that certainly

9:37 is a way that Flock has wheedled its way into communities,

9:40 is going through businesses and homeowners associations,

9:44 and other, you know, private entities.

9:47 [Christophe] As I kept reading, I kept seeing headline after headline

9:49 about the controversies surrounding these cameras.

9:52 (lively music) Cities and towns across the US are having

9:56 to figure out how to deal with them in real time,

10:00 and I wanted to understand what critics were most worried about.

10:04 For one thing, there are problems when

10:06 ALPRs don't work the way they're supposed to.

10:08 Testing on Flock cameras has found flaws

10:10 in the accuracy of their licence plate readings.

10:13 Police errors in interpreting ALPR data has led to several

10:16 cases of innocent people being pulled over at gunpoint.

10:19 [Anchor] Police later admitted they had mistakenly identified the car,

10:22 saying the plate numbers were similar to the one reported stolen.

10:26 [Christophe] And research on their effectiveness shows that, while

10:28 they do lead to more stolen vehicles being recovered,

10:31 they have little to no effect on crime rates more broadly.

10:34 But for critics, the more alarming question is what

10:38 happens when ALPRs do work the way they're supposed to?

10:41 Of course it works.

10:42 That's not the point.

10:43 If we put a tracker on every human being in Denver, we would solve every crime,

10:47 and we would get a whole lot of other bad, unintended consequences of that.

10:51 We could have basically zero crime if tomorrow we required every person

10:54 to wear a body camera and fed the footage into a police database.

10:59 But the Fourth Amendment doesn't allow that.

11:01 Obviously this is a good law enforcement tool, but at what societal cost?

11:07 The societal cost, of course, is privacy.

11:11 ALPRs have already been used to monitor attendance at gun shows,

11:14 in places of worship, and political rallies.

11:17 With enough data points like these, ALPRs

11:19 give law enforcement the kind of information

11:22 that was previously only available by putting a GPS tracker on your car,

11:27 or analysing data from your phone.

11:28 Both of which require getting a warrant under the Fourth Amendment.

11:32 That's the one that protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.

11:35 Flock argues that its system doesn't infringe on the Fourth Amendment,

11:39 because licence plates are not personal information.

11:43 They're issued by the government

11:44 for the express purpose of identifying vehicles.

11:47 But even if licence plates are public,

11:49 the record of everywhere that they've been can be very private.

11:52 Flock also argues that ALPRs do not track people.

11:55 They simply take pictures.

11:57 But even if ALPRs on their own do not track people,

12:01 people with access to a large network of ALPRs can.

12:05 And the question of who has access to Flock's large network

12:09 of ALPR cameras is at the core of this entire controversy.

12:15 The outlet 404 Media obtained records of searches

12:17 that had been made on Flock's nationwide network.

12:20 Every search on that network requires police to list the reason for their query.

12:24 In the search records officers had entered keywords

12:27 like "immigration." (gentle music) (keys clacking) In the US,

12:32 different states have different laws.

12:34 Usually that's not an issue.

12:35 Police in the state where a crime takes place have jurisdiction over the case,

12:39 and police in the other state aren't involved.

12:42 But if police in this state are actively sharing their ALPR

12:45 data to a network that police in this state can access,

12:49 suddenly they are involved with that agency's work.

12:52 So if we look at like abortion access,

12:54 places like Texas, it's illegal to help somebody get an abortion.

12:58 In California, it is illegal to impede somebody's access to an abortion.

13:04 These are diametrically opposite, like, ideas of what a crime is.

13:10 And so how do agencies even interact anymore?

13:14 How do they share data when they're working at cross purposes?

13:18 [Christophe] To avoid those issues?

13:19 In some states, it's illegal for local police

13:22 to share licence plate info with out-of-state or federal authorities.

13:26 Often these laws are specifically to limit

13:28 that information being accessed for immigration enforcement,

13:31 in order to promote trust between immigrant communities and local authorities.

13:35 But we have evidence that even in states with those laws,

13:38 police have been sharing their data anyway.

13:41 You can see in these maps from the watchdog site,

13:43 Eyes On Flock, that most California police departments follow that law.

13:47 But some police departments,

13:48 like El Cajon share their data all over the country.

13:52 Here in California, we have this real

13:54 struggle with cities are handing out this data,

13:56 whether they're supposed to or not.

13:58 It is not as controlled and responsibly used as I

14:01 think the average person would assume that it is.

14:07 The 404 Media investigation didn't just reveal that police were

14:10 labelling their searches "immigration," they

14:12 were also specifically inputting ICE,

14:15 which stands for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement,

14:18 and ERO for ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations division.

14:23 All of this suggested that local police were running

14:25 searches on Flock's database on behalf of federal agencies.

14:30 Local law enforcement in Colorado were even

14:32 caught giving their Flock passwords to federal authorities.

14:35 Those federal authorities have then run

14:37 ALPR searches related to immigration enforcement.

14:40 In town halls across the country,

14:41 residents have expressed concern that federal agencies might be

14:44 able to access the Flock cameras in their communities.

14:47 Flock is not the company that we trust not to share our data.

14:50 This is not, right?

14:51 They're gonna sell it to the highest bidder.

14:53 The intended purposes are all noble goals.

14:56 But these cameras and this technology does so much more than that.

15:00 The only way to protect our residents,

15:03 especially immigrants, and people seeking reproductive care,

15:07 is to not collect the data in the first place.

15:10 Some cities have put their contracts with Flock Safety on pause,

15:13 or ended them entirely.

15:15 Flock now claims it will block any searches

15:17 of a state's ALPRs if those searches violate that state's law.

15:23 When there is state legislation, we help our customers not break it.

15:29 And following 404 Media's reporting, Flock removed Illinois,

15:31 California, and Virginia from its national lookup tool.

15:35 But it raised the question of whether federal

15:37 authorities might have direct access to Flock cameras.

15:40 Flock, at first, said they don't.

15:42 So you're in 6,000 municipalities.

15:44 Yeah.

15:45 Do you have any federal contracts?

15:46 We don't.

15:47 So, no contracts with ICE?

15:48 No contracts with ICE.

15:49 One month after that interview, Flock admitted that they actually did have

15:53 a pilot programme with US Customs and Border Protection.

15:56 Well, now that company admits immigration agents do have direct access.

16:00 [Anchor] Flock has insisted for months that federal agents do

16:03 not have direct access to a local police departments tracking data.

16:06 We now know that's not true.

16:09 A previously undisclosed programme gave US Customs

16:11 and Border Protection access to a Flock account,

16:13 which allowed federal agents to send invitations

16:16 to police departments for one-to-one data sharing.

16:19 In August, 2025, Flock announced that it

16:21 had paused all operations with federal agencies,

16:24 because of concerns from communities across

16:25 the country over how that data is used.

16:28 But the pause is only temporary.

16:29 The company says it still has plans to work with federal agencies in the future.

16:34 I'm not sure that we have really fully grasped what that power is.

16:38 That's an incredible power that really only

16:40 if you believe in, like, God, or something,

16:42 that's that kind of God-like power to be able to fully

16:45 analyse and be aware of of an entire population's movement and motions,

16:49 and what that means about them, right?

16:51 I've been particularly obsessed with this question

16:53 of how many cameras there are around us.

16:56 I find it fascinating.

16:57 (playful music) At the same time, to be completely honest,

17:01 I find it increasingly difficult to care about surveillance.

17:05 It's overwhelming, it's easy to tune out.

17:08 There are too many kinds of surveillance technologies,

17:10 and too few things that we can realistically do about any of them.

17:15 But in the United States, I think there's a case to be made that one company

17:18 has single handedly brought us into a new era of surveillance.

17:22 The sheer number of cameras that Flock Safety operates,

17:25 and the ease of sharing data between those cameras

17:28 are testing the limits of our right to privacy.

17:30 At Flock, ALPRs are only the beginning.

17:33 In 2025, the company debuted its newest product.

17:36 It's easy to see that drones are the future of law enforcement.

17:40 They are safer, they are faster.

17:42 They work 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

17:45 It's nothing new for a tech company to disrupt

17:48 an industry by moving into grey areas of the law.

17:52 But when the industry that they're disrupting is

17:55 the way that we enforce the law itself, that changes the equation.

18:00 Even if you agree with Flock's mission,

18:02 even if you don't care about the cameras, or who has access to them,

18:06 the bottom line is that a company whose stated mission is

18:09 to eliminate crime might be going outside the law to do so.

18:13 (playful music) Hey, thank you so much for watching.

18:16 If you're new here, this is Tunnel Vision.

18:18 It is a show where we go down rabbit holes,

18:20 and tell stories about how we find answers on the internet.

18:23 I wanted to give a special shout-out to Will Freeman's website, DeFlock.me.

18:27 It is the easiest way to see the location of ALPRs near you or around the world.

18:32 It also has some really easy to follow instructions

18:34 about how to submit ALPR locations to the map.

18:37 I've been doing it for all the ones that I've

18:38 found in real life that were not labelled on maps yet.

18:41 It's a cool website, and it is the exact kind of open source

18:44 intelligence tool that I like to explore in my videos.

18:46 And if you have an idea for a video, I am always happy to hear them.

18:50 You can send me an email with your idea at christophe@newpress.com.

18:54 Okay, see you next time.