Written by Attorney Neil T. O’Donnell and Attorney Connor Graham

How Flock Safety’s AI-Assisted License Plate Cameras Work

Flock Safety purportedly helps law enforcement by installing AI-assisted cameras in certain areas. They photograph the license plates of vehicles and collect other identifying information for law enforcement use. The company claims that they scan approximately 20 billion license plates per month. That data can be shared by police departments across the country.¹

Flock Safety AI Cameras Vandalized

AI cameras owned by Flock Safety have recently been vandalized by saws or spray paint.²

Questions About Flock Cameras and Crime Reduction

Flock’s website boasts that these cameras lead to faster cases, fewer officers, and tighter budgets. An advertisement on their website perplexingly points to lowering crime statistics. This is despite crime, both violent and property, having been steadily decreasing since the 1990s.³ As such, it’s difficult to discern the level of utility these cameras provide to fighting crime. What we do know for certain is that these cameras are emboldening various heartbroken or clingy individuals in law enforcement.

Unauthorized Police Use of Flock’s Camera Network

Reports indicated that at least 50 law-enforcement personnel have used Flock for unauthorized purposes, mostly related to stalking their significant others and ex-girlfriends.⁴ In one instance, a policeman searched his ex’s license plate hundreds of times. Flock gave departments broad discretion regarding safeguards that would deter misconduct. Those safeguards were underutilized, which resulted in those personnel having a very expensive search service at their fingertip.

Flock Safety’s New Data Privacy Safeguards

For what it’s worth, Flock says that they are working to enhance safeguards. These include tools to adopt flags for abnormal usage activity for review, as well as reducing the default data-retention period from 30 to 7 days. One wonders how the latter will be much help, since the department can change data retention from the default rate. Regardless, this is just another example of AI accelerating onwards, and some people being subject to privacy violations.