‘Treated like a criminal:’ Witnesses testify on abuse of Flock cameras

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Flock Safety’s automated license-plate readers are now one of the biggest privately constructed surveillance systems on the roads in the United States. The company, which is legally known as Flock Group Inc., is headquartered in Atlanta and was established in 2017 by Georgia Tech graduates Garrett Langley (who is the CEO), Matt Feury, and Paige Todd. Purchases by homeowner associations came first, after which police departments joined.

Flock is not a publicly traded company; it has no ticker symbol and has not announced an IPO. The company is controlled by its founders and by its venture investors. Among the investors who have been disclosed are Y Combinator, Matrix Partners, Meritech, Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global, Bedrock, and Greenoaks. Valuations in the private market were reported as being around $7.5 billion following a $275 million financing in 2025 and about $8.4 billion in April 2026.

It earns money through leasing rather than by selling the cameras outright. The package—covering hardware, software, the cellular connection, cloud storage, and maintenance—is priced at around $2,400 to $2,500 per camera each year, together with a few hundred dollars for installation. Flock generally retains ownership of the device.

There is no single federal statute relating to ALPRs. In some of the 2026 rulings, limited captures of license plates on public roads were regarded as not constituting a “search”. In other cases, it has been claimed that querying a vehicle’s location history over a period of time amounts to mosaic tracking under Carpenter and therefore requires a warrant. The officers have also used the system to keep track of romantic partners. The cities have the option of canceling their contracts. The “Flock-Off Act” introduced by Representative Thomas Massie is aimed at cutting off federal funding, not at establishing a national ban.

The public has no facility for browsing the network; sharing with other agencies has to be opted in for. New law-enforcement customers are directed to a seven-day default retention. Residents themselves cannot obtain their own plate history from Flock. When the public-records law is applicable, they can request contracts and search audit logs from a government customer—not every image.

On the 16th of September, the group known as stegan0gram took away one camera and handed the files over to 404 Media and WIRED. The data stored by that unit amounted to about 21 days’ worth of logs: approximately 50,200 vehicles and 1.6 million images. A portion of the storage was not encrypted, including a key that was used to unlock the media. The software also identified people and bicycles. Flock regarded the removal as illegal.

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