Primer: Flock Cameras

“Pure liberty with no restraints produces anarchy, while pure discipline brings in the police state.” — Judge Wade Hampton McCree, Jr., U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.

The debate between public safety and personal liberty is one of this nation’s oldest traditions. From smallpox vaccination to Japanese American internment to the PATRIOT Act, Americans have long reckoned with where to draw the line between protecting the individual and the collective. In recent months, a new iteration of this ideological and constitutional struggle has emerged: Flock cameras. After findings that Immigration and Customs Enforcement was using these cameras to find and detain undocumented immigrants, a public furor over the technology has swept online spaces and city council meetings across the country.

Cameras owned by Flock Safety comprise approximately 83 percent of existing automatic license plate readers (ALPRs). As of this writing, over 120,000 Flock cameras hang from highways and telephone poles in urban and rural areas alike, capturing license plate numbers, make, model, color, and unique features of vehicles before storing this information in an AI-powered searchable database. In a month, these instantaneous scans rack up information on over 1 billion vehicles. Then, the 700-plus local law enforcement agencies with whom Safety has partnered can utilize this data to trace vehicles and develop leads. According to a May 2026 data report that the company released, Flock cameras supported over one million investigations in 2025—roughly 20 to 25 percent of all crimes in America—but technology experts have alleged that this is an overestimate.

For proponents of the resolution, public safety is their preeminent concern. However “creepy” Flock cameras may seem, their ability to help law enforcement officials solve homicide cases and locate missing persons trumps the nebulous notion of individual liberty. In modern American society, where digital surveillance—from Amazon Alexas to Ring doorbells—is practically unavoidable, at least Flock cameras can serve a common good rather than, for instance, enabling profit-hungry companies to sell better ads. Moreover, although the regulatory landscape is uncertain at this time, proponents point to Flock’s built-in auditing system, which logs each time an investigator deploys a search term or exports data, as proof of the technology’s good faith. This record-keeping system, proponents argue, can help regulate misconduct and data abuse—and, in fact, is what allowed journalists to break the news about ICE’s usage of Flock cameras in the first place.

Hailing from across the political spectrum, opponents of the resolution give significantly more weight to individual liberty, which they view as an essential right they must zealously guard from encroaching technology companies. As Vermont senator and prominent anti-Flock advocate Bernie Sanders stated, “We cannot allow America to become a surveillance state where a handful of AI oligarchs profit by giving the government the power to track our every movement.” At the ground level, opponents are concerned about the lack of transparency and oversight for ALPR companies like Flock. In the meantime, anti-Flockers say, these cameras allow bad actors—from ICE agents to corrupt police to stalker exes—to invade the privacy and, sometimes, upend the lives of their targets without being held accountable.

Come join our debate this Monday at 7pm in Scott Hall!

"A zoomed-in shot of a Flock Safety ALPR camera looking southwest towards B Street in Hayward, California" by RailTypes is licensed under Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.