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What We Know – and Don’t Know – About Flock’s License Plate Cameras

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What We Know – and Don’t Know – About Flock’s License Plate Cameras

Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) are high-speed camera systems that automatically photograph every license plate that passes them. When networked together and paired with specialized software, they can reconstruct where a vehicle has been over a period of days or weeks. The technology was initially developed in the United Kingdom in the mid-1970s to aid in terrorism investigations and is now used widely by public safety agencies in the United States.

Flock Safety, founded in 2017, is the leading ALPR vendor. The company estimates that its cameras were used to help with more than 1 million law enforcement investigations in 2025. But there have also been abuses of the company’s technology, including multiple investigations into stalking and misconduct by law enforcement. As a result, some lawmakers in Congress have proposed bills to more tightly regulate ALPRs – or potentially ban them outright.

Here is what we know and don’t know about Flock cameras, based on data from Flock and other sources. In this analysis, the phrase “Flock cameras” specifically refers to the company’s license plate reader technology. We use the phrases “law enforcement agency” and “public safety agency” interchangeably.

This Pew Research Center analysis looks at the locations and reported usage of Flock automated license plate readers, better known as “Flock cameras.”

Pew Research Center does research to help the public, media and decision-makers understand important topics. This analysis builds on our recent work about technology policy issues.

Data on the number and locations of Flock cameras comes from OpenStreetMap , a crowdsourced mapping project.


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