Flock Safety
American license plate recognition company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Flock Group Inc., doing business as Flock Safety,[2] is an American manufacturer and operator of security hardware and software, particularly automated license plate recognition (ALPR), video surveillance, and gunfire locator systems, and supporting software to integrate the data gathered by these technologies. Founded in 2017, Flock operates such systems under contract with law enforcement agencies, neighborhood associations, and private property owners. As of 2025, Flock claims to operate in over 5,000 communities across 49 U.S. states, and perform over 20 billion scans of vehicles in the U.S. every month.[3][4][5] Flock Safety's network of cameras, utilizing image recognition and machine learning, can share data with police departments and can be integrated into predictive policing platforms like Palantir.[6]
Surveillance
Matt Feury
Paige Todd
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| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Technology Surveillance |
| Founded | 2017 |
| Founders | Garrett Langley Matt Feury Paige Todd |
| Headquarters | Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. |
Key people | Garrett Langley (CEO) |
| Products | Automated license plate readers CCTV cameras Gunfire detection systems Software |
Number of employees | 1,500 (2025)[1] |
| Website | flocksafety |
Flock differs from its competitors in that it markets their services not just to law enforcement, but also to homeowner associations and similar community organizations as tools for crime prevention. They claim that their systems aid criminal investigations; however, they are widely described by critics as an example of mass surveillance, and their efficacy and effects on privacy and other civil liberties are the subject of extensive public scrutiny, debate, and litigation.[7]
Corporate history
Flock was founded in 2017.[2][8][9] It was co-founded by three Georgia Tech alumni: Garrett Langley (CEO), Paige Todd (CHRO), and Matt Feury (CTO).[10][11] It began as a side project in which the three co-founders built their first video surveillance cameras by hand around Langley's dining room table.[10] When a DeKalb County detective told Langley that his camera product had helped with solving a home break-in, Langley called the two other co-founders and told them to quit their jobs.[10]
By 2024, Flock's fixed cameras had been installed in over 4,000 cities across 42 states.[12][13][14] By April of that year, Flock employed over 900 people.[11]
In June 2024, a judge in the Norfolk, Virginia, Circuit Court ruled that collecting location data from the city's 172 Flock ALPRs constitutes a search under the Fourth Amendment, and cannot be used as evidence in a criminal case when collected without a warrant. The ruling likened ALPR location databases to tracking devices, whose use by police was previously found unconstitutional without a warrant in United States v. Jones.[15] Following this ruling, the company began to receive additional push back from communities concerned about the legality of their operation.[16][17][18]
That October, Flock acquired Aerodome, a manufacturer of drones for law enforcement, and announced plans to introduce its own line of drones.[19]
As of 2025, Flock is used by over 6,000 municipalities in the United States. The raised a total $950 million in venture funding, with a $7.5 billion valuation.[20][21] Some cities have stopped working with Flock over the use of its data in immigration enforcement and for community privacy concerns.[22]
In October 2025, Flock Safety announced a partnership with Amazon's Ring security products, where residents with ring cameras have the option to share video data to public safety agencies in legal investigations.[23][24] The plan came under scrutiny after Amazon ran an ad during Super Bowl LX that depicted the "Search Party" function for finding missing or lost pets across enhanced with AI surveillance. A joint decision was made to cancel the planned integration.[25] "Integration never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety."[26]
Products
Automatic license plate readers
According to The Center for Human Rights and Privacy, Flock's products, the Falcon and Sparrow, are cameras which monitor traffic and photograph the rear of all passing vehicles. Their software uses computer vision to read the vehicles' license plates and identify other distinguishing visual characteristics, sending that information to a central server via cellular network.[27] Flock's servers then log these identifying data, with the time and location of the scan, in a searchable database, and compare all results with the National Crime Information Center, as well as state and local police watchlists of cars that are reported stolen or otherwise of interest to the police, instantly alerting nearby officers upon a match.[28][29]
ALPRs like Flock's differ from traffic enforcement cameras in that they are for surveillance and criminal investigations, and do not perform any enforcement of traffic laws.[30][31][32]
Flock claims that its system's ability to identify vehicles' visual features, which it calls "vehicle fingerprint technology", is unique among ALPR systems; they state that the system can identify vehicles' make, model, and color, as well as other distinguishing attributes such as mismatching colors, bumper stickers, dents, and temporary license plates, allowing investigators to search for recorded vehicles based on these characteristics.[14][33][34] Flock claims that its ALPRs can capture images of vehicles traveling at up to 100 miles per hour (160 km/h), at distances of up to 75 feet (23 m), regardless of lighting.[30]
Most Flock devices are powered by solar panels and rechargeable batteries,[6] allowing them to operate in locations without access to utility power.[35] Many are mounted on manufacturer-supplied poles, while others are affixed to existing lampposts or telephone poles.[35][36] Flock's primary competitor in the ALPR market is Motorola Solutions.[28][37]
Integration with other camera systems
Flock offers software which integrates its ALPR and vehicle identification software into existing video camera systems, including Axon dashcams widely used in police vehicles.[38][39]
Person lookup tool
In May 2025, 404 Media reported that Flock was developing a new product called Nova that the company referred as a "public safety data platform," which would supplement ALPR data with information from data breaches, public records, and commercially available data in order to track specific individuals without a warrant, and which as of May 2025 was already in use by law enforcement in an Early Access program.[40] The Electronic Frontier Foundation described Flock Nova as a "dystopian panopticon".[41] After the 404 Media reporting, the company decided not to include information from data breaches in Nova.[42]
Gunshot detector
Launched in 2021, the Flock Raven is an audio gunfire locator, similar in function to ShotSpotter.[43] The Raven records audio in 5-second increments, using artificial intelligence to analyze the sound clips for audible gunfire; when a gunshot is detected, the device estimates its location and alerts police.[44] Like the ALPRs, they can be mounted on manufacturer-supplied poles and powered by solar panels.[45]
In October 2025, Flock announced that their Raven devices would begin listening for "human distress", with advertisements showing police being alerted when the device picks up on screaming.[46]
Business model
Flock owns and operates all of its devices,[47] leasing them to various categories of customers.[48][49][50] Marketing materials center on efforts to reduce crime, and the company uses bird-themed product names, assertedly to reinforce the theme of watchfulness.[6] While companies in this space tend to primarily market their products to law enforcement agencies, Flock also markets its products to community organizations and private entities,[6] with some customers sharing data from their systems with police agencies.[51][52]
Flock has developed relationships with several mayors.[53][failed verification][54] After Denver city council voted to end the city's relationship with the company, the mayor negotiated a free six month extension of the contract for which no approval was required.[53]
Efficacy
Some law enforcement agencies have said that the technology is "[h]elpful at generating investigative leads and solving crimes that may have otherwise gone unsolved", with some additionally claiming a deterrent effect.[30]
In 2024, Cyrus Farivar, writing for Forbes, questioned a statistic crediting Flock Safety's technology with an 80% reduction in residential burglaries in San Marino, California in early 2021 compared to the same period in 2020, with Farivar's piece asserting that burglaries actually slightly increased, and that serious crimes remained nearly unchanged.[55] Farivar also questioned similar claims from Flock regarding Fort Worth, Dayton, and Lexington.[55]
A 2021 study of Flock's Falcon camera by "surveillance research firm IPVM ... found a 10% error rate in the camera output". Flock then halted sales to IPVM and disputed the accuracy of IPVM's findings.[56] Inaccuracies in Flock's cameras have resulted in wrongful arrests in several cities.[56]
Privacy concerns and potential misuse
Privacy concerns have been raised with respect to ALPRs generally, including Flock's systems.[57][58][59][7] Additionally, Flock's surveillance model has spurred debate.[60][61][62][63] Flock's surveillance technology is often criticized for its broadening of public surveillance, and lead to a chilling effect on civil liberties, as described by privacy experts and organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The EFF argues that ALPRs create more problems than they solve.[64]
In March 2022, the American Civil Liberties Union released a report criticizing Flock Safety's business model and products.[65] In 2023, the ACLU acknowledged some uses of ALPRs could be acceptable, but emphasized the need for careful controls:[28]
There's no reason the technology should be used to create comprehensive records of everybody's comings and goings — and that is precisely what ALPR databases like Flock's are doing. In our country, the government should not be tracking us unless it has individualized suspicion that we're engaged in wrongdoing.
In October 2024, the Institute for Justice filed a federal lawsuit against the Norfolk Police Department on behalf of two local residents, asserting that the department's use of Flock ALPRs constitutes illegal surveillance in violation of the Fourth Amendment.[17][66][67] In California, state law prohibits sharing license plate reader data with federal agencies, but in 2025 it was reported that several state and municipal law enforcement agencies have nonetheless done so.[68]
In 2025, it was reported that Flock data had been queried for use in immigration enforcement.[69] A pilot program of investigation with Customs and Border Protection and Homeland Security Investigations was initiated to help combat human trafficking and fentanyl distribution. Flock halted the program in August because of "confusion and concerns" about the purpose of the investigations.[70] Local governments shared the data by either blindly approving the inquiries or unknowingly signing onto the national sharing option.[71]
