Sprawling Surveillance Camera Network Can Track People and Vehicles Across State Lines
Posted on June 20, 2026
As reported in a recent segment from Atlanta News First, the services of prominent surveillance camera vendor Flock appear to enjoy more extensive reach than the company directly acknowledges. Although Flock denies that users of its service can track targets caught by their cameras, publicly accessible training materials characterize the monitoring of given targets as “tracking”.
Recordings of Flock webinars feature speakers repeatedly using the term “track” to describe following the movements of targeted individuals or vehicles. In one instance, a speaker refers to the company’s service as permitting the tracking of a vehicle across state lines: “The example of tracking that vehicle from location to location to location”. License plate data captured by Flock cameras is retained, and queryable, for 30 days, allowing users to trace a person’s past whereabouts long after the fact.
What makes Flock a truly formidable threat to privacy is the expanse of of its camera network. Flock has more than 88,000 cameras deployed and counting. These are a mix of both license plate readers (LPRs) and cameras intended to snoop on pedestrians. The latter, “Condor” models use AI to identify a subject as human, and then automatically rotate to keep the detected individual in the frame, irrespective of whether or not they are a person of interest for any law enforcement investigation. As with so many other private surveillance tech purveyors, Flock does not sell the cameras but the “service” of allowing users to query against the data that all their cameras capture and process. Those users are typically law enforcement entities and their personnel.
Benn Jordan, a security researcher featured in the news segment, revealed even more unsettling details about Flock camera operation. According to Jordan, data is only stored locally on the camera for a short duration, just long enough for the video to be uploaded to Flock’s cloud. The brief tenancy of data on the device itself, which is leased to the government agency contracting Flock, makes it practically impossible for citizens to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for it—even if the government could access the footage such that it could comply with the FOIA request (which is doubtful), by the time citizens think to ask for it, it’s no longer there. By farming out camera installation and operation to a private company, the party which is actually in possession of the data, governments and law enforcement can hide behind the “trade secrets” exemption to dodge FOIA requests.
Civil libertarians naturally focus on the potential for abuse of surveillance powers. In the case of Flock, abuse is not theoretical but actual. Law enforcement officers around the country have already been caught using their access to Flock’s tools to virtually stalk romantic interests. And this is merely what is known.
Given the danger Flock poses to Americans’ privacy, it is no surprise that grassroots campaigns to highlight and resist this technology are taking shape. Colorado-based activist Will Freeman created DeFlock.org, which maps all known Flock cameras. Among its features is a navigation tool akin to Google Maps that plots routes which deliberately avoid Flock cameras. There is even a section lauding the municipalities that have declined Flock contracts, providing incentives for communities to take a hard line against furthering government spying. With links to city council speeches decrying warrantless government intrusion, the site provides blueprints for others to mount a defense of liberty.
You can watch the full report from Atlanta News First here.
