Flock Isn’t Public, But the Cameras Are—and One Unit’s Data Is Out

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.

Its customers include police departments, cities, HOAs, businesses, and schools. Additional products increase the amount that each account pays. The company has stated that its annual recurring revenue is about $300 million. However, these figures are not from SEC filings. Flock has claimed to have more than 120,000 devices in 49 states and approximately 20 billion scans per month.

The cameras are used to take photographs of licence plates and vehicles. Authorized users can search using the plate number, a description, and a time window. Flock states that customers own the data and that it does not employ facial recognition in its ALPR product or sell its customers’ camera data.

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.

Flock was not banned throughout Florida. On August 31, 2026, the Florida Department of Transportation canceled the general permits for plate readers on the rights-of-way of the State Highway System and allowed the agencies to have thirty days to get rid of those devices. Governor Ron DeSantis had described the technology as “out of control”. The memo does not apply to county roads, city streets, or private property.

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.

Britain’s police plate network is not a private company. The National ANPR Service is a government law-enforcement system. Joint controllers include the National Police Chiefs’ Council ANPR lead, chief officers, and the Home Secretary. It is taxpayer-funded. It does not sell HOA subscriptions. Motorists have no public portal to browse their journeys. They may file a data-subject request under the Data Protection Act 2018; law-enforcement rules can limit or refuse it. National reads are deleted after 12 months unless held for an investigation. Separate private ANPR in car parks is a different business and cannot query the Police National Computer.

China inserts plates into the state video grids. Flock is the American version and is owned by a different company—a venture-backed company that leases the poles to police departments, homeowners’ associations, and retailers and then provides a shared lookup service if both parties agree to do so. The result is a national movement map compiled from the contracts. There is no switch that is marked ‘off’.

The principles of limited government and a life unmarred by unnecessary state surveillance should be fundamental to conservative ideology. Yet this network gathers extensive location data on public roads, data which is often funded by public money, and the information can be searched across different agencies. The administration is not ignoring this issue.

On September 15, FBI Director Kash Patel stated before the Senate that the cameras assist in recovering children and in solving serious crimes, and that the bureau has the authority to obtain Flock data as part of investigations. What has not happened, however, is the White House taking a stance that treats warrantless, multi-city vehicle history searches as a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

If it still means anything to have government removed from everyday life, then the administration should make it clear by supporting warrant requirements for searches of such databases, by ensuring that federal funds are not used for new deployments, and by ceasing to regard a private surveillance company as a replacement for probable cause. Controlling crime does not demand an unaccountable record of every car.

Flock is still legal to buy in most parts of the United States, and the live fights will be subject to warrants, questions about who else can query a city’s cameras, and the question of whether the state highway agencies will continue to host the poles.