Smile, You're On Camera!
By Abigail Koh, Age 15
From: Australia
BIPARTISANSHIP is a political situation- usually in the context of a two-party system- in
which both political parties find common ground through compromise. That's what... most
sites say, anyway. But what do bipartisanship, America, and cameras have to do in common?
Flock.
Flock Group Inc., doing business as Flock Safety, is a privately held American manufacturer
and operator of surveillance hardware and software. Founded in 2017, when three co-owners
built their first surveillance cameras around a dinner table, a stroke of genius in solving a
break-in because of these devices laid the foundations for Flock usage in over 6500
municipalities across the United States.
Flock operates under contracts with law enforcement, homeowner organisations and similar
community organisations for crime prevention and investigation.
I wouldn't be wrong to say Flock isn't exactly a topic you bring up at the dinner table. But
since July, social media posts about the organisation have increased, and platforms such as X,
TikTok and Reddit have amplified videos of protests, confrontations at town halls, and even
citizens vandalising or tearing down Flock's solar powered cameras in cities across states like
Florida, Georgia, Minnesota and California.
Flock's security cameras are automated license plate readers powered by AI. In the USA,
there are about 200,000 Flock cameras, generating around 2 billion scans per month. The
argument for them is fairly simple: if a stolen car, missing person or vehicle connected to a
crime passes a camera, police have another way of finding it. Flock says its technology has
helped solve crimes and locate missing people.
It's an appealing idea. Except it isn't.
The company has stirred up some controversy in regards to reports of abuse of those scans. A
Washington Post investigation found at least 50 law-enforcement officers accused of or
charged with misusing Flock or similar systems, including cases in which officers allegedly
used the technology to track women in their personal lives. One investigation found that
police departments often weren't regularly checking how their own officers were using Flock.
That is where Flock becomes less of a crime-fighting story and more of a Big Brother-esque
tale.
In Indianapolis, for example, The Washington Post identified an officer whose searches
appeared to track vehicles belonging to his wife and two acquaintances. The department
subsequently suspended him and began investigations; its police chief acknowledged that the
department had not previously had a regular practice of auditing officers' searches.
Flock has since introduced stricter safeguards, including requiring officers to attach searches
to criminal case numbers and making suspicious search activity subject to review. The
company has also announced shorter default data-retention periods and more restrictions on
information sharing between agencies.
Officers aren't the only issue, though. In Plymouth, Minnesota, a car blogger and his wife
were detained after Flock misread a dealer plate. In Sherwood, Arkansas, a couple were
pulled over and ordered out of their car at gunpoint after the system confused a single digit on
their licence plate. In Morristown, Tennessee, two grandparents were detained at gunpoint
while their three-year-old granddaughter watched from the car, after a Flock camera
interpreted an “O” as a “0”. And in Volusia County, Florida, a 23-year-old woman was
wrongfully arrested and detained for 13 days after Flock reportedly misidentified both the
colour of her vehicle and a character on her licence plate, flagging her as a suspect in a fatal
hit-and-run. A different driver, whose vehicle matched the description, was later arrested and
charged.
A camera can make a mistake in a fraction of a second. The person acting on that mistake
may not. And when a system built to watch millions of people can turn a single misread
character into a police stop, a gunpoint detention or even an arrest, the question can no longer
be simply whether the technology works. And that brings us back to the uncomfortable heart
of this entire debate: if Flock is watching the public, who is watching Flock?
America is currently divided over practically everything. Republicans and Democrats
disagree over immigration, abortion, guns, healthcare, taxes, education and approximately
every other noun in the English language.
But Flock has managed to irritate both.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, blocked state agencies from procuring Flock
products. Progressive Senator Bernie Sanders has pushed for restrictions, while Republican
Senator Josh Hawley has investigated potential privacy abuses. Democratic Representative
Ro Khanna and Republican Representative Thomas Massie have even joined together on
legislation that would prevent federal funds from being used to purchase Flock cameras.
Municipality leaders of all stars and stripes are dropping contracts with Flock.
Reasons either side oppose the cameras, though, differ.
While progressives focus more on the tracking down of immigrants or the ridding of babies,
conservatives have warned that the cameras could be creating a national gun registry. And
perhaps that is what makes Flock so unsettling. It isn't simply that a camera can see where
your car goes. It is that, somewhere behind that camera, none of us know what's really going
on.
A camera on a street corner might look harmless. It takes a picture of a license plate. Nothing
particularly dramatic happens. There is no flashing warning sign saying
CONGRATULATIONS, YOU ARE NOW PART OF A NATIONAL SURVEILLANCE
NETWORK.
But connect thousands of those cameras together, and the picture changes.
Flock's network allows different law-enforcement agencies to share information, meaning a
vehicle photographed in one place can potentially become relevant to an investigation
somewhere else. A single photograph may seem insignificant, but thousands of photographs
can begin to form a record of where a person has been—and, perhaps more importantly,
where they might be going.
And that is where the question of trust enters the picture. People might trust the politicians
and officials who install surveillance technology today, but, as one privacy expert has
warned, they cannot necessarily know who will have access to it tomorrow. The camera itself
may not be dangerous; the uncertainty surrounding whoever controls its information is.
Perhaps that is why Flock has managed to produce such an unusual kind of political
agreement. The reasons for opposing the cameras may differ, but the conclusion is beginning
to converge: the problem isn't simply that Flock can watch America. It is that America isn't
entirely sure who is watching Flock.
And surveillance does not have to be used maliciously to change behaviour. Knowing that a
camera might be recording your movements can be enough. A person does not need to be
arrested, questioned or even contacted for surveillance to affect them; the knowledge that
their movements can be traced may make them think twice about where they go, who they
visit or what they do.
There is also something oddly one-sided about the arrangement. The public can see the
cameras, but they cannot necessarily see what happens to the information after it has been
collected. You might know that a camera photographed your car, but you probably won't
know who searched for your license plate later, why they searched for it, or whether that
information was shared elsewhere.
That creates a strange imbalance of visibility. The citizen is visible to the system, while the
system remains largely invisible to the citizen.
And perhaps that is the uncomfortable irony at the heart of Flock. The company sells
surveillance as a way of making communities safer by allowing authorities to see more. But
the more the system can see, the more important it becomes to know who can look through it.
After all, surveillance only feels reassuring when you trust the person holding the camera.
The problem is that trust is a lot harder to monitor than a license plate.
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/05/flock-cameras-political-backlash
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cew9kz1kxpvo