Faulty reasoning signals

• Confirmation Bias - 13.6% (110 hits)
• Anchoring Bias - 0%
• Availability Heuristic - 16.9% (136 hits)
• Representativeness Heuristic - 6.6% (53 hits)
• Hindsight Bias - 6.7% (54 hits)
• Overconfidence Bias - 0%
• Framing Effect - 24.9% (201 hits)
• Loss Aversion - 3.7% (30 hits)
• Status Quo Bias - 0%
• Sunk Cost Effect - 0%
• Optimism Bias - 6.3% (51 hits)
• Pessimism Bias - 0%

Article text

The Nationwide Resistance Against Flock Surveillance Cameras Is Gaining Steam

Resistance is mounting across the United States against the increasing use of surveillance tech company Flock Safety’s cameras, with a growing number of cities canceling contracts as the artificial intelligence-powered license plate readers are quietly being installed in thousands of locations nationwide.

State and local police departments first used the Atlanta-based company’s automated license plate reader (ALPR) systems for standard law enforcement purposes, but they are now being employed for a much broader range of uses, including immigration-related searches and other actions supporting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the Trump administration’s deadly anti-immigrant crackdown.

“Flock’s ALPR cameras aren’t like your normal traffic cameras,” the ACLU explained.

“This surveillance technology records and tracks every car that comes into view, and then an AI algorithm catalogs the make, model, color, license plate number, bumper stickers, and even scratches.

This personal information is then uploaded into a nationwide database that any law enforcement agency with a Flock contract can search — with few regulations or oversight on how they use what they find.”

“I think our country is in a kind of uniquely anti-surveillance environment right now, which is to say that, in a time where it seems there is nothing that is not partisan, opposition to government surveillance is nonpartisan,” ACLU privacy and surveillance attorney Chad Marlow told The Washington Times on Thursday.

There is growing action — both legal and otherwise — to end the use of ALPRs across the country.

According to the public information project Ban Flock Cameras, 82 Flock contracts were terminated across 28 states between August 2021 and May 2026, with 39 of those cancellations occurring in the first five months of 2026 alone.

Even Amazon-owned Ring announced earlier this year that it would stop doing business with Flock Safety.

Susie O’Hara, a member of Santa Cruz, California’s nominally nonpartisan City Council, told WBUR earlier this year that she grew increasingly concerned about local use of eight Flock cameras last year after learning that police were sharing data gleaned from the cameras with the company’s national network without city officials’ knowledge, a violation of state laws banning the practice.

O’Hara became increasingly convinced that Santa Cruz should cancel its Flock contract after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good, a US citizen, in Minneapolis in January.

“I have goose bumps on my arms thinking about the absolute chaos that was happening in Minneapolis,” she said.

“And just the absolute insanity of what we were seeing … It was totally clear to me that we should in no way consciously be in this system at all — just no way.”

Less than a week after Good’s killing, the Santa Cruz City Council voted to terminate the city’s Flock contract, becoming the first municipality in California to do so.

“For us, the threat to our civil liberties was greater than any benefit we could get from the flawed product,” Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley told KQED at the time.

Chad Kemp, who represents District 32 on the nonpartisan Dane County Board of Supervisors in Wisconsin — which in April voted to stop funding two dozen cameras leased from Flock — told The Washington Times that “there’s a public safety issue here, but there is also a privacy issue.”

“There are serious concerns about individuals who can be monitored without their knowledge, or if it is even constitutional or ethical to track people without a warrant,” he added.

At the national level, US Reps.

Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) last year launched an investigation into the use of Flock cameras to track pregnant people across state lines for abortion care and to conduct unauthorized immigration enforcement operations.

Krishnamoorthi and Sen.

Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have also urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Flock Safety “for failing to implement cybersecurity protections, allowing Americans’ personal data to be exposed to hackers, criminals, and spies to steal.”

Their demand came after the cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock revealed that hackers stole passwords and data from at least 35 Flock customer accounts.

In May, US Reps.

Jesús “Chuy” Garcia (D-Ill.) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) introduced a bipartisan amendment to a bill that would prohibit state and local governments receiving federal highway funds from using ALPRs for purposes other than electronic toll collection.

It’s not just Flock.

Axon, Vigilant Solutions — a subsidiary of Motorola Solutions — Genetec, PlateSmart, Innova Systems, Rekor, ELSAG, Perceptics, Jenoptik, and other firms market ALPRs to law enforcement agencies, private companies, and others.

“It doesn’t matter which company has its creepy cameras in your neighborhood,” the ACLU said, “they all have the same problems: a lack of transparency, oversight, and regulation into how they collect, store, and use our data, and how to hold public and private actors accountable if they abuse it.”