In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled that government and law enforcement agencies need to have a warrant to access a person’s location history, as stored/logged by their cellular devices. This decision was a victory for individual rights and privacy, but it’s a victory that is currently being eroded by yet another invasive technological development: automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras and networks. These devices, the best-known of which are likely those tall, ominous-looking Flock cameras, are currently being used to track people’s movements via their vehicles’ license plates, and currently there is no warrant requirement. That’s worrying. Even worse, a recent study from the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that, in thousands and thousands of searches for specific vehicles in Flock camera searches by law enforcement agencies, the reasons for the searches given – as required as part of the search process – were treated as a joke, with responses like “LOL” or “LMAO” or “idk.”
If this makes you feel uncomfortable or angry, that’s probably a healthy response.
Flock and other ALPR cameras have been abused by law enforcement before, in some incidents that are by now fairly well-known. In one especially egregious example, a Kentucky police officer was found to have used Flock cameras to track his ex-girlfriend’s location in over 2,000 separate searches. A Florida police officer used the cameras to stalk an actress, to the point of using the tracking system to find her and pull her over. There are more incidents of stalking, tracking down protesters, and more. It’s clearly a powerful tool with plenty of opportunity for abuse.
The most egregious thing that this EFF analysis of Flock Safety’s search data, obtained through public records, found has to do with the “reason” field in the search inquiry form. This field is used to, presumably, help classify and sort the various justifications for why a law enforcement officer may choose to search for a particular vehicle. The reasons given appear to be just stored in the search database, and do not seem to be parsed for content.
That could be why so many search reasons given are things like “LOL” and “LMAO” or just random keystrokes, or, as the EFF report noted, some “reasons” were just juvenile insults:
Insults and Inappropriate Searches
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Belton Police Department (Mo.) ran searches (Aug–Sept 2024) for “d*ckhead.” (asterisk/redaction our own)
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A Manteca Police Department (Ill.) employee ran searches in June 2024 for “sh*thead” (asterisk/redaction our own)
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A Norton Police Department (Mass.) employee ran searches in December 2024 for “Sexy.”
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Corona Police Department (Calif.) employees ran searches (2023–2025) for “weird” or “WEIRD KID.”
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Thornton Police Department (Colo.) employees ran several searches in October 2025 for “driving around being weird.”
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A Columbus Police Department (Ohio) officer ran searches in 2023 for “idiot.”
Ah yes, the high crime of “driving around being weird.” Or, on the other end of the spectrum, “sexy.” All great uses of a powerful AI-powered camera surveillance system.
In response to these issues, Flock released an update to their software that replaced the “Reason” field with a drop-down menu selection of “Offense Types” which you can see in this video showing what the search UX is like:
This doesn’t really help anything. If anything, it just makes it even easier, as the person searching doesn’t even need to bang out random letters on the keyboard anymore, just grab a random entry from a pull-down menu. If anything, it hides frivolous or predatory or otherwise unethical searches even more than asking the searcher to type in a reason did. It doesn’t do anything to solve the problem other than obfuscating it even more.
The big question here is why should any law enforcement officer be able to track an individual car without just cause or a warrant at all? If it’s not legal to get someone’s location information from a cell phone, why should tracking everywhere their car went be any different? It’s the same thing, just using a different tool.
There should be more effort required to track a person than what these cameras allow, and if these “reason” entries show anything, it’s that there are way too many people using the system who are tracking a person like it’s a frivolous act with no regard to individual privacy. Who the hell wants this?
Sure, these cameras and networks can be helpful in solving all manner of crimes, and can give law enforcement a hugely beneficial tool that will help to better protect and serve citizens when used properly. The help these networks could give for, say, finding kidnapped people or tracking violent offenders could be huge! But, like any powerful tool, you have to be careful and thoughtful about its use.
Where you go is your business, and the ability for anyone in government or law enforcement to track that had damn well better be for reasons more worthy than just boredom or horniness or just because they can. This is a real problem, and it needs to be addressed, for reasons far beyond the LOLz.
Top graphic images: EFF; Flock
The Land of the Free
Here in DC the police union is suddenly against Flock cameras because they were used to investigate misconduct by an officer.
Been waiting for someone, presumably Jason, to address this.
This may be one of the few things that I’ve seen some bipartisan anger towards. You have to be a pretty insane bootlicker to believe any of this shit to be good, and to trust the police to use it appropriately. Nevermind the obvious dystopian vibes.
The bare minimum should be a warrant, and honestly, even that doesn’t feel like enough.
It used to be a big deal to look up a license plate. If you were doing this kind of nonsense you were getting fired and probably going to prison. We need to get back to that. It will stop really quick.
I am generally pro police and object less to these cameras than most people on this site, but obviously this is inappropriate. A warrant should be required to use systems like this 100% of the time. What is frustrating is that warrants are not exactly hard to obtain. In many cases you can get a judge to sign a warrant less than an hour, if it really is urgent. I have also seen police get warrants overnight several times, so it is not like you need to wait until the next business day.
I don’t necessarily want technologies like these to go away (yeah, I know that is not a popular opinion here) as I have seen them used to catch very serious criminals (murders, kidnappers, etc.). It is not worth it if the tradeoff is going to be police abusing these systems at will, though.
Yes. Get a warrant to access the system.
I also say that these systems should be passive. As in they should not be alerting the police to possible issues with vehicles or the people in them, as we know they make too many mistakes, and the police make them too. (See the story about the woman who got a ticket for not having insurance, even though she showed proof to the ticketing officer).
That’s also a good idea. I would support that.
I think the standard should be to get a warrant to record and store someone’s personal inform,ation and whereabouts. Failing that, we shouldn’t even have drivers’ licenses or license plates because of the potential for police, intelligence agencies, databrokers, corporations, and other 3rd parties to abuse the data collected. Your data should be yours and if you’re not proven to have done anything wrong, you should have full control over it. No one should be making money off of you without your permsision, no one should be spying on you, screw all of that.
Lots of departments have magistrates that will issue warrants 24/7 like candy. The real issue is we now have about 20 years of officers that can’t be trusted to not be creepy idiots. And there is no oversight. The databases probably need to be government controlled with serious restrictions, access controls and penalties like dmv databases. Leaving this to the private sector is going to come back with more privacy violations then the public sector.
Fuck flock cameras and fuck the police. That is all.
F*ck these “d*ckhead” “sh*theads” who aren’t even “Sexy!” They are just a bunch “weird” “WEIRD KIDS” “driving around being weird.”
“Idiots.”
This is why the machine in “Person of Interest” sent you the information when a threat was identified and didn’t allow interactive access. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I would argue that these sorts of logs MUST require a manually created input and justification from the person entering the request. If leaves the opportunity for accountability, FOIA requests that could lead to lawsuits for civil rights violations would hopefully lead to department policy changes if lawmakers are too useless to make that happen themselves.
Orwellian Idiocy, I hate all of this.
We are living in 1984+idiocracy timeline. Isn’t it lovely?
Who the hell wants this?
“And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.”
Cops in Philadelphia be like
“Idiot”
700,000 results found
“D*ckhead”
700,000 results found
OK, I’ll be more specific
“Careless, reckless, aggressive driver”
700,000 results found
Oh forget this, I’ll just go out and pull over any Altima
Rule of thumb for surveillance technologies: Would you be comfortable with this tool being available to the general public?
If the answer is no, then it should need judicial oversight to employ.
*Sound of revving sawzalls intensifies*
The metal man doesn’t care where the copper came from. Or so I’ve heard.
Tell the local tweakers how much copper is in those things…