Flock, whose whole mission is to track each and every American’s location, is seeking to take down public maps showing locations of its surveillance cameras.
With over 170,000 cameras across the country, Flock Safety has established one of the biggest automatic license plate recognition surveillance networks in the United States. Cybersecurity researcher Joshua Michael, creator of the Flock Surveillance Map, says there are 300,000 Flock surveillance devices spread across the country.
Interestingly, just one day after the release of his map, which color-codes each Flock device according to its model, security firm Doppel filed a trademark complaint against him. Doppel claimed to be acting on behalf of Flock and asked that his website be taken down.
How secure is the data that Flock collects?
As The Intercept points out, Michael’s Flock Surveillance Map uses location data extracted from a snapshot of Flock’s own records that he preserved in December 2025 after he realized that Flock’s servers were publicly leaking data.
In January 2025, Flock released a blog post stating that it had not experienced any data breaches — after being informed of Michael’s findings. The business asserted that “Flock has never been hacked, and there has not been a leak of Flock information. Flock Safety’s cloud platform has never experienced a data breach.”
To show the scope of Flock’s surveillance network, Michael’s Flock Surveillance Map also locates additional devices outside of just cameras, such as networking equipment that incorporates third-party cameras and 27,000 acoustic detecting units.
“These cameras form a nationwide surveillance network that tracks where everyone drives,” Michael told The Intercept, “so foreign nations don’t need to send spies to harm our country. They can simply watch where our soldiers, federal agents, and politicians go.”
Despite Flock cameras helping to solve crimes, cities are quickly ending their contracts
Flock cameras, according to Moline, Illinois police, have helped solve serious crimes. However, the cost in terms of public trust as well as privacy concerns is outweighing that fact, and it is pausing its fixed automated license plate reader program, according to CarScoops.
Public opposition was a major factor, Mayor Sangeetha Rayapati told KWQC News, noting that concerns about Flock transcend party lines and have grown after reports of misuse abroad.
Moline is far from being the only city now feeling queasy about the use of Flock cameras. According to Jalopnik, the number of cities that have dropped Flock camera contracts has quietly been exploding.
A website, DeFlock, collects and shares data submitted by the public, also maps the locations of Flock cameras. Last month, using data from Deflock, Newsweek found that from January through August of 2026, 149 cities and counties canceled or rejected contracts or deactivated their cameras. Over half of those occurred in August alone and more have happened since then.