Have You Been Flocked?
What are Flock cameras, and why are they controversial?
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Police can track the movements of vehicles with these powerful license plate reader surveillance cameras. But critics say they’re ripe for abuse.
If you’ve driven anywhere, your vehicle’s license plate number has almost certainly been recorded and stored in a privately owned database used by the police to investigate crimes.
That database is owned and operated by Flock Safety, a company that provides surveillance technologies — including automated license plate readers, drones, and gunshot detectors — to thousands of law enforcement agencies and communities across the U.S. have installed thousands of license plate reader cameras.
But what exactly are these cameras, how do they work, and why have they generated so much debate? We’ve sought to answer these and other frequently asked questions below.
What is a license plate reader camera?
License plate reader cameras are surveillance tools that automatically record the license plate number of every vehicle that passes within their sight. They can be fixed to a pole or another stationary location, or a vehicle.
All these license plate scans become data that police use to investigate crimes. Officers can get real-time alerts when a camera spots a license plate that’s on a stolen or wanted car. Or, the police can search the database to trace a specific vehicle’s movements.
What is Flock Safety?
Flock Safety is a law enforcement technology company that operates what it calls a “nationwide public-private safety network” of surveillance cameras, drones, license plate readers, and other devices. It has contracts with over 5,000 communities, 4,500 law enforcement agencies, and 1,000 businesses nationwide.
The company, based in Georgia, is valued at $7.5 billion and receives nearly $700 million in venture capital funding, according to its website.
One of Flock’s products is a line of license plate reader cameras.
How do Flock’s license plate reader cameras work?
Flock cameras aren’t traffic cameras; they don’t measure a car’s speed or issue traffic tickets.
They do, however, continuously monitor vehicles and store the data in the Flock operating system, a portal where users can look up a vehicle’s plate number and see where that vehicle was spotted in the last 30 days without obtaining a warrant.
The cameras also record what Flock calls a “vehicle fingerprint,” which includes the make, model, and color of the car, the state the license plate is registered in, whether the license plate is covered or missing, and unique features of the car — such as roof racks and bumper stickers — that would help law enforcement identify it in an investigation.
Do Flock cameras reduce crime?
The research is mixed. Experts generally say it’s difficult to establish a causal relationship between Flock cameras and changing crime rates.
When license plate reader cameras have been installed in cities, Flock and its supporters claim that crime clearance rates — the percentage of cases “solved” by the identification or arrest of a suspect — increase. They also claim that license plate reader cameras help deter crime, as shown by falling crime rates after cameras are put to use.
The Oaklandside reviewed several recent academic studies that tried to measure the impact license plate reader cameras had on public safety in different cities.
The results of these studies show mixed and inconclusive results.
A 2019 study of Charlotte-Mecklenburg, North Carolina, where police deployed nearly 100 stationary cameras, showed “for the city overall, there were no indications of significant improvements in clearances for auto theft cases during the post-LPR period,” and that “at the city level, there was no change in robbery clearances overall.”
The researchers did find “moderately significant improvement” in clearance rate for auto theft in areas of the city with the highest concentrations of cameras, and a roughly 2% increase in clearance rates for robbery cases that were not solved on the first day. But these weren’t conclusive findings, and the researchers wrote: “the most sophisticated tests did not show statistically significant evidence of greater improvements.” It was possible, they surmised, that “factors beyond [license plate reader] deployment contributed to improvements in case closures, particularly for auto theft investigations.”
A 2016 study found “significantly increased follow-up arrests in the Cincinnati Police Department compared with traditional policing approaches” after license plate readers were put to use by local police. The researchers concluded that police were able to make “more follow-up arrests by using fewer police officers compared with traditional policing,” and that the technology quickly paid for itself by making officers more efficient.
Research published earlier this year about the use of license plate readers in Atlantic City, New Jersey, showed mixed findings. The study’s authors wrote that the expansion of the police department’s license plate reader camera network didn’t reduce violent crime.
“There is little evidence that the ALPR expansion was associated with reductions in violent crime in general,” they concluded. However, they did find evidence suggesting that the cameras “were associated with decreases in shootings, motor vehicle thefts, and property crime in general.” They ended their study by issuing a caveat noted in other research papers about drops in crime: “It is difficult to rule out other factors —both locally and nationally — that might be contributing to those reductions,” they said.
Most of the studies we were able to review concluded that there needs to be much more research done to gain a firm understanding of how license plate readers may or may not contribute to public safety.
And there’s also a vast and growing body of literature about the potential harms of license plate readers when it comes to privacy and civil liberties.
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Check your license plate to see if you have been Flocked.
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Article compiled and edited by your pal, Sal
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