By Tyler Lilly – Editorial Editor

There are over 130,000 Flock cameras in the United States, owned and manufactured by Flock Safety. Flock Safety was started as a small project in 2017 as a vehicle tracking camera and license plate reader. Since then, Flock has quickly grown into a large company with over 700 employees that is now primarily used to assist law enforcement. In 2025, Flock was used by over 6,000 United States municipalities. While the intentions behind Flock Safety seem noble at first glance, the company is contributing to the formation of a surveillance state and is frequently used by ill-intentioned people. The cameras should come down and stay down.

The usage of Flock cameras everywhere makes it so it is impossible to go anywhere without being tracked. This has technically been true for years, with security cameras in businesses and things such as that, but Flock cameras are much more precise in terms of what they can track. There are multiple Flock Safety products. Falcon and Sparrow are license plate readers that, in addition to the obvious function of recording license plate information, a car’s mode, color, and the location and time that the car was seen are all recorded. The license plate readers share an internet network to send information, which helps law enforcement track vehicles. Another kind of camera is the Condor camera, which can zoom in on individuals, turn, and pan to follow a person. A training video from Flock Safety shows police using Condor cameras to track people across state lines, and surveil people as they walk. This is a huge overreach that can and has been used for very bad purposes.

There have been multiple instances of police using cameras for tracking people not involved in crimes at all. A police officer in Kentucky was arrested for using Flock cameras to track his ex-girlfriend over 2,000 times. Other police officers have used the cameras to spy on family members, romantic partners, and even strangers. Flock has had very little security on the cameras, so it was very easy for law enforcement to search for a specific person to track. In the town of Savannah, Georgia, six police officers were fired for allegedly abusing Flock cameras. This is a shockingly common occurrence, and, while Flock has been adding more security measures in place recently, making it slightly harder to abuse the cameras, police departments still have control over them. No matter how many security measures Flock adds, the capability of these cameras is always there.

It is very clear that Flock cameras are not just used to read license plates and solve crimes. The devices have been seen outside of public pools, playgrounds, and other suspicious locations. Any law enforcement official can track anyone using these cameras, and privacy is guaranteed to be violated. Big Brother is watching, and it is the correct (and sane) course of action to outlaw this piece of technology, much like Milford recently decided to do. Privacy is almost completely gone. But maybe, just maybe, it can be partially salvaged.