Flock cameras face growing backlash as vandalism highlights US surveillance concerns

Flock Safety’s AI-powered surveillance cameras are facing growing opposition in the United States, with four devices vandalised in Houston and similar incidents reported in Minnesota, California and Georgia.

The Houston cameras were cut down in the city’s affluent, tree-lined Old Braeswood neighbourhood in late July. The black oval cameras and their solar panels were left on the ground, while some carried signs warning that they recorded video around the clock.

The vandalism reflects wider concerns about the expansion of automated licence-plate reader networks across the country. Flock says its cameras make communities safer, while critics argue that they allow police to monitor the movements of ordinary people on an increasingly broad scale.

A growing network

Founded in 2017, Flock Safety says it works with more than 7,000 communities and estimates that about 100,000 cameras have been deployed. The cameras photograph the rear of every vehicle that passes them, with images retained for a specified period.

Law-enforcement agencies can also search across Flock’s wider network, including cameras outside their own jurisdictions. Documents obtained by the BBC show that Houston’s Metro Transit Authority owns 35 cameras but has access to about 20,000 devices in the wider Flock system, including cameras in Albany County, New York.

The scope of searches has also expanded in some areas. In the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District, a typical licence-plate search covered about 270 camera networks in April 2024 and almost 500 a year later. In April 2026, one in five searches covered more than 6,000 networks, according to documents reviewed by the BBC.

Christopher Rivera of the Texas Civil Rights Project said the network could allow authorities to examine people’s daily routines, including their routes to work, children’s schools and places of worship.

Flock says its cameras do not use facial recognition. However, the BBC reported that the Harris County Sheriff’s Office separately uses facial-recognition company Clearview AI, whose database contains more than 70 billion images. The sheriff’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

Supporters point to crimes solved

Police departments that use Flock technology say it can help recover stolen vehicles, solve crimes and locate vulnerable people.

Chief Ray Schultz of the Memorial Villages Police Department in Houston said his department recovered an average of three stolen cars a year before purchasing a Flock camera. He said that figure has since risen to 45.

Schultz also said the technology helped officers find an elderly woman with dementia who had driven from Galveston to Houston and become lost. He argued that agencies should have strict rules governing access to the system, but said misuse should not mean abandoning a tool that can help recover missing people.

Flock founder and chief executive Garrett Langley said the company’s technology had helped solve about a million crimes and locate more than 10,000 missing people. He said decisions about data retention and sharing should be made by individual cities rather than by the technology company.

Privacy and misuse concerns

Critics have raised concerns about police using Flock data without warrants and about the possibility of information being shared with federal immigration authorities. The federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency does not have a direct contract with Flock, and Flock’s chief executive says federal immigration authorities cannot access its data directly.

However, some police departments have agreements to work with federal immigration enforcement. A proposed amendment to Harris County’s Flock contract initially included permission to share camera data with federal law enforcement, but the provision was removed after opposition from campaigners.

The technology has also been involved in reported misuse. A Kentucky police officer was charged after allegedly using Flock to track his former girlfriend more than 2,000 times. The use was detected by an artificial-intelligence audit tool that Flock has made mandatory.

In another case, a detective in Johnson County, Texas, searched more than 80,000 images while trying to locate a woman suspected of having an abortion. The search was conducted without a warrant, according to the report.

Flock has reduced the default period for retaining data from 30 days to seven, unless images are flagged as part of an investigation. Individual agencies can retain data for longer.

More than 200 communities have cancelled or declined to renew their Flock contracts since 2021, according to the advocacy group Secure Justice. The reasons may include cost as well as concerns about privacy.

As lawmakers consider possible limits on access to the data, the debate over Flock reflects a broader question about how public safety and privacy should coexist as artificial intelligence becomes more closely integrated into surveillance systems.