The surveillance state has crept up around us, but in at least one instance, its integration into society has prompted a backlash. Flock Safety has managed to make automated license plate readers (ALPRs), cameras that record the license plate and other characteristics of every vehicle that passes them, a hot-button issue across the United States.
More than 50 agencies or jurisdictions have canceled, suspended, or rejected Flock contracts, or deactivated its cameras, since the start of 2026. The public pressure has become strong enough that Flock CEO Garrett Langley announced a raft of changes to how his service operates on August 13, including cutting its default data retention period from 30 days to seven, requiring case codes for police searches, and making software designed to detect suspicious searches mandatory.
It’s a significant hit for the company, and a victory for privacy campaigners. But a campaign against Flock doesn’t do much to tackle the surveillance system of which Flock is just a small part.
“The company really brought people into this conversation, but the technology made them stay,” says Anaya Robinson, public policy director at the ACLU of Colorado. Flock has become the name attached to ALPR surveillance in much the same way Google became a household verb for searching the internet, Robinson argues. That makes it easier for people to think about the problem as one troublesome company rather than a whole category of surveillance tech.
Flock became a flashpoint in part because of how quietly its technology spread into communities. Many local government contracts were small enough to be signed without the sort of legislative approval or public consultation that might have alerted residents to what was being set up. And once people did start looking, controversies around Flock gave them plenty to investigate. “The more people understand that Flock cameras or other types of ALPRs or other types of surveillance are being used in their jurisdictions, the more concerned people become,” Robinson says.
But by shunning Flock, there’s a risk that communities are simply changing the logo on the surveillance product while keeping the camera itself.
Following fierce criticism of Flock and concerns about access to the city’s data, officials in Denver, Colorado, allowed its contract to expire, then promptly approved a $150,000 contract with a competitor, Axon for 50 ALPR cameras. Privacy campaigners who helped push Flock out opposed the Axon deal too, but to no avail.
Cooper Quintin, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says that while the pushback against Flock proves communities can constrain surveillance companies, voluntary product changes ultimately don’t tackle the root cause of the problem.
“Invasive searches like ALPR database queries must require a judicial warrant,” Quintin says. “Policymakers must seize this moment—when even the leading ALPR vendor has admitted they have done too little to prevent abuse—to, at minimum, codify real protections into law.”
Flock’s role as a lightning rod for the debate over the surveillance state is useful. But driving Flock out of town while buying practically the same technology from somebody else risks winning the battle while leaving the broader fight against unwarranted surveillance unresolved.
“The real root of the problem isn’t one singular vendor,” says the ACLU’s Robinson. “It’s the unregulated use of this technology itself.”