{"id":37,"date":"2026-09-11T17:04:21","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T17:04:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xeonsecurity.com\/xeon-blog\/?p=37"},"modified":"2026-09-11T17:04:22","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T17:04:22","slug":"flock-safety-says-its-cameras-help-keep-america-safer-that-claim-is-now-colliding-with-a-wave-of-nighttime-sabotage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xeonsecurity.com\/xeon-blog\/2026\/09\/11\/flock-safety-says-its-cameras-help-keep-america-safer-that-claim-is-now-colliding-with-a-wave-of-nighttime-sabotage\/","title":{"rendered":"Flock Safety says its cameras help keep America safer. That claim is now colliding with a wave of nighttime sabotage."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Houston\u2019s well-off, tree-lined Old Braeswood neighborhood, four of the company\u2019s cameras were cut down after dark in late July. Poles were sliced through; the distinctive black oval units and their solar panels were left on the ground, some still bearing \u201c24\/7 video recording\u201d notices. Similar coordinated attacks have been reported in Minnesota, California, and Georgia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company, founded in 2017, has become one of the largest U.S. makers of automatic license-plate readers. Its AI cameras photograph the rear of every passing vehicle and store the images for a set period. Flock says it works with more than 7,000 communities and estimates roughly 100,000 cameras are in the field. Exact figures are not published.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What distinguishes the system from older plate readers is the national network. A local agency does not just own its own cameras; it can search thousands of others. Houston Metro Transit Authority, for example, owns 35 units but can tap about 20,000 devices in the Flock network, including cameras as far away as Albany County, New York. In one Houston-area school district, a typical plate search in April 2024 covered about 270 networks. By April 2025 that figure had nearly doubled. By April 2026, one in five searches spanned more than 6,000 networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critics argue the real issue is not any single pole but the searchable map of everyday travel\u2014routes to work, school, and worship. Civil-rights advocates say the databases treat ordinary drivers as potential suspects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Documented misuse has sharpened those worries. A Kentucky officer was charged after querying the system more than 2,000 times to track an ex-girlfriend who had a protection order; Flock\u2019s new mandatory AI audit tool flagged him. In 2025 a Texas detective searched more than 80,000 images looking for a woman suspected of having an abortion, without a warrant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flock itself does not use facial recognition. Harris County Sheriff\u2019s Office, which covers Houston, does: records obtained by the BBC show a contract with Clearview AI, whose database contains more than 70 billion images scraped from the public internet, running through March 2027. Several European regulators have already fined Clearview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Police departments that use the cameras credit them with results. One small Houston-area chief says stolen-car recoveries rose from three a year to 45 after Flock was installed, and the system recently helped locate a woman with dementia who had driven 60 miles off course. \u201cDon\u2019t throw out a tool that can help recover a missing child,\u201d he said, while adding that agencies need strict policies and must punish abuse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Immigrant communities are less reassured. Organizers worry local searches could feed ICE even though Flock has no direct federal contract. One Central American immigrant who asked not to be named said a camera appeared outside her house last month; she now varies her commute so she does not create a pattern. \u201cIt makes me feel as if I\u2019m being stalked.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pushback has already produced cancellations. More than 200 communities have dropped or declined to renew Flock contracts since 2021\u201490 of them in a single recent month\u2014citing cost and privacy. Los Angeles, Seattle, and Austin are among the larger cities that have walked away. Lawmakers in both parties have floated warrant requirements for federal access to the data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flock has tightened some defaults: mandatory audits and a seven-day retention period unless an investigation flags the footage. Individual agencies can still keep data far longer. CEO Garrett Langley says those choices belong to cities, not the vendor. He notes the technology has been credited with solving about a million crimes and locating more than 10,000 missing people. Patents the company filed between 2020 and 2025, however, use the word \u201csurveillance\u201d in their titles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some residents, none of that changes the feeling on the street. \u201cI just don\u2019t trust that they\u2019re doing it to keep us safe,\u201d the Houston immigrant said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Houston\u2019s well-off, tree-lined Old Braeswood neighborhood, four of the company\u2019s cameras were cut down after dark in late July. Poles were sliced through; the distinctive…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,14],"tags":[6,15,8],"class_list":["post-37","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general-news","category-privacy","tag-flock","tag-immigrants","tag-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xeonsecurity.com\/xeon-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xeonsecurity.com\/xeon-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xeonsecurity.com\/xeon-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xeonsecurity.com\/xeon-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xeonsecurity.com\/xeon-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/xeonsecurity.com\/xeon-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40,"href":"https:\/\/xeonsecurity.com\/xeon-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37\/revisions\/40"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xeonsecurity.com\/xeon-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xeonsecurity.com\/xeon-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xeonsecurity.com\/xeon-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xeonsecurity.com\/xeon-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}