“A Company That Trades Privacy for Profit”: ACLU on Flock’s Growing Nationwide Surveillance Network

The tech company Flock, makers of traffic cameras that automatically record and log car license plates for law enforcement agencies, is facing increasing scrutiny over accusations that its vast, AI-sorted database has created a new, nationwide mass surveillance system. With few regulations or oversight on its use, Flock’s data can be sold to third parties or shared with federal agencies such as ICE, says the ACLU’s Chad Marlow, who works on efforts to regulate and cancel Flock’s contracts with local law enforcement. Because Flock’s indiscriminate system records information on all cars and drivers that pass its cameras, “we have a company working to record the comings and goings of every single person in the country,” in what Marlow calls “a very un-American take on privacy.”