Many Texas cities have been expanding their surveillance efforts with the use of automated license plate readers (ALPRs), like Flock cameras. Texas has an estimated 10,000 Flock cameras up and running right now. Police departments across the country are using the technology to aid their criminal investigations, but many residents say the cameras are criminalizing law-abiding citizens more than anything. Flock cameras have misidentified vehicles as stolen, been used to track immigrants, and police are under fire for misusing the system, like the Pasedna officer who was caught using the cameras to stalk a woman coworker.
Houston has employed more than any other Texas city with nearly 4,000 cameras, and surveillance in Dallas is picking up as a result of the city signing a three-year $5.3 million contract with Flock Safety last year. With smaller cities like Plano, McKinney, and Irving investing in Flock, there are about 3,000 cameras currently playing “RoboCop” throughout the metro.
Anti-surveillance activists have come up with tools to empower residents—who reject this modern-day Big Brother and don’t want their license plate and vehicle information saved—and to watch them right back. Check out these four apps and online tools that show you where all the ALPRs are throughout your routes around town and if they’re tracking your car.
Deflock
Deflock is a crowdsourced map of all ALPRs around the country. This system depends on users reporting camera sightings. While user reports could have errors, they help fill the gaps left by agencies that don’t disclose their use of these cameras. Out of the 6,400 different agencies that manage Flock cameras, only 900 of them run a public transparency portal that accounts for each device, according to Deflock.
HaveYou Been Flocked?
The site lets you type in your license plate number to see if it’s already been scanned by a Flock camera. The hub pulls this data by aggregating government agency reports, like police department, county, and airport records. You can also see how much these cameras have cost an entity and what they’re being used for.
Flock Hopper
Flock Hopper is a website, but also an app, that helps you find ALPRs near you and then route your drive to work or weekend travel around the cameras. This site debunks myths around the use of Flock cameras and documents incidents around the country where people have abused their access to Flock footage.
Waze
The navigation app Waze isn’t officially tracking Flock cameras, but users have started to use its police tracking feature to do it anyway. Users are recording Flock sightings as police sightings or general hazards as a way to fight back against this increased surveillance.
