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'Get the Flock Out': Nationwide Backlash Grows Against AI-Powered Surveillance Tech
Since 2021, 82 Flock contracts have been canceled across 28 US states—39 of them during the first five months of this year alone.
Jul 03, 2026
Resistance is mounting across the United States against the increasing use of surveillance tech company Flock Safety's cameras, with a growing number of cities canceling contracts as the artificial intelligence-powered license plate readers are quietly being installed in thousands of locations nationwide.
State and local police departments first used the Atlanta-based company's automated license plate reader (ALPR) systems for standard law enforcement purposes, but they are now being employed for a much broader range of uses, including immigration-related searches and other actions supporting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during the Trump administration's deadly anti-immigrant crackdown.
“We have cameras that are used for everything from illegal dumping to drug houses to hotels that are just big problems,” Flock Safety engineer Kevin Cox told prospective customers during a demonstration of the company's Condor Camera, according to a Thursday report in The Washington Times.
“There are endless, endless uses for what we can do with these things," Cox added.
Those uses include spying on constitutionally protected protest activity and enforcing abortion bans by tracking pregnant people's travel across states—even ones in which the medical procedure is legal.
The ACLU—which recently launched a "Get the Flock Out" campaign to "fight creepy ALPR cameras"—says there are currently between 80,000 and 100,000 Flock devices installed nationwide that conduct more than 20 billion scans per month. More than 5,000 law enforcement agencies use the cameras, and some of them keep their locations a secret.
Automatic license plate readers track our every move and funnel our personal information into enormous databases that police can access to spy on us without a warrant.Surveillance company Flock Safety is the largest provider of these cameras — it's time we get all of them out of our communities.
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— ACLU (@aclu.org) June 28, 2026 at 11:15 AM
"Flock's ALPR cameras aren't like your normal traffic cameras," the ACLU explained. "This surveillance technology records and tracks every car that comes into view, and then an AI algorithm catalogs the make, model, color, license plate number, bumper stickers, and even scratches. This personal information is then uploaded into a nationwide database that any law enforcement agency with a Flock contract can search—with few regulations or oversight on how they use what they find."
The backlash against creeping state surveillance has even transcended the partisan divide.
“I think our country is in a kind of uniquely anti-surveillance environment right now, which is to say that, in a time where it seems there is nothing that is not partisan, opposition to government surveillance is nonpartisan," ACLU privacy and surveillance attorney Chad Marlow told The Washington Times on Thursday.
There is growing action—both legal and otherwise—to end the use of ALPRs across the country.
According to the public information project Ban Flock Cameras, 82 Flock contracts were terminated across 28 states between August 2021 and May 2026, with 39 of those cancellations occurring in the first five months of 2026 alone.
Even Amazon-owned Ring announced earlier this year that it would stop doing business with Flock Safety.
Susie O'Hara, a member of Santa Cruz, California's nominally nonpartisan City Council, told WBUR earlier this year that she grew increasingly concerned about local use of eight Flock cameras last year after learning that police were sharing data gleaned from the cameras with the company's national network without city officials' knowledge, a violation of state laws banning the practice.
O'Hara became increasingly convinced that Santa Cruz should cancel its Flock contract after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good, a US citizen, in Minneapolis in January.
"I have goose hbumps on my arms thinking about the absolute chaos that was happening in Minneapolis," she said. "And just the absolute insanity of what we were seeing... It was totally clear to me that we should in no way consciously be in this system at all—just no way."
Less than a week after Good's killing, the Santa Cruz City Council voted to terminate the city's Flock contract, becoming the first municipality in California to do so.
“For us, the threat to our civil liberties was greater than any benefit we could get from the flawed product,” Santa Cruz Mayor Fred Keeley told KQED at the time.
Chad Kemp, who represents District 32 on the nonpartisan Dane County Board of Supervisors in Wisconsin—which in April voted to stop funding two dozen cameras leased from Flock—told The Washington Times that “there’s a public safety issue here, but there is also a privacy issue."
"There are serious concerns about individuals who can be monitored without their knowledge, or if it is even constitutional or ethical to track people without a warrant," he added.
At the national level, US Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) last year launched an investigation into the use of Flock cameras to track pregnant people across state lines for abortion care and to conduct unauthorized immigration enforcement operations.
Krishnamoorthi and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have also urged the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Flock Safety "for failing to implement cybersecurity protections, allowing Americans’ personal data to be exposed to hackers, criminals, and spies to steal."
Their demand came after the cybersecurity firm Hudson Rock revealed that hackers stole passwords and data from at least 35 Flock customer accounts.
In May, US Reps. Jesús "Chuy" Garcia (D-Ill.) and Scott Perry (R-Pa.) introduced a bipartisan amendment to a bill that would prohibit state and local governments receiving federal highway funds from using ALPRs for purposes other than electronic toll collection.
It's not just Flock. Axon, Vigilant Solutions—a subsidiary of Motorola Solutions—Genetec, PlateSmart, Innova Systems, Rekor, ELSAG, Perceptics, Jenoptik, and other firms market ALPRs to law enforcement agencies, private companies, and others.
"It doesn't matter which company has its creepy cameras in your neighborhood," the ACLU said, "they all have the same problems: a lack of transparency, oversight, and regulation into how they collect, store, and use our data, and how to hold public and private actors accountable if they abuse it."
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Rights Groups Argue Trump Orders Have 'Murdered Over 210 Civilians With No Sound Legal or Moral Basis'
“By claiming that these attacks are legal while refusing to provide any evidence or rationale, President Trump shows once again his disdain for basic transparency, human rights, and the rule of law."
Jun 25, 2026
Civil rights groups squared off against the Trump administration in a New York federal court on Wednesday, with the former seeking to compel the release of a secret Department of Justice memo being used to justify illegal bombings of alleged narco-trafficking boats and the latter claiming executive privilege in a bid to avert the document's disclosure.
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on the first day of his second term designating drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and then reportedly signed a secret order directing the Pentagon to use military force against them. Last July, the DOJ's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued a classified opinion providing the legal rationale for the strikes, which international law experts around the world contend are illegal acts of murder and possibly war crimes or even crimes against humanity.
The ACLU, New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU), and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) argued in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York that the Trump administration cannot conceal its legal justification for boat strikes from the American people while repeatedly referring to it.
“People across the country, politicians across the aisle, and the families of victims have been demanding answers as to how our government is justifying the cold-blooded murder of civilians,” ACLU National Security Project staff attorney Jeffrey Stein said in a statement. “The Trump administration has murdered over 210 civilians with no sound legal or moral basis. At a minimum, the administration must disclose to the American people why it thinks this killing spree is lawful.”
The DOJ, which is seeking a summary judgment, claimed that the memo contains classified and highly sensitive information that, if disclosed, would compromise intelligence operations and sources. DOJ attorneys argued that executive privilege shields the memo from disclosure.
“Wouldn’t that be true of any OLC memo?f” US District Judge Paul Engelmayer countered, according to Courthouse News Service. “Is it the government’s position that any presidential communications privilege cannot be waived?"
Stein asserted that the boat strikes are being carried out "on the basis of secret law" that "has no place in a democratic society" and dismissed the government's claim as “contrary to the foundational presidential communications privileges" in Freedom of Information Act cases.
CCR legal director Baher Azmy accused the Trump administration of "displacing the fundamental mandates of international law with the phony wartime rhetoric of a basic autocrat."
“If the OLC opinion seeks to dress up the obvious illegality of these serial homicides in legalese in order to provide cover, the public needs to see this analysis and ultimately hold accountable all those who facilitate murder in the United States’ name," he added.
CCR said that the OLC memo "supposedly validates the ongoing strikes as lawful acts in an alleged 'armed conflict' with unspecified 'drug cartels.'"
"Reportedly, the memo also purports to immunize personnel who authorized or took part in these unlawful strikes from future criminal prosecution for what would otherwise simply be homicides," the group added.
As CCR said Wednesday:
Contrary to the government’s public assertions, the US is not, and could not be, in an armed conflict with Latin American drug cartels. Under international law, an armed conflict between a state and a nonstate actor exists only if the nonstate actor is an “organized armed group” that is structured and disciplined like regular armed forces and is engaged in “protracted armed violence” against the state. There is no plausible argument that any drug cartel satisfies this test vis-à-vis the United States.
Even if the OLC does release the memo, it doesn't mean that its arguments are actually legal under international law. OLC lawyers have notoriously written opinions that affirm the purported legality of their administration's policies, from John Yoo positing during former President George W. Bush's War on Terror that detainee abuse only crossed the threshold of torture when the pain inflicted upon the victim was equal to “organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death," to the Obama-era OLC determining that the president could order the extrajudicial assassination of US citizens under certain circumstances.
Since last September, US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) has publicly disclosed 66 strikes on boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean that it has claimed—without providing evidence—were involved in "narco-trafficking operations." The bombings have killed 215 people and left around a dozen survivors, according to a strike tracker published by The Intercept. In the first of the attacks, a special operations commander ordered a second strike that killed two survivors, reportedly on orders from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to "kill everybody."
Relatives of people killed in previous US boat bombings, as well as officials in Venezuela and Colombia, have said that numerous victims were fishers who were not involved in the illicit drug trade. In January, relatives of two Trinidadian fishers killed in the strikes filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit in Massachusetts.
NYCLU staff attorney Ify Chikezie said Wednesday that "the public deserves to know how the Trump administration is rubber-stamping the killing of civilians."
“By claiming that these attacks are legal while refusing to provide any evidence or rationale, President Trump shows once again his disdain for basic transparency, human rights, and the rule of law," Chikezie added. "The court must step in and order the administration to release these documents immediately.”
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Florida Man's Wrongful Arrest Suit Highlights Dangers of AI Facial Recognition in Policing
"Over a year later, I'm still picking up the pieces of my life, all because the police relied on this dangerous technology instead of doing their jobs and actually investigating," said Robert Dillon.
Jun 10, 2026
A federal lawsuit filed Wednesday in the Middle District of Florida by a Fort Myers resident wrongfully arrested nearly two years ago highlights the risks of police agencies relying on facial recognition tools.
"This case is about what happens when police let an error-prone artificial intelligence (AI) system stand in for an investigation," explains the complaint, filed by attorneys with the state and national ACLU as well as the firm Hoguet Newman Regal & Kenney. "A facial recognition algorithm flagged Robert Dillon as the man who tried to lure or entice a child under 12 years old at a Jacksonville Beach McDonald's. It was wrong."
The 52-year-old "lives more than 300 miles from" and "had never set foot in Jacksonville Beach," the complaint continues. "But rather than test the machine's answer against the evidence that would have cleared him, the officers built a case to confirm it. Mr. Dillon was arrested and prosecuted for one of the most stigmatizing crimes a person can face."
Dillon—one of at least 15 people wrongfully arrested in the United States due to police reliance on incorrect facial recognition results—is suing the city of Jacksonville Beach as well as law enforcement officers from the Jacksonville Beach Police Department, Jacksonville Sheriff's Office (JSO), and Pinellas County Sheriff's Office.
Reporting on the case Wednesday, Wired noted that while the Pinellas agency did not respond to a request for comment, a JSO spokesperson simply said that "due to pending litigation, we would be unable to comment further on the incident."
The actual suspect allegedly approached a girl at the McDonald's shortly before midnight on November 2, 2023. The following month, Dillon was flagged as a possible match by the Face Analysis Comparison and Examination System (FACES)—which "has been operated by the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office since 2001, making it one of the oldest police face-recognition systems in the country," according to Wired. "At its peak in 2021, its tens of millions of Florida mug shots and driver's license photos were accessible to more than 260 agencies."
After denying any involvement in the case in December, Dillon was arrested at his home in front of his wife the next August, "held overnight in jail, forced to borrow money and pledge the title to his truck to post bond, subjected to months of criminal prosecution, and publicly branded with a mugshot that remains accessible online, long after the charges were dropped," the complaint states. "Community members still approach him in public to ask about the case. He no longer feels comfortable being friendly to children."
"He had no connection to the McDonald's, to the child who was targeted, or to anyone involved in the crime. He became a suspect for one reason: a facial recognition algorithm included him in a list of possible matches to a suspect captured on grainy surveillance footage at the restaurant," the document emphasizes. "The investigating officer treated that algorithmic output as a near-certain identification, omitted critical exculpatory evidence from his arrest warrant application, and failed to pursue routine investigative steps that would have immediately excluded Mr. Dillon as a suspect."
"The arrest warrant that deprived Mr. Dillon of his liberty was the product of a cascade of investigative failures by the lead investigator, Jacksonville Beach Police Department officer (now corporal) Scott O'Connell," according to the filing. Among them was the officer's "complete failure to consider that the suspect was alleged to have been a 'regular' customer."
The complaint also notes that "O'Connell is an officer with a documented history of volatility and poor judgment, having previously been terminated from the St. Johns County Sheriff's Office for threatening to 'blow up' the agency, later reinstated, then arrested for domestic battery before resigning under the weight of those charges. Jacksonville Beach PD hired him anyway, assigned him as lead investigator on a sensitive child-luring case, and later promoted him to corporal after his investigation resulted in the wrongful arrest and prosecution of an innocent man."
Dillon said in a Wednesday statement that "the night I spent in jail after they arrested me for a crime I did not commit still haunts me to this day. I will never get over how terrified and worried I was, wondering if I'd ever go home to my wife and daughter again."
"Over a year later, I'm still picking up the pieces of my life, all because the police relied on this dangerous technology instead of doing their jobs and actually investigating," Dillon added. "Florida police must implement safeguards and ensure this never happens to anyone else, because until they do, nobody is safe."
Nate Freed Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, stressed that "no one should lose their freedom or be scared to leave their house because an algorithm got it wrong."
"These Florida police departments owe it to Mr. Dillon to make amends and to take serious steps to make sure this doesn't happen to anyone else," he argued. "Police across the country are on notice: Unreliable face recognition technology is hurting people, and we will keep fighting to hold them accountable for these abuses."
The ACLU has previously sounded the alarm over other cases, including those of Robert Williams, a Black man wrongfully arrested in 2020 after software owned by Michigan State Police misidentified him as a shoplifting suspect, and Randal Reid, who spent nearly a week in jail in 2022 after he was falsely identified as a luxury purse thief by Louisiana authorities.
The legal group on Wednesday also pointed to the reported role of FACES in the 2025 wrongful arrest of New Smyrna Beach resident Beau Burgess, as well as another case involving the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office: Jalil Richardson told Action News Jax earlier this month that after being misidentified as a vehicle thief, he "sat in there for over 50 days, in the most worst jail ever."
"There was no proper investigation done... to even reach out to me or to see if I was even in Florida," said Richardson, whose charges were dropped after he provided time sheets showing that he was at work in North Carolina when the vehicle was stolen.
In his case, JSO provided a lengthy statement, saying in part that "facial recognition software is just one tool in a large toolbox for investigators," and "calling the arrest the result 'police AI misidentification' is a catchy headline but does not provide accurate context," including that "the victim chose Mr. Richardson out of a photographic lineup to include other potential suspects."
Nicholas Warren, staff attorney at the ACLU of Florida, said Wednesday that "one wrongful arrest is one too many."
"Florida's growing reliance on facial recognition technology threatens us all," he warned. "We must stop this dangerous pattern before it traps more innocent people. No one should have their freedom taken away because the police rely on faulty technology."
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