 |
By The RepresentUs Team September 14, 2026 |
What is Flock Safety and why should you care?
Flock Safety is a company that makes camera systems for police departments, mainly cameras that automatically read and log license plates, but also other surveillance tools. Flock has installed more than 120,000 of these cameras in 49 states, and it links them all together into one giant, searchable nationwide network. That means a police department in one city can often search footage and data collected by cameras in a totally different city or state with agency agreements.
Privacy advocates say this adds up to a mass surveillance system and not just from police cameras. Many of the cameras in Flock's network are security cameras that ordinary homeowners and businesses installed on their own property, which Flock has folded into the same searchable system law enforcement uses.
Here's why that's alarming in practice. The news outlet 404 Media reported a case in which police in Texas used Flock's nationwide network to search for a woman who had self-administered an abortion. According to 404 Media, they conducted the investigation at the behest of the woman’s partner.
In other cases, a DEA agent used a local police department's login to run an immigration search in Illinois, and police in San Francisco and Oakland shared Flock data with ICE even though state law says they aren't allowed to. The issue of potential Constitutional violation of citizens’ rights is uniting both the right and the left against unchecked surveillance.
Both these examples go well beyond the use of cameras to catch traffic law violators, and raise a serious question: how else might this technology be used down the road?
Legal experts are also debating whether searches like these amount to warrantless surveillance that violates the Constitution.
Who's supposed to be keeping this in check and why isn't it happening?
In January 2025, during his first month back in office, President Trump signed an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to sign more agreements that deputize local and state police to help enforce immigration law. As of late August 2026, ICE says it has signed 2,430 of these agreements, covering 39 states and 2 U.S. territories. In plain terms: this is the federal paperwork that lets police departments use the license-plate camera access they already have to run immigration searches, not just local crime searches.
That same month, the administration also removed three of the four members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, the one independent federal watchdog created specifically to check whether the government's security and surveillance programs are trampling on people's privacy and constitutional rights. The board was set up after 9/11, with five members appointed by the president and confirmed by Congress, and its whole job is to make sure the fight against terrorism doesn't come at the cost of Americans' civil liberties. But with only one member left, it doesn't have enough people to legally open new investigations.
Put simply: the one federal watchdog built to ask hard questions about programs like Flock's has been sidelined right when those questions matter most. Nobody in Washington is currently checking whether this nationwide camera network is being used within the bounds of the law.
What can you actually do about it?
Only the president can appoint new members to get the privacy watchdog board back up and running. But that doesn't mean regular people are powerless. Citizens can:
- Push for Oversight. Urge your Senators and Representatives to investigate the extent to which the executive branch is engaging in or fueling mass surveillance, either through ICE or other agencies.. Members of Congress respond to volume — a flood of calls and letters gets noticed.
- Join organizations already fighting for accountability. Groups like RepresentUs are organizing around government accountability. Volunteering, donating, or simply adding your name to a campaign helps build the numbers that make politicians pay attention.
- Speak up publicly. Write a letter to the editor or an op-ed for your local media, or post about this on social media. Most people have never heard of Flock Safety or this oversight gap. Public pressure often starts with just making people aware.
Related Reading