Flock Faces U.S. Privacy Backlash as LAPD and Ring Pull Back

Flock Safety’s AI-assisted automated license plate readers photograph passing vehicles and log plates, vehicle attributes, locations and timestamps in searchable databases that can be shared across law-enforcement agencies. Police say the network helps locate stolen cars, missing people and suspects. Privacy advocates counter that it creates a detailed record of ordinary drivers’ movements without individualized suspicion, while uneven rules on retention, access and federal sharing turn a crime-fighting tool into a potential system of mass surveillance.

The backlash intensified in 2026. Alameda County supervisors voted 3-2 to approve a contract extension worth more than $300,000, even as other localities canceled deals or deactivated cameras. Ring and Flock scrapped their planned integration on February 12, saying it never launched and no customer video reached Flock. The Los Angeles Police Department let its three-year agreement expire on July 11. A July 14 inspector general report found LAPD’s wider ALPR system logged more than 210.5 million reads from August 1 through September 30, 2025, including 161 false stolen-vehicle alerts.