Was Your Car Searched by Flock? There’s Now a Way to Check
The new Have I Been Flocked? website lets drivers check whether their license plate appears in audit logs from Flock Safety’s automated license plate reader system. Users can simply enter a plate number, and the site checks it against a database built from public records obtained from law enforcement agencies that use Flock cameras.
Flock Group Inc., which does business as Flock Safety, is a Delaware company that sells a “surveillance as a service” system to police departments and private communities. Its cameras, many of which are installed along public roads, photograph passing vehicles and use AI to read license plates. The system can also record details such as a vehicle’s make, model, and color, creating searchable data that authorized customers can access across Flock’s network.
Have I Been Flocked? site searches audit logs, which document when someone manually looked up a particular license plate in Flock’s system and the reason given for that search. A result does not provide a complete history of when or where a vehicle passed a Flock camera, nor does it show everything the cameras may have recorded. It also does not necessarily mean the driver was stopped, suspected of a crime, or formally investigated. The person who performed the search may not have been a law enforcement officer.
The database also includes the reasons operators provided for their searches. Drug-related investigations appear most often, followed by motor vehicle theft. According to the site, plate numbers entered by visitors are not saved.
Its database does not contain records from every agency using Flock cameras, so a plate returning no results does not necessarily mean nobody has searched for it. Records may be incomplete, outdated, or unavailable if the relevant agency has not provided its logs. Hunyar has encouraged residents to request audit logs from their own police departments and contribute those records to help expand the database.
The site arrives as Flock Safety faces growing scrutiny over how its network is accessed and who can use the information it collects. Questions have emerged over access by immigration enforcement agencies, while documented cases of misuse have raised concerns about how closely searches are monitored. In one North Carolina case, an officer was arrested after authorities said she used Flock’s system more than 30 times to track her boyfriend’s ex-wife.
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