Who sees your drive?

The cameras

What is a Flock camera?

Flock Safety, a company founded in Atlanta in 2017, makes automated license plate readers: cameras on poles beside the road that photograph passing vehicles and turn each picture into searchable data. Police departments and sheriffs use them, and so do homeowners’ associations, shopping centers and stores. Flock’s network has grown to about 120,000 cameras, used by some 5,000 law enforcement agencies.1

Flock says its technology “helps communities deter crime, respond to emergencies, and investigate safety incidents,” and that in 2025 it helped locate more than 10,000 missing people.2 Critics point to what it costs everyone else: a record of where ordinary drivers go, kept by default and searchable without a warrant.

More than 115,000 Flock cameras have been found and mapped by volunteers so far. Track the Pole uses their map.

The data

What it records

The database

How long it’s kept, and who can search it

Each capture goes into Flock’s cloud, where it stays searchable for a set time. For years the default was 30 days.3 In August 2026, after a Washington Post investigation found at least 50 officers charged with or accused of misusing license plate readers, many of them to track partners and exes,5 Flock changed its rules: a 7-day default for keeping data, a case number for every search by January 1, and automatic flags on unusual searches.16 Agencies can still keep data longer where state law allows, and Flock does not check that a case number is real.1

Departments can open their cameras to other departments across a state or the whole country. That sharing let plate data reach federal immigration enforcement without a federal contract: one set of search logs showed more than 4,000 lookups by local and state police done for federal agencies or with a possible immigration focus.7 Businesses can share theirs too. Records showed one Texas sheriff’s office could search Flock cameras at 173 Lowe’s stores around the country.8

The law

Is it legal?

Photographing a car on a public road doesn’t require a warrant, and courts are still deciding when a network of cameras adds up to a search under the Fourth Amendment. In January 2026 a federal judge ruled that Norfolk, Virginia’s 176 Flock cameras, which keep data for 21 days, don’t yet capture enough of a person’s movements to count as one. He warned that “as the number and capabilities of ALPR cameras expand, the constitutional balancing could conceivably tip the other way.” The drivers who sued said they would appeal.9

In June 2026 the Supreme Court held, in Chatrie v. United States, that the location data our phones generate is protected by the Fourth Amendment.10 It didn’t decide whether plate reader networks are. For now, the rules come mostly from state laws and from the city and county contracts that pay for the cameras.

What you can do

The people who can switch them off

A police department’s cameras are usually paid for under a contract that a city council or county commission approves, and can cancel. Between January and mid-August 2026, more than 50 agencies or local governments canceled, suspended or rejected a Flock contract or turned their cameras off, by DeFlock’s count.6

1. Find out who answers for each camera

   Hover over or tap any camera on the map to see who runs it, if that’s known, and the mayor, state legislators and members of Congress for that spot. Under your results, “Who’s responsible” lists them for every camera on your route.

2. Ask your council or commission

   • How many cameras do we have, where are they, and who decided?
   • How long is data kept? Do we use Flock’s 7-day default?
   • Which other agencies can search our cameras: in other states? Federal agencies?
   • Are searches audited, and are the audits public?
   • What has the system helped solve, and what does it cost each year?

3. Ask your state legislators

   State law decides how long plate data can be kept, who it can be shared with, and whether searches need a warrant.

4. Ask for the records

   Agencies’ plate reader policies and search logs are often public records you can request. 404 Media’s reporting on immigration lookups began with exactly that.7

5. Map what’s missing

   Every camera on this map was found and recorded by a volunteer. If you know one that isn’t here, add it on DeFlock; it will appear on Track the Pole after the next update.

The method

How we count

A plate reader watches one stretch of road. We count a camera when your route passes through the stretch it is aimed at, within about 60 meters (200 feet), while you drive toward it or away from it. Driving away, it photographs your rear plate; driving toward it, the front of your car. Cameras aimed at a side street, a parking lot or the other side of a divided road aren’t counted, even when you pass right by them. They show on the map as “nearby, not counted.”

A few cameras have no direction recorded. We count one of those only if it stands within 30 meters (100 feet) of your route. Flock cameras are counted separately from other makers’ plate readers, such as Motorola Solutions, Genetec and Axis, which read plates too.

Every count here is a minimum. The map only knows the cameras volunteers have found and recorded, and some places are far better mapped than others. Some mapped cameras may since have moved or come down, and directions are estimated by eye. So read “14 cameras” as “at least 14 that we know of.”

The fine print

Data and privacy

Cameras

DeFlock’s export of OpenStreetMap (© OpenStreetMap contributors, Open Database License), refreshed each time this site is published.

Map and routes

Map by OpenFreeMap with OpenMapTiles; routes by OSRM on servers run by FOSSGIS; address search by Photon from komoot, with city and town suggestions from the U.S. Census Bureau’s gazetteer and population estimates.

Officials

Districts from the U.S. Census Geocoder; state legislators from Open States; members of Congress from congress-legislators; mayors and county leaders from Wikidata, which volunteers keep up to date and which can lag after an election.

Your privacy

Track the Pole has no accounts, cookies, ads or analytics, and keeps nothing you enter. To work, it has to send a few things to the services above: what you type in the address boxes goes to Photon; your route’s start and end go to the routing server; when you look up who answers for a camera, that camera’s location goes to the Census Geocoder (through this site) and to Wikidata; and the map’s images come from OpenFreeMap. Camera data comes from this site, so the route itself is never sent anywhere. The page’s security policy allows it to talk to those services and nothing else. Shared links round your start and end to about 100 meters.