Flock Safety once floated a plan to turn Uber, Lyft, and delivery vehicles into a mobile license-plate scanning network. A presentation prepared for the Georgia Attorney General's office, and later shared with 404 Media, described a proposal to use dashcams from Nexar to capture plates from cars those drivers passed.
Flock said the Nexar deal was never actually launched. Even so, the document offered a clear look at how aggressively the company was considering expanding the reach of its surveillance network.
From pole-mounted cameras to roaming readers
Flock's core product is a fixed camera mounted on a pole. It logs the license plate, color, make, and model of every vehicle that passes, then adds that information to a searchable map showing where cars have traveled. Those systems have become deeply divisive in some communities, where residents have knocked them down or covered them up in protest.
The Nexar concept would have broken that model loose from a single intersection. Instead of one stationary camera watching one location, 350,000 vehicles could have carried cameras through streets and highways, filling gaps between fixed sites and tracking plates across entire regions in real time.
Axon already sells a comparable mobile version for police cruisers. Motorola's DRN and Vigilant use repossession agents' cars for similar work. Flock's proposal pushed that model to a civilian scale.
Expansion plans surfaced as criticism mounted
Flock reached an $8.4 billion valuation in April, and its stationary camera network now spans more than 5,000 U.S. communities. But opposition to that footprint has kept growing. In July, the Los Angeles Police Department allowed its contract with Flock to expire, citing “serious concerns” over privacy and civil liberties.
CNN documented at least two dozen cases in which officers either resigned or were arrested after allegedly abusing Flock's plate-reader system. The emergence of a presentation built around a 350,000-car expansion added to the pressure at a time when the company's existing deployments were already under fire.
Legislative and advocacy pressure is growing
The backlash has spread well beyond local disputes. In May, the nonprofit advocacy group EPIC urged Congress to ban automated license-plate readers outright. States have also started moving on their own. Washington passed SB 6002, which restricts the use of ALPR systems, while California is considering a bill that would limit how the data is shared.
Decrypt previously reported on a proposed House bill that would require warrants for government AI surveillance.
Flock camera deployments at federal buildings have also faced heavy opposition from critics who argue that the systems may violate civil rights.
On July 25, 2026, Representative Thomas Massie wrote: “I’ll soon be sponsoring a bill to withhold federal money from municipalities and police departments that deploy Flock (and other style) cameras to surveil law abiding citizens.”
A legal fight is also moving forward
The court battle is active as well. A federal judge allowed a lawsuit in Norfolk to proceed after plaintiffs argued that Flock cameras violate the Fourth Amendment. In doing so, the judge cited the Supreme Court's Carpenter v. United States decision on warrantless tracking.