What Flock’s defenders are missing
Flock, a company providing license plate reader technology to police, has implemented new safeguards to prevent officer misuse. Critics argue these measures are insufficient and that the technology facilitates mass surveillance and potential civil liberty violations.
Why it matters
The debate highlights the tension between public safety tools and the potential for systemic abuse by law enforcement.
As cities reconsider the technology, it’s worth asking how the company’s design choices have shaped the trade-off between solving crimes and protecting civil liberties.
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here .
Flock, the police-tech giant known for its network of some 120,000 automatic license plate readers around the US, announced some changes to its platform last Thursday. The updates are meant to prevent officers from using the platform for illegal or illegitimate purposes.
That includes stalking. The Washington Post recently identified 50 cases in which officers misused systems from Flock and its competitors, often to stalk and harass women. One woman in Wisconsin alleged that her officer ex-boyfriend searched for her car 179 times. Another woman was being stalked by the chief of police, with nobody to report him to.
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