Artificial Intelligence · 17.08.2026, 19:55 UTC
What Flock’s defenders are missing
| Schweregrad | info |
|---|---|
| Kategorie | Artificial Intelligence |
| Quelle | MIT Tech Review AI ↗ |
| Veröffentlicht | 17.08.2026 UTC |
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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.
Flock has responded with practices aimed at ensuring that officers have a proper cause for every search, like using software to flag abnormal searches and requiring searchers to enter a criminal case number.
The changes come with big loopholes, though. For example, officers can enter bogus case numbers, just as they’ve lied to get around other Flock safeguards. The policies also don’t address some of the broader concerns from civil liberties and privacy groups that Flock is turning what was sold as a crime-stopping tool into a mass surveillance network. These criticisms have led to a growing backlash that already has some cities canceling contracts and some states trying to pass laws to limit or ban license plate readers entirely.
Amid all this, there have recently been several arguments defending Flock: If these …