The Growing Surveillance Network in the USA | FREE IPVM Article Included
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IPVM Team
•Published Apr 10, 2026 09:59 AM
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Does Flock track you? Flock built an entire "Trust" section, titled "Myths vs. Facts," that claims to answer that question, hosting videos from its own executives amid mounting legal and political pressure. Two back-to-back videos, taken together, expose the answer Flock is trying to avoid.
The CCO Says No
Chief Communications Officer Josh Thomas opens the video with a direct claim: "There's a common misconception that Flock tracks you wherever you go, and that's just not the case. [emphasis added]"
He then presents two arguments in support of it. First, temporal: each read is "a single point in time from a single location," not a continuous record.
Second, categorical: "the only information that's there is the back of the car" - a plate number, a vehicle color. Not a person. He concludes, "that is the only information that is being captured."
However, Flock's CCO has been at the company since 2018. What that plate is tied to cannot be a mystery to him.
The CLO Proves the CCO Is Wrong
Ironically, in the very next video, Flock Chief Legal Officer Dan Haley connects it. He declares that
That statement was said in the context of arguing that plates carry no privacy expectation.
It simultaneously dismantles the CCO's claim. Since every plate is legally required to identify its owner, every Flock read is a record tied to a specific person. Not an inanimate vehicle. A person. The "only information on the back of the car" is, by legal design, a mandatory personal identifier.
The two videos sit on the same page, are produced by the same company, and are for the same audience.
The Plate-to-Person Link Is Inescapable
The CLO's own words reveal the contradiction and reality. License plates are legally required to identify their owner. That is not a feature of how Flock uses the data: it is a feature of what a license plate is. Every read, regardless of purpose, is a record tied to a specific person by legal design. There is no version of capturing a plate that is not, in some meaningful sense, capturing information about its owner.
The Use Cases Confirm It
Flock and its law enforcement customers do use the system to find stolen vehicles, and in those cases, the driver's identity may be incidental. But Flock well knows what it can do with people. Flock's own FAQ tells officers that:
Its law enforcement blog says the system allows agencies to "monitor the vehicle movements of suspected offenders." The vehicle is the mechanism. The person is the target.
The privacy problem is that Flock cannot track criminals without tracking everyone else. Most people accept that tracking criminals is a legitimate public safety goal. However, every plate gets read. Every read is tied to an owner. The system has no way to scan only the guilty. That is precisely what the CCO's claim obscures: he describes each read as "a single point in time from a single location," capturing only "a plate number and a vehicle color." But you cannot "pinpoint" a suspect, as Flock's own FAQ promises, without that data point meaning something about a specific person.
Tens of Billions of Scans
And as Flock's own self-proclaimed 20 billion reads per month across 5,000+ agencies, the records of everyone, not just suspects, accumulate into movement histories tied to identifiable people across jurisdictions.
Plus Nova
Flock's own Nova product goes further, with the company advertising that investigators can now "move beyond simply identifying vehicles and instead connect the dots between people." That is not a leaked internal memo or an adversarial characterization. That is Flock's sales pitch on its website for its product. The company is simultaneously denying and marketing the same capability.
The Debate Worth Having
Flock is at its most credible when it argues that the technology serves a public good and that guardrails exist to limit abuse. Stolen vehicles get recovered. Fugitives get caught. Missing children get found. Those are real outcomes, and Flock has documented evidence of them. The harder, but more honest, argument is that mass plate reading is an unavoidable trade-off, that catching criminals requires capturing everyone's data, and that the question society should be debating is whether the guardrails are sufficient, not whether the tracking is happening at all. That is a real argument worth having openly.
The Trust Page Problem
Flock is under serious pressure: class-action lawsuits, state-law violations, congressional scrutiny, and contract cancellations across dozens of cities. The Trust page is a direct response to that pressure.
Telling the public they are not being tracked, on a page explicitly designed to earn their trust, while the company's own legal officer explains the mechanism by which they are, does not build trust. It destroys it. Critics who watch both videos will not feel reassured. They will feel confirmed.
"Flock Tracks You": Execs Contradiction Reveals Reality (Public Report)
See how "straight answers only" reveal a fundamental problem from the controversial company.
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"Flock Tracks You": Execs Contradiction Reveals Reality
ITIPVM Team
•Published Apr 10, 2026 09:59 AM
PUBLIC - This article does not require an IPVM subscription. Feel free to share.
Does Flock track you? Flock built an entire "Trust" section, titled "Myths vs. Facts," that claims to answer that question, hosting videos from its own executives amid mounting legal and political pressure. Two back-to-back videos, taken together, expose the answer Flock is trying to avoid.
The CCO Says No
Chief Communications Officer Josh Thomas opens the video with a direct claim: "There's a common misconception that Flock tracks you wherever you go, and that's just not the case. [emphasis added]"
He then presents two arguments in support of it. First, temporal: each read is "a single point in time from a single location," not a continuous record.
Second, categorical: "the only information that's there is the back of the car" - a plate number, a vehicle color. Not a person. He concludes, "that is the only information that is being captured."
However, Flock's CCO has been at the company since 2018. What that plate is tied to cannot be a mystery to him.
The CLO Proves the CCO Is Wrong
Ironically, in the very next video, Flock Chief Legal Officer Dan Haley connects it. He declares that
That statement was said in the context of arguing that plates carry no privacy expectation.
It simultaneously dismantles the CCO's claim. Since every plate is legally required to identify its owner, every Flock read is a record tied to a specific person. Not an inanimate vehicle. A person. The "only information on the back of the car" is, by legal design, a mandatory personal identifier.
The two videos sit on the same page, are produced by the same company, and are for the same audience.
The Plate-to-Person Link Is Inescapable
The CLO's own words reveal the contradiction and reality. License plates are legally required to identify their owner. That is not a feature of how Flock uses the data: it is a feature of what a license plate is. Every read, regardless of purpose, is a record tied to a specific person by legal design. There is no version of capturing a plate that is not, in some meaningful sense, capturing information about its owner.
The Use Cases Confirm It
Flock and its law enforcement customers do use the system to find stolen vehicles, and in those cases, the driver's identity may be incidental. But Flock well knows what it can do with people. Flock's own FAQ tells officers that:
Its law enforcement blog says the system allows agencies to "monitor the vehicle movements of suspected offenders." The vehicle is the mechanism. The person is the target.
The privacy problem is that Flock cannot track criminals without tracking everyone else. Most people accept that tracking criminals is a legitimate public safety goal. However, every plate gets read. Every read is tied to an owner. The system has no way to scan only the guilty. That is precisely what the CCO's claim obscures: he describes each read as "a single point in time from a single location," capturing only "a plate number and a vehicle color." But you cannot "pinpoint" a suspect, as Flock's own FAQ promises, without that data point meaning something about a specific person.
Tens of Billions of Scans
And as Flock's own self-proclaimed 20 billion reads per month across 5,000+ agencies, the records of everyone, not just suspects, accumulate into movement histories tied to identifiable people across jurisdictions.
Plus Nova
Flock's own Nova product goes further, with the company advertising that investigators can now "move beyond simply identifying vehicles and instead connect the dots between people." That is not a leaked internal memo or an adversarial characterization. That is Flock's sales pitch on its website for its product. The company is simultaneously denying and marketing the same capability.
The Debate Worth Having
Flock is at its most credible when it argues that the technology serves a public good and that guardrails exist to limit abuse. Stolen vehicles get recovered. Fugitives get caught. Missing children get found. Those are real outcomes, and Flock has documented evidence of them. The harder, but more honest, argument is that mass plate reading is an unavoidable trade-off, that catching criminals requires capturing everyone's data, and that the question society should be debating is whether the guardrails are sufficient, not whether the tracking is happening at all. That is a real argument worth having openly.
The Trust Page Problem
Flock is under serious pressure: class-action lawsuits, state-law violations, congressional scrutiny, and contract cancellations across dozens of cities. The Trust page is a direct response to that pressure.
Telling the public they are not being tracked, on a page explicitly designed to earn their trust, while the company's own legal officer explains the mechanism by which they are, does not build trust. It destroys it. Critics who watch both videos will not feel reassured. They will feel confirmed.