Automated licence plate readers are the most widely deployed form of mass surveillance that ordinary people never agreed to and mostly cannot see. This section collects the tools, datasets, and records processes that make them visible, organised by country, because the technology, the vendor, and the law are different depending on where you drive.
The section is named after Flock Safety, the American company whose cameras have become shorthand for this whole category. The scope is wider than one vendor, for a reason explained below.
Responsibility
This section exists for research, journalism, records requests, and local political work. It is not a call to interfere with anyone's equipment.
Do not damage, obstruct, or tamper with cameras. It is a crime in every jurisdiction we are aware of, it is easier to attribute than people assume, and it is counterproductive. It converts an argument about proportionate surveillance into a straightforward vandalism case, and it hands the operator a sympathetic story to tell instead of an awkward question to answer.
Everything here is published as is, for information. We do not coordinate, direct, or assist anyone's activity, and we accept no responsibility for what any reader chooses to do with public information. Observing and mapping equipment that is plainly visible from public space, and filing records requests, are ordinary lawful activities in most places, but the law varies and so does the local temper about it. If you are unsure how any of this applies to you, or you are already in contact with law enforcement about it, get advice from a lawyer in your jurisdiction rather than from a website.
What these systems actually do
A licence plate reader photographs every passing vehicle, extracts the plate, and records it with a timestamp and a location. Modern systems also record vehicle make, colour, body type, and distinguishing features such as roof racks or damage, which means they can be searched by description even when no plate is legible.
Three properties make a networked reader different in kind from a speed camera rather than different in degree.
It is retroactive. The record exists before anyone suspects you of anything, so a query run today can reconstruct where a vehicle has been for as long as the data is retained.
It is networked. An agency that installs cameras can usually share access with other agencies, and in the United States that sharing has extended nationally, which means a camera bought by a small town becomes queryable by people who have never been accountable to that town.
It is searched by individuals. Every result comes from a person typing a plate and a reason, and in the American system there are roughly 140,000 people with that ability, a figure Flock itself gave the Washington Post while arguing that documented abuse involved only a small share of them.
The search log is the accountability surface
The cameras are the visible part and the least interesting. What matters is the record of who ran which query, when, against how many networks, and why.
That record exists because the vendor sells it as a compliance feature, which means it is often obtainable through ordinary public records law. It is how journalists established that federal immigration enforcement was reaching Flock data through local police departments without holding a contract, and how several police officers were caught using the system to track partners and ex-partners. In at least one case, the victims found the searches themselves by looking up their own plates in a public database of released audit logs.
That is the practical shape of this work. Map the cameras to know what exists, then request the logs to find out what it is being used for.
A note on scope
Flock is an American company and, as far as any public evidence shows, an American deployment. It has said it has no partnerships with Canadian municipalities, police services, or airports, and there is no confirmed deployment by any UK police force. Claims that "Flock cameras" have appeared on a street outside the United States are usually a mix-up, sometimes with an unrelated British insurance company of the same name.
That does not mean anyone else is unwatched. It means the system you live under is probably built by a different vendor, or run directly by the police, under a different legal framework and with different paperwork attached. So the country pages here cover the plate reader network you actually have, along with the route to information about it, rather than pretending Flock is everywhere.
If your country is not covered yet, Everywhere Else describes the general approach, and the research methods page works anywhere.