Will Freeman wasn’t looking to start a national movement when he launched DeFlock after noticing Flock Safety’s automatic license plate readers along the side of the road.
The software engineer was driving across the country in 2024 when the cameras began catching his attention. They appeared at interstate exits, along city streets, and, in one instance, on a dirt road. When Freeman arrived in his hometown of Huntsville, Alabama, he found them there too.
“I mean, it just looked creepy to me,” Freeman told the Washington Examiner. “It looked like it was designed to be hidden because it was all black and then typically mounted behind signs and in spots where you’re unlikely to see them.”
Freeman started asking his friends if he knew what they were, only to find out no one had any idea what Flock was. So, he started digging.
He learned that the cameras he had encountered were operated by Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based tech company that has rapidly built a nationwide network used by thousands of law enforcement agencies.
Getting DeFlock off the ground
For Freeman, having learned what the cameras do only made them more concerning.
“I thought, wow, well, we need to have a discussion about this,” he said. “This kind of seems like something that should have been brought up to the public before they were implemented.”
Freeman then put his computer skills to work and built a website where people can map out the locations of Flock cameras: DeFlock.
Unlike a traditional camera positioned to catch a specific violation, such as not paying a toll, Flock’s cameras collect information about every vehicle that passes them, including license plates and other identifying characteristics. Flock currently has over 120,000 cameras active across 49 states and has struck deals with thousands of municipalities.
When Freeman set DeFlock live, his intention was just to let people know about the cameras he felt were invading residents’ privacy. There was no advertising campaign or political organization behind it. Freeman still had his regular job, and DeFlock was just a side project that stemmed from his concerns about the company and its product.
“I wanted to make a website that kind of told you about them, showed you where they were on a map, so that if someone wanted to go out and verify it, they could,” Freeman said.
The website slowly spread through technology circles before reaching a much larger audience through national media and political figures. Freeman said after conservative commentator Tucker Carlson talked about Flock, traffic on the website grew sixfold.
“It changed from just like something that only privacy-focused people knew about to something that the average person cares about,” Freeman said.
DeFlock has expanded as opposition to ALPRs has grown. What started primarily as a crowdsourced map became a clearinghouse for people who wanted to challenge Flock deployments in their own communities. Freeman added information about taking concerns to city councils and helped local activists organize.
But the operation behind DeFlock remains strikingly small compared to its reach. Freeman said only five to 10 people make up the team, supplemented by a much larger network of people who donate time and resources around the country.
The movement has remained difficult to place neatly on the political spectrum, as candidates and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have raised concerns about Flock.
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“I don’t think it’s a politically divisive issue,” Freeman said. “I think it’s a top-down versus Left-Right kind of thing.”
Freeman explained that he never intended to become an activist by creating DeFlock, but the opposition to Flock has grown beyond grassroots organizing and has carried into electoral politics.
Flock backlash reaches the midterm elections and Capitol Hill
The same concerns that transformed DeFlock from a side project into a national movement are now making their way into the midterm elections, with candidates turning Flock’s surveillance network into a campaign issue.
In Texas, Democratic gubernatorial challenger Gina Hinojosa has made the ALPRs part of her argument against Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX), releasing a digital ad Tuesday accusing the governor of allowing a mass surveillance network to spread across the state.
“Welcome to Texas y’all, where we celebrate freedom from big government,” the ad says, before warning viewers that 10,000 Flock cameras are “reading your plate, logging where you sleep and pray.”
Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has also raised concerns about the scale of Flock’s operation, comparing it to a “Chinese-style surveillance state.”
“I do not want to see an authoritarian surveillance state that ultimately threatens what this country was built on, which is our freedom,” Ramaswamy said.
His competitor, Democrat Amy Acton, has voiced worry about data privacy, saying she would work to make sure “law enforcement officers to use technology in all the right ways to protect Ohioans.” She has also said she would put “strict guardrails” in place to prevent law enforcement from abusing ALPRs, according to Signal Cleveland.
Acton’s concerns about police abusing ALPRs come as law enforcement offices across the country have been accused of using the technology for unauthorized purposes, including tracking current or former romantic partners. A Washington Post investigation identified at least 69 police officials accused, charged, or convicted of misusing Flock or other license plate reader systems, including cases in which departments were aware of potential abuse until it was revealed by victims, activists, or journalists.
Flock opposition is also turning heads on Capitol Hill.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) sent a letter to Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley, raising concerns about the company’s “unprecedented national surveillance network.” He cited police officers’ misuse of Flock cameras to stalk former partners, saying the incidents show the lack of safeguards.
Another area of alarm about Flock for Hawley was what happens to the data after it’s collected, an area of concern Freeman has also expressed. Flock spokesman Paris Lewbel told the Washington Examiner that the company had received Hawley’s letter and is looking forward to “the opportunity to provide the Subcommittee with additional information.”
Earlier this month, Flock announced several changes to the company’s systems, including tightening the retention period to seven days and requiring a search to be tied to a case number. The company has framed the changes as safeguards intended to prevent misuse of its technology, but Freeman argues they do little to address the underlying problem.
The seven-day retention period, for example, is a recommended default for new customers rather than a requirement for agencies already using the system. Freeman also questioned whether requiring officers to enter a case number would prevent abuse, noting that officers accused of improperly searching the database have previously entered legitimate-looking case numbers and search reasons.
“A lot of their changes are symbolic,” Freeman said. “They’re designed to ease people’s fears when in reality they don’t really do much.”
For Freeman, those safeguards leave intact the feature that concerned him when he first began researching the cameras: the ability to collect information about the movements of people who are not suspected of committing a crime and make that information reachable across a sprawling network.
But what started as Freeman’s personal objection has turned increasingly political as hopefuls in Ohio and Texas and Hawley join in opposition.
HAWLEY OPENS INVESTIGATION INTO ‘UNPRECEDENTED’ SCALE OF FLOCK SURVEILLANCE
Less than two years after Freeman noticed cameras on a cross-country drive, the questions he began asking from his computer have reached city councils.
That may ultimately be DeFlock’s most significant contribution to the debate. Freeman did not create the public’s concerns about government surveillance but rather gave citizens a map to see just how closely they were being watched.
The Washington Examiner reached out to Flock for comment.