Government surveillance isn’t new, but new wide-ranging technologies that can detect our faces and track our movements are making it more ubiquitous. While the tools have changed, the purpose remains the same: to chill independent thought, free speech, and dissent, bringing our country closer to 1984.
Millions of Americans are being watched as the U.S. ramps up mass surveillance with help from AI, data brokers, and partnerships with private tech companies. Immigrants, people seeking reproductive health care, and activists are among the most intensely monitored, but tech like Flock cameras has brought the issue into communities across the country.
According to the ACLU, police departments have increasingly deployed automated license plate readers (ALPRs) powered by AI to track drivers “without a warrant, probable cause, or even reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.” And they’re doing this with little to no oversight or regulation.
Flock Safety is one of the largest ALPR vendors in the U.S. Their solar-powered, teardrop-shaped cameras capture images of all passing vehicles, storing the car’s make, model, and other identifying features. Any law enforcement agency with a Flock contract can access the company’s nationwide database without a warrant.
Flock cameras also track people. Their “FreeForm search” feature has allowed police departments to search the database using phrases like “malewith tattoos” and “person on skateboard,” according to data reviewed by 404 Media.
DeFlock, an open-source project that maps license plate readers, has identified over 128,000 ALPRs in the U.S. Even my small town of around 20,000 people in Southern California has at least 35 ALPRs, most of them Flock cameras.
No independent research has shown that ALPRs can reduce crime. But there’s mounting evidence of the technology’s alarmingly high error rate. An analysis by the Roseville, California police department found that 71 percent of Flock’s alerts to the Roseville police incorrectly flagged vehicles as stolen or used in a felony.
Far from promoting “public safety,” the tech has led to wrongful arrests, profiling, and countless other abuses.
Flock reportedly has shared license plate data with federal authorities, including ICE. Among other cities, Los Angeles recently suspended their use of Flock cameras amid mounting privacy concerns over who controls the data and how it’s shared.
Court records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation show that Texas deputies searched 83,000 Flock cameras nationwide to track a Texas woman across state lines because she allegedly “had an abortion.” In Dunwoody, Georgia, a public records request revealed Flock employees accessing cameras in children’s spaces at a community center as part of sales demonstrations.
Other reporting has found cops repeatedly misusing the Flock system to stalk exes.
More communities are organizing and fighting back against this unregulated AI technology. As a result, at least 100 cities have now rejected ALPRs, most of them Flock cameras. But Flock is only one cog in the machine. Cities can easily replace their Flock cameras with those from competitors like Axon, Motorola Solutions, or Genetec, as some have already done.
Mass surveillance remains the fundamental problem. Ever more companies collect our data through cellular networks, facial recognition, surveillance cameras, and ALPRs, among other sources.
The U.S. government, in turn, purchases massive amounts of our data from commercial data brokers without obtaining warrants — bypassing our Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. In tandem, multiple federal agencies now have sweeping access to Americans’ sensitive personal data through systems built by Big Tech company Palantir, following President Trump’s 2025 executive order that expanded data sharing across agencies.
This metastasizing mass surveillance state — what George Orwell called “Big Brother” in 1984 — is eroding our privacy, freedom, and Constitution.
As more communities wake up to the danger, the solution isn’t trading one brand of camera for another. We need oversight and regulation of the entire surveillance industry, as well as the government agencies that rely on it.
OtherWords columnist Farrah Hassen, J.D., is a writer, policy analyst, and educator. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org.