You all heard of the red light cameras, well Flock Cameras are the big brother to redlight cameras. I hope you understand that was a 1984 reference based on the following information. Flock Safety is a singular, Billion dollar company that owns the servers to host all the data from their cameras. Id encourage you to look into their investors on your own but this post is not about that. These cameras use AI to sort vehicles based on license plates, but they do more than just LPs, they sort based on identifying marks like scratches, dents and so on. The scary part is that Law Enforcement has access to these databases and can allow them to bypass the 4th amendment and gather information that they would otherwise need a warrant for. The current use case for flock is amazing and it works extremely well at catching bad guys. that is not the fear, the fear is that its effectiveness is used later, on well meaning Americans as a surveillance tool. Not to mention Flock can do whatever they want with the data. if they wanted to run it through a secondary facial recognition algorithm they could do so all without our knowledge. They are building Big Brother right under our noses, and they are already here in BCS. https://deflock.org/ to find the cameras near you.

You know it will be abused. Just a matter of how and when.

Hey OP, this has been around for a while. The cameras on the freeway are not just for traffic. Same goes for the ones in major cities downtown areas. Take Houston for example, once you are inside the beltway, your on some sort of live camera feed.

Apparently these Flock cameras are freaking everywhere…except Nancy Guthrie's neighborhood, surrounding roads, highways, Tucson, AZ and Pima County.

Burnsey said:

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Apparently these Flock cameras are freaking everywhere…except Nancy Guthrie's neighborhood, surrounding roads, highways, Tucson, AZ and Pima County.

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Probably nowhere in AZ because I see people in Phoenix egregiously put others in danger, on a daily basis, running red lights amongst many other things.

Several places in Texas have banned/removed them because they don't want the cameras to be used to help ICE.

light_bulb said:

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Burnsey said:

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Apparently these Flock cameras are freaking everywhere…except Nancy Guthrie's neighborhood, surrounding roads, highways, Tucson, AZ and Pima County.

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Probably nowhere in AZ because I see people in Phoenix egregiously put others in danger, on a daily basis, running red lights amongst many other things.

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You have to run the absurdly long 15 minute stop lights or you will die in traffic of old age in that town. What wizard did they hire to mangle traffic so badly?

Pooh-ah95_ESL said:

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light_bulb said:

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Burnsey said:

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Apparently these Flock cameras are freaking everywhere…except Nancy Guthrie's neighborhood, surrounding roads, highways, Tucson, AZ and Pima County.

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Probably nowhere in AZ because I see people in Phoenix egregiously put others in danger, on a daily basis, running red lights amongst many other things.

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You have to run the absurdly long 15 minute stop lights or you will die in traffic of old age in that town. What wizard did they hire to mangle traffic so badly?

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You have to break the law to live.. got it. I will keep in mind fellow ags are idiots when driving, which to be fair isn't surprising.

TheAggieWalrus said:

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can allow them to bypass the 4th amendment and gather information that they would otherwise need a warrant for.

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What makes you think you have a right to privacy on a public road??

You don't have a 4th amendment right in public.
Had you paid attention in civics you would have known that

Watch this video to see how overzealous idiot cops are using Flock cameras.

Old Army Ghost said:

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TheAggieWalrus said:

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can allow them to bypass the 4th amendment and gather information that they would otherwise need a warrant for.

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What makes you think you have a right to privacy on a public road??

You don't have a 4th amendment right in public.
Had you paid attention in civics you would have known that

---

And had you been paying attention to the SCOTUS opinions in the last few years, there are a number of problems with this, not least of which is that the court said you can't be tracked in public without a warrant. You also would have realized that the public information created by the police departments has been kept from public inspection and that more cops have been caught stalking people than crimes have been solved from Flock data.

If you're posting here, you have already given up any chance of anonymity.

Google, every non-cash purchase, almost everything you look at on the internet, your car, your phone, your travel anywhere is all being collected. Not by the government, but by private businesses, so they can sell the info.

Ban the practice? It's how these companies make money, the entire reason they provide the service(s) to you.

If it's "free," you are the product. If they can't make money from your info, they'll just make everything a subscription service, or pay as you go.

There is no putting this horse back in the barn. So, setting reasonable guidelines is prudent. Normally LE doesn't have the bandwidth, nor the desire to look at random pics or info on people not involved in crime. AI is what needs to have guardrails, because it can process much more information.

Pinochet said:

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Old Army Ghost said:

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TheAggieWalrus said:

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can allow them to bypass the 4th amendment and gather information that they would otherwise need a warrant for.

---

What makes you think you have a right to privacy on a public road??

You don't have a 4th amendment right in public.
Had you paid attention in civics you would have known that

---

And had you been paying attention to the SCOTUS opinions in the last few years, there are a number of problems with this, not least of which is that the court said you can't be tracked in public without a warrant. You also would have realized that the public information created by the police departments has been kept from public inspection and that more cops have been caught stalking people than crimes have been solved from Flock data.

---

Source? Because I haven't seen a blanket SCOTUS opinion on surveillance, only some state laws passed.

And where is this cops stalking people source, because there's a lot of crime that is getting solved from Flock cameras, every day. If that's an actual stat out there, it is in no way accurate.

People wanted by the poice used to often take back roads between cities because they the local police wouldn't be looking.

The reality is that the police in small town would often sit on the side of the road and call in the license plate on every car they didn't recognize that passed them.

In my last neighborhood, I was on the HOA board and the MUD district wanted to put these cameras in at the entrances to our neighborhood. The HOA board told them to pound sand as they needed us to give them an easement of neighborhood property to install them.

MUD board president was a friend but he had very differing political views.

Pretty sure I started a thread about it several years back.

Edit: found it https://texags.com/forums/16/topics/3288964/replies/62047216

You give anything to anyone and they will eventually use it to their advantage. That's how people work.

Anywho - I'm off to start a Somali daycare in Minnesota, talk to you boys soon!

You have no expectation to privacy in public spaces.

If you are in a public space, you are now possibly to likely to be on some camera. That's the reality. As they.continue to proliferate along with drones to make them mobile and AI to organize and analyze the data, we will have no public privacy. The only question will be what limits we place on access and use of that data.

Went through this with my POA. The only opposition it saw was a handful of folks that saw Minority Report and could connect dots and foreigner who'd come from oppressive homelands. Fortunately we've got a bunch of doctors that are long in critical thinking and it passed with flying colors. It's one thing if the government overreaches, but when folks are self funding this to hand it over to the government, it blows my mind. POA is unable to prove the system has affected crime by 1 iota. Now Google the relationship between Flock and Ring cameras. The notion that folks are voluntarily giving folks their data and then paying to view shows how dumb and comfortable we've become.

TheAggieWalrus said:

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You all heard of the red light cameras, well Flock Cameras are the big brother to redlight cameras. I hope you understand that was a 1984 reference based on the following information. Flock Safety is a singular, Billion dollar company that owns the servers to host all the data from their cameras. Id encourage you to look into their investors on your own but this post is not about that. These cameras use AI to sort vehicles based on license plates, but they do more than just LPs, they sort based on identifying marks like scratches, dents and so on. The scary part is that Law Enforcement has access to these databases and can allow them to bypass the 4th amendment and gather information that they would otherwise need a warrant for. The current use case for flock is amazing and it works extremely well at catching bad guys. that is not the fear, the fear is that its effectiveness is used later, on well meaning Americans as a surveillance tool. Not to mention Flock can do whatever they want with the data. if they wanted to run it through a secondary facial recognition algorithm they could do so all without our knowledge. They are building Big Brother right under our noses, and they are already here in BCS. https://deflock.org/ to find the cameras near you.

---

And people laughed at the COVIDians wearing their masks while driving their cars.

rononeill said:

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Went through this with my POA. The only opposition it saw was a handful of folks that saw Minority Report and could connect dots and foreigner who'd come from oppressive homelands. Fortunately we've got a bunch of doctors that are long in critical thinking and it passed with flying colors. It's one thing if the government overreaches, but when folks are self funding this to hand it over to the government, it blows my mind. POA is unable to prove the system has affected crime by 1 iota. Now Google the relationship between Flock and Ring cameras. The notion that folks are voluntarily giving folks their data and then paying to view shows how dumb and comfortable we've become.

---

only for lost dogs

although the partnership did get cancelled (for now, allegedly...)
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/amazons-ring-cancels-flock-partnership-amid-super-bowl-ad-backlash.html

Looking at the ones in B/CS according to that map, a lot of them look to be on private property. Both Lowes have 4 each. Home Depot has 3. Most of the others are at the entrances to neighborhoods like Traditions or apartment complexes.

And the few that aren't, about half are in places that might be beneficial to law enforcement. The rest look like they have no real benefit at all. The two on Copperfield Drive make no sense whatsoever. Maybe if they were at the intersection on University at Veterans Park they would make more sense.

Old Army Ghost said:

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TheAggieWalrus said:

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can allow them to bypass the 4th amendment and gather information that they would otherwise need a warrant for.

---

What makes you think you have a right to privacy on a public road??

You don't have a 4th amendment right in public.
Had you paid attention in civics you would have known that

---

End of Thread

How will these cameras jive with current Texas law that prohibits these cameras?

samurai_science said:

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Old Army Ghost said:

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TheAggieWalrus said:

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can allow them to bypass the 4th amendment and gather information that they would otherwise need a warrant for.

---

What makes you think you have a right to privacy on a public road??

You don't have a 4th amendment right in public.
Had you paid attention in civics you would have known that

---

End of Thread

---

Not really. LE is using Flock in situations where historically they might have needed a warrant but case law hasn't caught up

Could an officer sit outside your house, follow your car, and write down everywhere you went all day? Sure, if they have the manpower, but Flock is different.

A few years ago, in Carpenter v. US, SCOTUS held police need a warrant for long-term historical cell phone location records because they reveal a detailed chronicle of a person's movements but also said the ruling was narrow and didn't eliminate surveillance of what you knowingly expose to the public.

I think Flock sits in a gray area here. Each plate scan is basically the same as an officer seeing your car drive past, but when aggregated across a city over weeks or months, it starts to look a lot like the type of persistent tracking Carpenter was concerned about. I think Carpenter had some cases where the court said 7 days was long term.

LE agencies can't bypass the Constitution by buying private data. The issue now is whether large-scale automated tracking is a "search" even if every individual observation happened in public.

Flock absolutely has real investigative value, but access scope and retention length matter because at some point collection shifts from observation to surveillance. The courts just haven't fully drawn that line yet.

eric76 said:

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People wanted by the poice used to often take back roads between cities because they the local police wouldn't be looking.

The reality is that the police in small town would often sit on the side of the road and call in the license plate on every car they didn't recognize that passed them.

---

Like Bonny and Clyde?

Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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How will these cameras jive with current Texas law that prohibits these cameras?

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These aren't cameras used for enforcing traffic law. They don't result in tickets if you run a red light or speed.

My neighborhood has them. So does my son's.

Not long ago a friend of my son's who lives in the neighborhood left his truck unlocked (idiot!) with his briefcase inside with laptop, billfold lots of other important stuff. Truck is broken into and that stuff is stolen along with a few other neighbors.

The neighborhood is one way in and out. The crime occurred between 2-4am. LE looks at the Flock cameras and had the perp in custody by 4pm the next day.

light_bulb said:

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Burnsey said:

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Apparently these Flock cameras are freaking everywhere…except Nancy Guthrie's neighborhood, surrounding roads, highways, Tucson, AZ and Pima County.

---

Probably nowhere in AZ because I see people in Phoenix egregiously put others in danger, on a daily basis, running red lights amongst many other things.

---

Ever driven in Utah? Now that is some crazy sh*t. There was a big camera push here in AZ 15 or so years ago. We made such a fuss that most municipalities got rid of them. The approach was, "I have a right to face my accuser". A lot of tickets went unpaid.

InfantryAg said:

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Pinochet said:

---

Old Army Ghost said:

---

TheAggieWalrus said:

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can allow them to bypass the 4th amendment and gather information that they would otherwise need a warrant for.

---

What makes you think you have a right to privacy on a public road??

You don't have a 4th amendment right in public.
Had you paid attention in civics you would have known that

---

And had you been paying attention to the SCOTUS opinions in the last few years, there are a number of problems with this, not least of which is that the court said you can't be tracked in public without a warrant. You also would have realized that the public information created by the police departments has been kept from public inspection and that more cops have been caught stalking people than crimes have been solved from Flock data.

---

Source? Because I haven't seen a blanket SCOTUS opinion on surveillance, only some state laws passed.

---

Carpenter v US
US v Jones

You probably didn't see it because you're too busy chasing rage bait about CEOs.

Does OP work for Reason TV?

Not really the same thing...

Carpenter v US - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpenter_v._United_States

You can't use cell phone data to track physical locations without a search warrant.

"However, the Court emphasized that the Carpenter ruling was narrowly restricted to the precise types of information and search procedures that were relevant to this case."

US v Jones - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Jones_(2012)

You can't place GPS trackers on people's cars.

I'm not really sure using public video cameras is the same as either using private cell data without a warrant or placing a GPS tracker on a car.


BTW - The CEO hating poster is "infinity ag", not the InfantryAg that you replied to....

Shooter McGavin said:

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My neighborhood has them. So does my son's.

Not long ago a friend of my son's who lives in the neighborhood left his truck unlocked (idiot!) with his briefcase inside with laptop, billfold lots of other important stuff. Truck is broken into and that stuff is stolen along with a few other neighbors.

The neighborhood is one way in and out. The crime occurred between 2-4am. LE looks at the Flock cameras and had the perp in custody by 4pm the next day.

---

Our hood recently installed them as well. I welcome our overlord's watchful eye.

.

Add Katz v United States

I think SCOUTS would probably rule against police use of Flock if it came down to it. It is hard to argue that it is anything but blanket surveillance.

Yes, it is in public, but then again, following someone around 24/7 would arguably constitute stalking. You could say, "But it's not because it's the police," but it's not the police. It's a private company that sells to the police. What happens if Flock has a giant data breach and all of a sudden all of this information is out there in the ether? That is a serious problem for a lot of people, and I for one would not be comfortable with that kind of information being in the public domain.

There are already plenty of cases of police misusing Flock data to stalk, harass, and intimidate people. The data is ripe for misuse, and any kind of leak would be 1000x worse.