Here’s How To Know If You’ve Been ‘Flocked’ In Maryland

Police in Maryland are among thousands of agencies nationwide using automated license plate readers to photograph vehicles and add the images to searchable databases.

Flock Safety, the largest provider of fixed license plate readers, says its cameras help police solve crimes, recover stolen vehicles and find missing or endangered people. Civil rights groups warn the same technology can track motorists who are not suspected of crimes and reveal trips to workplaces, medical clinics, religious centers or political events.

Flock says it has deployed about 120,000 cameras across 49 states. Its customers include more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies, along with local governments, businesses, schools, homeowner associations and property managers.

Residents can search Have I Been Flocked by state and police jurisdiction to review Flock audit logs obtained through public records requests. Depending on what records are available, users may see how often an agency searched the system, the reasons officers gave and whether a particular license plate appeared in the logs.

In Maryland, local police and sheriff’s departments have used the database in cases involving robberies, assaults, drugs, hit-and-runs, and traffic offenses, among other incidents.

Records show that police in Anne Arundel County used the cameras to investigate a suspicious person who seemed to be "casing" an elementary and high school back in May.

The open-source DeFlock project also maintains a crowdsourced map showing reported locations of automated license plate readers. The map is not an official or complete inventory, but it may identify cameras reported in Montgomery, Prince George's, Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties, or elsewhere in Maryland.

Residents can also search police policies, city council agendas, meeting minutes, contracts and purchasing records for terms such as “Flock Safety” or “automated license plate reader.”

Flock Makes Changes Amid Privacy Concerns

Privacy advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation, have called for warrants, tighter limits on data sharing, shorter retention periods and regular audits. Flock has also received scrutiny from lawmakers and citizens across the U.S.

While Flock rejects the description of its system as mass surveillance, arguing that its cameras capture vehicles only at fixed public locations, not continuously following them, the company announced major changes on Thursday to address concerns and documented abuses of its system by some members of law enforcement.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Flock CEO Garrett Langley said many of the product changes will make what were once optional guardrails mandatory for its users to implement by Jan. 1.

Among them: All law enforcement customers will have to implement an audit tool that's intended to flag abnormal search behavior. When the system detects abnormal behavior, the user would be locked out pending an internal review, the company said in a description of the changes provided ahead of Thursday's announcement.

Flock, which says its customers own the data recorded by the cameras, is also shortening the standard data retention window from 30 days to 7 days. It said it will allow data to be preserved for longer when it is evidence tied to a case number.

Law enforcement users will now also be required to enter a code from their records management system that ties each search to a specific case before it is run, something Langley said civil liberties advocates have long called for. Overrides for emergencies would be automatically flagged for review, the company said.

Customers will also be allowed to decide which offense types — such as homicide or arson — outside agencies can search their data for, which would allow a customer to block outside searches related to immigration enforcement, the company said.

Langley said that change will give individual cities and departments control to use the system in a manner “consistent with community values.”

• Read more: Crime-Solving Tool Or Mass Surveillance: Inside Flock’s Camera Network

The Associated Press contributed reporting.