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Rogue Police Officers Have Turned Flock's Nationwide Camera Network Into a Stalking Tool (yahoo.com) 100

Posted by EditorDavid from the who-watches-the-watchmen dept.
A woman found her police officer ex-boyfriend had used Flock's camera system 600 times to look up the location of her and her daughter, reports the Washington Post (Alternate URL here). (She found out through Have I Been Flocked, described as "a website that aggregates police search logs made available through public records.")

But it turns out dozens more police officers have also misused Flock... Authorities have charged or accused at least 50 law-enforcement officers of using license-plate readers for unauthorized purposes, including to stalk women without their knowledge or consent, a Post analysis of police and court records found. In 26 of these cases, police investigators and prosecutors said the officers used the technology to spy on their wives, their girlfriends, their exes, their exes' new partners or women they wanted to meet. In other cases, police or prosecutors have not specified the alleged surveillance targets. Flock's system was used in 46 of the cases analyzed by The Post, while the other cases involved competing products...

After The Post relayed its findings to Flock, the company said in a statement it "will soon be announcing better filters and tools to stop abuse before it happens...." In April, the company rolled out a new voluntary "audit assistance" feature, which agencies can choose to enable, that automatically scans officers' searches for suspicious activity, such as queries repeatedly targeting the same vehicle or run by officers off the clock. In an interview with The Post, Flock chief executive Garrett Langley said misuse of its systems is inevitable and that the company is focused on providing tools to catch perpetrators after the fact... "We're not going to change humans, and humans make bad decisions," Langley said. "What we can do is make sure that they know if you use this tool, you will be held accountable...."

Through automated license-plate reader systems, or ALPRs, officers could trace the rhythms and travels of their subjects' daily lives, leading in some instances to violent confrontations, moments of psychological manipulation, and threats of coercion and control, the analysis found.

- In Wisconsin, a police officer allegedly used Flock to check whether his ex-girlfriend had gone to an abortion clinic, according to a police affidavit for a case set for trial this month.

- In Kansas, a police chief who tracked his ex through Flock sneaked up on her while she was intimate with another man, a state police certification body alleged, leading to his firing.

- In Florida, a deputy speeding to stop a young actress he'd added to a watch list for a license-plate tool called Guardian nearly caused a head-on crash, according to a police report and video from his dashboard camera. The deputy was arrested in March, and his attorney declined to comment.

- And in California, prosecutors said a former deputy, Alexander Vanny, used Flock as part of a months-long campaign of "stalking" and "humiliating" his former fiancée that also involved following her around town and installing a hidden camera in her roommate's bathroom, according to a sentencing brief...

While some of the searches resulted in officers' firings, prosecutions and prison sentences, police departments in other cases allowed officers to continue using the systems even after receiving warnings that they were being misused... An array of privacy advocates has argued that Flock could deter bad actors by making simple changes to its product, such as requiring officers to label every search with a criminal case number. Some policing experts also warned that agencies' inconsistencies in developing and enforcing standard procedures for license-plate readers could lead to further misconduct. With no federal laws governing use and only a patchwork of state laws, many of the country's roughly 18,000 police agencies are left to decide their rules on their own...

Langley, Flock's chief, has dismissed pushes by activists for the company to further limit how officers use its product. "No one elected me the police chief of America," he told Forbes last year, adding, "I don't think it's our job to police the police."
The Post also got this quote from an officer was fired and sentenced to probation after pleading no contest to charges of computer-system misuse, stalking and battery. "Pretty much everybody uses that computer system" improperly in the department, he said, and "they don't audit it [nearly] as much as they should."

Flock told The Post it now has over 120,000 cameras in more than 6,000 communities, recording 20 billion license plate scans every month.

Rogue Police Officers Have Turned Flock's Nationwide Camera Network Into a Stalking Tool More | Reply

Rogue Police Officers Have Turned Flock's Nationwide Camera Network Into a Stalking Tool

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  • Facial recognition (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    In my area, major NE USA city suburbs, the traffic light cameras are all pointing directly at the drivers' faces. You know, facial recognition. I'm wearing black covid mask anytime approaching a traffic light.

  • The high cost of training police (Score:4, Interesting)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Sunday August 02, 2026 @10:32PM (#66269666)
    Largely due to corruption means they're basically untouchable. It doesn't matter if you get caught doing something hideously illegal another subdivision of your city will hire you because they don't want to have to spend the money training somebody else.

    • Re:The high cost of training police (Score:4, Insightful)

      by ISayWeOnlyToBePolite ( 721679 ) on Sunday August 02, 2026 @11:24PM (#66269702)

      Afaik the US has very short training period to become a police compared to other countries. If length of training correlates with cost (which I believe is a reasonable assumption) then I don't see how this makes sense?

      What sets the US police apart in my mind is the _lack_ of training in combination with the concept of "qualified immunity".

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Archfeld ( 6757 )

        FT or Field Training is 12 months AFTER a 14-18 week boot camp academy. You can be let go for any reason during your FT. That seems like a fairly robust training and guidance period. What other countries are you referring to ? All police in the world operate with "qualified immunity" not would not be possible to do the job without i.t

      • So it doesn't take long to get them on the street but there is a metric fuck ton of additional training much of which is military training that the police are given. It's often an extremely low quality and dubious value and clearly intended to line the pockets of some well connected asshole. But the cities have to do it because if they don't then they will piss off the police Union and lose their re-election campaigns.

        So a typical police officer has several hundred thousand dollars worth of training pou

      • Re:The high cost of training police (Score:4, Informative)

        by test321 ( 8891681 ) on Monday August 03, 2026 @08:55AM (#66270170)

        Another organisational difference is that policing in rest-of-the-world is handled nationally rather than by city. Local (municipal) police have limited powers. A number of countries don't give them arrest powers, a number of jurisdictions don't give them firearms (source: Municipal Policing in the European Union -- Comparative Perspectives https://link.springer.com/book... [springer.com]). When sworn officers in charge of all the serious business are selected, trained, and paid nationally, the training can be made more uniform in quality, and the budget issues mentioned by rsilvergun don't exist (the issue that cities wouldn't want to fire rogue officers due to the cost of training new ones).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Largely due to corruption means they're basically untouchable. It doesn't matter if you get caught doing something hideously illegal another subdivision of your city will hire you because they don't want to have to spend the money training somebody else.

      And if they somehow manage to do something bad enough to get fired from a force that has some semblance of integrity, there's dozens of other forces who'll turn a blind eye to it just to get a trained body in the door, even the worst of the worst of the most corrupt, laziest cops can get a job at Bumfuck County Sheriffs Department because no-one wants to live in Bumfuck, Nebroma. Cops that get fired from the LAPD for egregious racism (to the point where they can't ignore it any more), they all flee to place

    • The only solution is successful lawsuits against the cities and counties that employ these scum. Can this happen? I don't know.

    • Re:The high cost of training police (Score:4, Informative)

      by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Monday August 03, 2026 @10:45AM (#66270354) Homepage

      Maybe not so untouchable. Numerous officers have been charged and convicted for using Flock cameras for stalking.
      https://www.usatoday.com/story... [usatoday.com]
      https://www.techspot.com/news/... [techspot.com]
      https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/... [yahoo.com].
      https://www.cbsnews.com/losang... [cbsnews.com]

      While US police forces certainly do have bad apples, the difference between the US and countries where corruption is rampant, is that officers actually do get charged and punished for misusing police privileges for personal purposes.

  • How shocking (Score:5, Insightful)

    by russotto ( 537200 ) on Sunday August 02, 2026 @10:41PM (#66269672) Journal
    I'm sure nobody could have predicted this. Nobody at all [wikipedia.org].

  • Amazon's Ring is far worse (Score:5, Interesting)

    by yuvcifjt ( 4161545 ) on Sunday August 02, 2026 @10:58PM (#66269690)

    Ring is far worse, yet receives little to no scrutiny.

    Flock is bad, but not to the same degree as Ring, which is ubiquitous across the US, Canada, UK, etc.

    • Ring is far worse, yet receives little to no scrutiny.

      No it's not. Ring literally does not track people's movement and provide a log of movement to police. It's just footage.

      That's not to say that Ring handing over footage to police is in any way good, just that you're wrong about which one is worse, very objectively so.

    • My neighbors and I all have video doorbells. Any one of us would provide footage to police on request, no warrant needed. We feel it makes our neighborhood safer.

      Clearly, your take is different. Can you help me understand why these security devices aren't a good thing?

      • No, we clearly can't make you willing participants in a surveillance society understand that it's a shit substitute for meeting needs.

        • My neighbors and I also work together to make our community a better place. When Hurricane Beryl came through Houston two years ago, *everybody* was out, helping their neighbors clear debris. Those with chain saws were going around helping others cut up fallen trees, for free. People were sharing generator power with those who didn't have generators, People shared food and invited each other into their homes to work and sleep.

          In regular times too, neighbors are often out in the street catching up with each

          • Yes, we take care of each other in real life too, not just through our doorbell cameras.

            Irrelevant to the point presented, cheap hand-waving tactic. You're not going to impress anyone with that no matter how good you try to make yourself look, especially while you prove you only care about your neighbors and yourself. There's a whole world of other people you don't care about.

            • You said:

              we clearly can't make you willing participants in a surveillance society understand that it's a shit substitute for meeting needs.

              My response was to demonstrate that we do meet each other's needs.

              Who exactly are you claiming I don't care about? And how would you know? And even if I don't care about the people out there in the world, what does my having a doorbell camera have to do with it?

              Perhaps you're worried about the poor, hapless burglars who won't get away with taking people's stuff because of video doorbells? Yes, I care about those people too, and want them to learn an important life lesson about working for your own

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by BranMan ( 29917 )

                Don't pay much mind to drinkypoo - he's just here to troll everyone. Anything to get a rise out of you.

                I had a similar experience to you up in NH - ours was an ice storm instead of a hurricane, but same deal - made for a very tense night, without power, as we listened to the trees exploding around us from the weight of the ice on them. Like a slow walking artillery barrage I imagine.

                Over the next few days we all came out with chainsaws to try and clear the road, mindful of the downed wires. I got out a f

                • I love these kinds of stories! There really are so many great people all around us, who are ready to help.

                  I wish *we* could just empty our freezers and put the stuff outside when there's no power! In Houston, especially in hurricane season, it's *hot* outside. LOTS of people lost all the food in their refrigerators when they lost power. But even then, there were people literally driving around looking for somebody to give something to. Nobody went hungry.

    • I live in a neighborhood where every house has a ring camera, and many of the drive ways. To add to the irony we live a stone's throw from Google and MS offices. We are close to the highway, and are constantly robbed of our Amazon packages. Why? The thieves are completely unafraid of Ring cameras, I've seen them wave at them! Why? Our neighbors are in a WhatsApp group and we share Ring videos when someone gets robbed, these videos are worthless. They never show the thief's face (they wear hoodies and bright

      • You can hate on Flock all you want, but at least it IS EFFECTIVE.

        Other than Flock's PR reports, there is little rigorous evidence that Flock cameras reduce crime. There is some evidence it is easier to locate a stolen car or find a missing person (both of which are useful but happen AFTER the crime has occurred); but it does not appear Flock systematically is helpful in other types of crime or is of much use for areas that are not under Flock surveillance (which is to say that we would have to surveil everything all the time).

  • No one elected you, period (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DeanonymizedCoward ( 7230266 ) on Sunday August 02, 2026 @11:21PM (#66269698)

    Langley, Flock's chief, has dismissed pushes by activists for the company to further limit how officers use its product. "No one elected me the police chief of America," he told Forbes last year

    Yeah, no one elected you as much of anything, so kindly take your cameras and fuck off.

  • Officer was fired and given probation (Score:3)

    by schwit1 ( 797399 ) on Sunday August 02, 2026 @11:28PM (#66269706)

    Fired should be just the start. He should also be prohibited from having a LEO job any where in the US.

    • Re:Officer was fired and given probation (Score:4, Insightful)

      by taustin ( 171655 ) on Sunday August 02, 2026 @11:31PM (#66269710) Homepage Journal

      He should be in prison. Once he's a convicted felon, he won't be getting any more jobs as a LEO even after he's out.

      • Re:Officer was fired and given probation (Score:5, Informative)

        by divide overflow ( 599608 ) on Monday August 03, 2026 @01:46AM (#66269788)
        You might expect this to be so, but systemic loopholes, regulatory breakdowns, and specific rehabilitation pathways have historically allowed a small number of individuals with felony records to enter law enforcement:

        1. Remote Village Law Enforcement (Regulatory Breakdowns)
        The most prominent, documented systemic hiring of criminals as police occurred in isolated communities.

        2. Plea Bargains and "Charged vs. Convicted" Loopholes
        Many officers who commit felony-level actions are able to stay on the force or get hired by other departments because they are never technically convicted of a felony.

        3. Absolute Expungement, Pardons, and Restoration of Rights
        In rare individual cases, former felons have successfully overturned their legal status to become police officers through years of rehabilitation and legal intervention.

        In addition, you may recall that In his role as the 47th president of the United States (January 20, 2025 – present), Donald Trump granted executive clemency to more than 1,700 individuals as of June 11, 2026, all of whom were charged or convicted of federal criminal offenses This included a blanket pardon of some 1,500 individuals associated with the January 6 United States Capitol attack.

        Moreover, President Donald Trump has pardoned at least 600 individuals whose cases involved violent felony charges or explicit acts of violence, the overwhelming majority of which were granted via his sweeping January 20, 2025, blanket clemency order.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by allo ( 1728082 )

      He would not get an employment when he has to tell them why he was fired. He wouldn,t ... would he?

  • "... job to police the police."

    Or, to give the police reasons to not buy and use Flock.

    Paradoxically, if he said "Yes" to more auditing, he would discover exactly why auditing police behaviour is a good idea.

  • 800k police officers (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Archfeld ( 6757 ) <treboreel@live.com> on Sunday August 02, 2026 @11:57PM (#66269724) Journal

    There are in excess of 800k Police/Sheriff/Highway Patrol officers in the US. 50 doing bad things or even 500 is a very tiny percentage. Look at other professions and plot the sizable percentage that go rogue. I wonder what the % of CEO/CIO that commit fraud and embezzle is. Cops that go bad SHOULD be nailed to the wall, but quit painting everyone the same color as the crooks.
    On another note Flock is a great tool provided it is strongly regulated. What they are doing today is crap. You need a writ or a warrant to get info on anyone...

    • Re:800k police officers (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Monday August 03, 2026 @12:17AM (#66269738)
      The problem is there is ZERO reason to accept any of this behaviour when it could be so easily audited and controlled if done right. Obviously flock are a bunch of incompetent arseholes that only care about money. The consequence should be serious regulation to come down on their heads like a ton of bricks
      • "easily audited and controlled" funny! Can you point out a some large cities we can look at and see the police department/mayors office/city council and prosecutors office in action, doing it right?

        • Re:800k police officers (Score:4, Insightful)

          by bloodhawk ( 813939 ) on Monday August 03, 2026 @12:40AM (#66269750)
          why would you give them the role of auditing and controlling this? To do it right you give it to a central authority that doesn't have local politics at play that can review every search and the associated proof required to justify it while giving that authority no ability to do searches themselves.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Archfeld ( 6757 )

            I'd mod you up if I hadn't posted already. A simple check and balance system would make Flock a great resource and stop the abuses. I don't like the idea of being tracked everywhere but if you had just cause, the ability to do a city or state wide search for a vehicle by plate number is amazing and could save lives.

            • exactly it is a powerful tool that can save lives, all it needs is proper oversight and auditing. With that in place even most bad actors would not attempt dodgy shit as knowing someone is checking on you is a powerful incentive to do the right thing. I hate the idea of being monitored, but if used appropriately it is definitely a positive, just you cannot trust the people actually using it to also be the oversight.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Mate, these are just the first 50 to get caught. Don't assume everyone else is doing the right thing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Archfeld ( 6757 )

        Lord no. The system needs reworking. The LEO's (law enforcement officers) should submit the request and justification to a third party, just like search warrants, who should then provide the data. This kind of tool needs centralized authority and security. But humans are crap, so even with watchers some will abuse the system.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      This is a group of people that should be held to a higher standard, even 1 is too many. Also it is only 50 that have been caught thus far, with the poor controls and auditing the likely number is many many times that but too hard for authorities to prove misuse when the controls are so lacking.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's like nuclear power. Sure, only 1.25% of civilian reactors have ever melted down, but the consequences for individuals of those meltdowns can be extreme. Anywhere from massive loss of property and community to death.

      While 500 stalkers might be a small percentage of 800k officers, for the victims they probably don't find much comfort in the fact that there are only 499 other victims of the same thing. Especially when the technology is relatively new and still rapidly expanding.

    • No we don't look at other professions because other professions don't have their sole reason of being to uphold the law. We should be holding police to the highest possible standard.

      But we don't. Instead we give them qualified immunity and let them off the hook when they execute unarmed people. Forgive me for not giving a FUCK if some CEO commits fraud or embezzlement.

    • These are merely 50 that got caught.

      Bring up the idea of drug testing police and see how fast the union files a lawsuit.

      The guy who mops the floor at the police station requires a drug test. The cop who can murder people with impunity does not.

    • It takes a ridiculous amount of crime for a police officer to qualify as doing a bad thing. Police are more or less above the law unless what they do is so cartoonishly evil that it triggers moral indignation and makes the news.
  • "Turned Flock's Nationwide Camera Network Into a Stalking Tool" It always was a corporate owned and operated generalized stalking and surveillance tool.
    That is what it was designed for! (SSaaS) Stalking and Surveillance as a service.
    As for the police doing it? The police are just a cross section of humanity the good and the bad!
    In fact I would wager that a greater percentage of police are honest and respectful of others than the general population across the board.
    • Something tells me you don't have much experience with police. All of mine have certainly shown me that police are *not* as ethical as people not granted undue power over others.

  • Extremely predictable outcome (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Monday August 03, 2026 @12:18AM (#66269740)

    Even if you live somewhere with good cops, they're still human beings and will often put themselves above duty.

    Only the fear of consequences drilled into them during training followed by robust monitoring and security audits will keep it under control (note I didn't say 'prevent entirely').

  • Not going to change humans... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jddj ( 1085169 ) on Monday August 03, 2026 @02:48AM (#66269820) Journal

    "We're not going to change humans, and humans make bad decisions," Langley said. "What we can do is make sure that they know if you use this tool, you will be held accountable...."

    Wow he's right,

    So maybe what we could do instead is to outlaw mass surveillance and warrantless surveillance, whether government-owned or corporate, across the country.

    We could even have a constitutional amendment! Let's call it #4. The OLD 4th amendment doesn't seem to be doing anything; we can call this one '4th-Prime'.

    • "We're not going to change humans, and humans make bad decisions," Langley said. "What we can do is make sure that they know if you use this tool, you will be held accountable...."

      Wow he's right,

      So maybe what we could do instead is to outlaw mass surveillance and warrantless surveillance, whether government-owned or corporate, across the country.

      We could even have a constitutional amendment! Let's call it #4. The OLD 4th amendment doesn't seem to be doing anything; we can call this one '4th-Prime'.

      To be clear, the language would have to change if you wanted it to outlaw corporate surveillance, because the existing one applies only to government. And I suppose the new one would also have to explain "corporate" and how that's different from other kinds of organizations or surveillance by individuals.

  • No ??!? (Score:2)

    by Tom ( 822 )

    What a complete and utter surprise... to the three people who are so high their brain stopped working but miraculously didn't kill them.

    For everyone else, this was literally the first thing we thought about, right? Please tell me I'm not the last sane person on planet Earth. Nobody expected that this would NOT be abused in such ways, right?

    • You're right, this was a completely obvious outcome, and I expect it is being used against me too. My enemies are already stalking me through my ISP, bank, credit card companies, shipping companies, cellphone carrier, insurance provider, and various online video game service accounts, (not to mention this website in particular) and even surveiling my house directly, so I didn't bother ranting about it at length. For me the battle is already lost; the criminals have already broken the circle of trust. The en

  • It feels like the simple requirement of needing a warrant to search rather than "bored officer looking up his ex" would solve 99% of these issues.

  • But it turns out dozens more police officers have also misused Flock...

    One of any crime is too many, but "dozens" in of a country of hundreds of millions is not a reason for panic.

  • A tire pressure sensor sends an ID for each tire. That's good enough for a roadside receiver and software to identify a particular car. You can see where this is going.

  • Article misses one of the scariest cases of abuse because it attacks society: https://www.kcur.org/politics-... [kcur.org] Lenexa, Kansas police used Flock to track an op-ed writer that was critical of them.

  • Interesting... Langley uses the same argument for using Flock "illegaly" as legalization advocates use to push the decriminalization of illict drugs.

  • They just have one new tool now. They've always misused police equipment and tools for their own purposes.

    Rogue officers also have other tools that they misuse, you know, like tasers, guns, and the authority to pull people over to the side of the road.

    On the other hand, these tools also provide powerful weapons to fight crime, for the vast majority of officers who are *not* rogue.

  • Wasn't this the plot of the Ice Cube version of War of the Worlds?

  • People always forget that this is an important reason why these tools are dangerous. Let's give departments the benefit of the doubt that 99% of police officers will use this tool properly. The tradeoff becomes that inevitably, you are going to have 1% that abuse the system like our stalker cop here. Separately, you also have the abuse of the system broadly constantly leaning in to expand where they can use the tool out of expediency or convenience even at the cost of violating individual civil liberties. S

  • In Wisconsin, a police officer allegedly used Flock to check whether his ex-girlfriend had gone to an abortion clinic, according to a police affidavit for a case set for trial this month.

    ... used a mirror.

  • Rogue? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday August 03, 2026 @12:04PM (#66270518) Homepage Journal

    This is by design. Otherwise these systems would be designed with meaningful oversight.

    Since they were designed in such a way as to enable abuse, that must be the goal, right? Otherwise we'd have to appeal to incompetence.

  • Combine authority / power with unlimited access to information and you will always end up with those who will abuse it.

    Always.

    It's human nature.

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