At least 50 law enforcement officers across the United States have been charged with or accused of misusing Flock automated license plate reader systems to stalk their targets, according to an investigation.
The Washington Post reports that rogue police officers have turned the nationwide network of Flock license plate cameras, built to fight crime, into a stalking tool. The Post analyzed police and court records and found at least 50 law enforcement officers charged with or accused of using license plate reader technology for unauthorized purposes. Most of the cases involved surveillance of women.
Marci Bakely, a 50-year-old single mother in Jefferson, Georgia, was one of them. Her ex-boyfriend, Michael Steffman, police chief in nearby Braselton, allegedly tracked her using the Flock license plate reader system. According to audit logs compiled by “Have I Been Flocked,” which aggregates police search records, Steffman searched Bakely’s plate and her teenage daughter’s about 600 times.
The surveillance began while they were dating and continued after the breakup. Bakely installed security cameras and had mechanics check her car for tracking devices, unable to work out how Steffman always knew where she was. When she confronted him, he admitted in a text message that he was using Flock cameras to monitor her.
Flock Safety, backed by Silicon Valley investors including Andreessen Horowitz, now dominates American surveillance technology. The company told the Post it operates more than 120,000 cameras across over 6,000 communities and records 20 billion license plate scans a month. AI reads the plates and compiles them into a searchable database that officers can access without a warrant.
Officers used Flock’s system in 46 of the 50 cases; the rest involved competing products from Axon and Motorola. In 26 cases, investigators and prosecutors said officers used the technology to spy on wives, girlfriends, ex-partners, their exes’ new partners, or women they wanted to meet.
In Wisconsin, an officer allegedly used Flock to check whether his ex-girlfriend had visited an abortion clinic. In Kansas, a police chief who tracked his ex confronted her while she was with another man. In Florida, a deputy speeding to intercept a young actress he had added to a watch list nearly caused a head-on collision. In California, former deputy Alexander Vanny was convicted on 10 charges, including stalking and unauthorized access of electronic data, over a months-long campaign against his former fiancée. He was sentenced in February to six years in prison.
Police arrested Steffman in November on charges of stalking, harassment, and license plate reader misuse. Before trial, he was found dead in his home in April from what officials said was a suicide.
Flock CEO Garrett Langley said misuse is inevitable and the focus should be on accountability. “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.” The company added it “will soon be announcing better filters and tools to stop abuse before it happens,” and said abusers are a small fraction of its 140,000 active users. In April it introduced an optional “audit assistance” feature that scans officers’ searches for suspicious activity. Only about one in four agencies have enabled it.
“Very often a technology will be farther ahead of policy, and that’s what has happened, I think, with license plate readers,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum. David Ulevitch, a partner at Flock investor Andreessen Horowitz, called the misuse cases “an infinitesimally small number” and “truly a nonissue.”
Read more at the Washington Post here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of AI, free speech, and online censorship.