Will Freeman received a cease-and-desist letter from Flock Safety, a company that sells automated license plate readers to police departments, and he nearly backed down.
What happened next reveals a critical gap in how surveillance technology gets deployed in America: a single activist with legal backing can expose what tens of thousands of police departments have been quietly installing on streets across the country. Freeman’s website, DeFlock.me, enlists ordinary people to map and track the locations of automated license plate readers—cameras that photograph every vehicle they see and upload that location data to a massive nationwide police database. When Flock Safety tried to silence him with trademark threats, the Electronic Frontier Foundation stepped in, recognized his work as protected speech, and the company backed down.
- The Scale: Automated license plate readers now operate across tens of thousands of police departments nationwide, photographing every passing vehicle.
- The Legal Victory: EFF’s intervention forced Flock Safety to withdraw trademark threats against DeFlock.me, establishing precedent for surveillance transparency activism.
- The Data Reality: ALPR systems collect location data on all drivers—not just suspects—creating permanent movement records accessible to police nationwide.
The stakes are concrete and personal. Automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, are not new technology. But their scale and integration into law enforcement databases represent a form of location tracking that most Americans don’t know exists on their own streets. These cameras collect data on every vehicle they photograph—not just suspects, not just stolen cars, but every driver passing by. That data flows into centralized systems accessible to police nationwide. Freeman’s DeFlock.me turns the surveillance apparatus around by crowdsourcing the locations of these cameras themselves, making visible what police and Flock Safety prefer to keep opaque.
Freeman created the website to reveal what he saw as a dangerous technology operating without adequate public scrutiny. When Flock Safety responded with legal threats citing trademark law, Freeman initially felt vulnerable. He had no legal team, no corporate backing. Then he remembered Dave Maass from the EFF, who had introduced himself weeks earlier. Freeman reached out. The EFF’s lawyers recognized DeFlock.me as quintessential grassroots advocacy—a form of criticism protected by the First Amendment. They helped Freeman fight back. Flock Safety flinched.
How Does ALPR Data Collection Mirror Cambridge Analytica’s Methods?
The pattern here mirrors a structural problem that defined the Cambridge Analytica scandal: the concentration of behavioral data in private hands, collected without meaningful consent, and deployed at scale before the public understands what’s happening. In CA’s case, psychographic profiles built from Facebook data enabled micro-targeted political messaging. With ALPRs, location data collected from every vehicle becomes a permanent record of movement patterns—where you work, where you worship, where you seek medical care, who you visit. Unlike Cambridge Analytica’s targeting of voters, ALPR data is collected indiscriminately from everyone, then stored in police databases with minimal oversight. The structural parallel is stark: data harvested at scale, insufficient transparency, and a private company profiting from the infrastructure while the public bears the surveillance cost.
• ALPR technology is rapidly becoming essential infrastructure in modern policing across thousands of departments
• Every photographed vehicle creates a permanent location record accessible to law enforcement nationwide
• Data collection occurs without individual consent or awareness of camera locations
Freeman’s victory is not merely symbolic. Cities across the country are now pressuring local officials to block or end contracts for ALPRs, and some are winning. Privacy advocates have momentum. But Flock Safety continues to expand its footprint. The company’s response to DeFlock.me—legal intimidation—is a standard playbook for surveillance vendors facing criticism. It works on most people. It almost worked on Freeman.
Why Did Flock Safety’s Legal Threats Backfire?
What makes this moment significant is that Freeman didn’t have to be wealthy or well-connected to fight back. The EFF provided the legal framework. But most activists don’t have that resource. Most people who receive a cease-and-desist letter from a billion-dollar company simply comply. Flock Safety’s decision to threaten Freeman reveals something important: the company understood that visibility is a threat to its business model. If enough people know where these cameras are, and what they do, local governments face political pressure to reconsider their contracts.
The broader implication is that your location data—collected every time you drive past an ALPR camera—is being stored, indexed, and made available to law enforcement without a warrant requirement in many jurisdictions. You have no way of knowing which cameras are watching you or where that data goes. DeFlock.me changes that calculus by making the invisible visible. Freeman’s legal victory means that effort will continue.
What Happens to Your Movement Data After Collection?
The technical infrastructure behind ALPR systems creates what privacy researchers describe as a comprehensive tracking network. Research on ALPR deployment demonstrates how these systems can track vehicle movements across jurisdictions, creating detailed patterns of daily life. Unlike targeted surveillance of specific suspects, ALPR networks collect data first and search for patterns later—a approach that captures the movements of millions of law-abiding citizens.
• Most jurisdictions allow ALPR data collection without individual warrants or probable cause
• Data retention periods vary widely, with some departments storing location records indefinitely
• Cross-jurisdictional data sharing creates surveillance networks that span state and local boundaries
Flock Safety will likely continue to defend its technology and its market position. But the company’s attempt to silence DeFlock.me through legal threats has backfired, drawing attention to the very surveillance infrastructure it wanted to keep quiet. The question now is whether that attention translates into policy change—whether cities will actually end their ALPR contracts, or whether the cameras will keep multiplying on American streets.
