If you have driven through Kentwood, Kalamazoo, Flint, Portage, Wixom, or one of the townships ringing Traverse City lately, a camera already logged your license plate, the time, the place, and the direction you were heading. You were not suspected of anything. You did not consent. And that record now sits in a searchable database that police agencies hundreds of miles away can query without a warrant.
That is the business model of Flock Safety, and it is expanding across Michigan fast. This post is a rally call, but a specific one: not “be afraid,” but “here is exactly what to do, who to talk to, and why the law is on your side if you act now.”
Accuracy matters here, so everything below is sourced. Where something is an allegation in an active lawsuit rather than a proven fact, I say so.
What Flock Actually Is
Flock Safety sells networked automated license plate readers, or ALPRs. Each camera photographs every passing vehicle, reads the plate with computer vision, and uploads a timestamped, geolocated record to Flock’s cloud. The cameras also capture a “vehicle fingerprint” - make, color, bumper stickers, roof racks, dents - so they can track cars even without a clear plate.
The key thing to understand is that this is not 30 cameras in one town. It is a single national network. By default, agencies can search across each other’s data. Flock is now valued in the billions and its cameras are deployed in thousands of communities. The crowdsourced DeFlock project has mapped tens of thousands of individual camera locations, and the EFF’s Atlas of Surveillance has identified more than 1,700 agencies nationwide using ALPRs.
Back in 2022, the ACLU warned that centralizing this data was creating a database tracking drivers’ locations “unlike any seen before in American life.” That warning aged well.
The Michigan Picture
This is not theoretical for us. As of early 2026:
- More than 180 Michigan law enforcement agencies - roughly one in three statewide - use Flock technology, across 125+ cities and counties (GovTech, Detroit News).
- Detroit has 566 readers across the city.
- Grand Rapids went from zero ALPRs before 2024 to 30 today.
- Waterford Township plans to add more readers plus Flock-powered drones in 2026 (Michigan Public).
- The State of Michigan holds a $2.626 million contract with Flock valid through June 2030.
And it is here in St. Clair County, not just the big metros. As of June 2026, DeFlock’s community map shows dozens of Flock readers across the county - run by the St. Clair County Sheriff’s Office, Port Huron PD, and Marysville PD - including cameras on Wadhams Road and at the Lapeer Road (M-21) junction in Wadhams, plus the corridors feeding the Blue Water Bridge international crossing. If you commute through Wadhams or Port Huron, you are being logged multiple times a day.
See the cameras near you. Open DeFlock’s map and pan to your town (search “Port Huron” or “St. Clair County”). Each marker is a real, documented reader. It is worth doing before you read the rest of this - it makes the scale concrete.
Here is the part that should bother everyone regardless of politics: Michigan currently has almost no statewide rules governing any of this. No mandatory warrant. No retention limit. No required public reporting. The cameras went up first; the law is still catching up. The Michigan League for Public Policy has a clear breakdown of what is at stake.
Why This Is the Wrong Solution
Nobody is arguing that solving crime is bad. The argument is that persistent, suspicionless tracking of every driver is the wrong tool, and the documented harms are not hypothetical.
1. The data leaks across jurisdictions, including to ICE. Reporting found that ICE indirectly tapped Flock’s network by asking local agencies to run searches, with more than 4,000 immigration-related lookups recorded between June 2024 and May 2025, and a federal pilot giving DHS agencies broader access in mid-2025 (Straight Arrow News). This happened even where local policy or state law prohibited using ALPR data for immigration enforcement. Flock states it does not sell to or share data with ICE, and in January 2026 added an admin toggle to disable federal sharing - but the default architecture is what allowed it in the first place.
2. Out-of-state agencies search local data at staggering scale. A class action alleges Flock let agencies outside California search San Francisco PD’s database more than 1.6 million times between August 2024 and February 2025, and the Los Altos database over a million times (Courthouse News). In Mountain View, more than 250 unapproved agencies ran roughly 600,000 queries in a single year. Your local department controls the camera. It does not control who reaches through it.
3. It enables stalking and tracking of ordinary people. In a Virginia case, a lawsuit says police used Flock cameras to track one driver 526 times in four months (NBC News). In Denver, a woman was accused of a theft based on Flock data and had to prove her own innocence. There is no opt-out for residents - you cannot decline to be tracked.
4. The “it stops crime” claim is mostly Flock’s own marketing. Independent, peer-reviewed evidence that blanket ALPR coverage meaningfully reduces crime is thin. We are buying a permanent surveillance layer on the strength of vendor case studies.
“I’m Not Doing Anything Wrong, So Why Should I Care?”
This is the single most common response, and it deserves a real answer, not a lecture.
The honest reply is: this was never about you having something to hide. It is about what your silence authorizes. Every camera that goes up unopposed is a data point that lawmakers, vendors, and corporations read as permission. When residents do not push back, the message to Lansing and to industry is simple: Michigan does not mind being tracked. That single signal is worth more to surveillance companies than any one license plate, because it sets the ceiling for everything that comes next.
And “next” is already arriving:
- Automakers are caught selling driving and location data brokered to insurers and others. A network of public ALPRs that nobody objected to is the precedent that makes “your car reports on you” feel normal.
- Data centers and AI infrastructure are being justified by exactly this kind of always-on collection. Mass surveillance is the demand that builds the supply. The more we feed it, the more permanent and power-hungry it becomes.
- Function creep is the rule, not the exception. A tool sold to find stolen cars gets quietly used for immigration enforcement, for tracking protesters, for a cop stalking an ex. We have already seen each of those with Flock specifically. The use you approved is never the only use you get.
The privacy you give up is not just yours to give. When you accept being tracked, you lower the floor for your neighbor, the abuse survivor who needs her location hidden, the journalist meeting a source, the person at a protest you happen to disagree with. Rights are a ratchet: they are hard to win and easy to surrender, and they almost never get handed back voluntarily.
So the answer to “why should I care if I’m not doing anything wrong” is: because the system is being built right now, and it is being built to outlast the current rules, the current police chief, and the current administration. You are not deciding whether you get watched today. You are deciding what your kids inherit as normal. That is worth an email and an evening at city hall.
The Law Is Watching - Which Is Exactly Why Now Matters
In the leading constitutional challenge, the Institute for Justice sued Norfolk, Virginia on behalf of residents whose cars were captured hundreds of times in four months, arguing the warrantless dragnet violates the Fourth Amendment. In January 2026, federal judge Mark Davis ruled it was not yet unconstitutional - but explicitly warned that ALPR surveillance “could become too intrusive and run afoul of [constitutional limits] at some point,” and that “at least in Norfolk, Virginia, the answer is: not today” (Courthouse News). The plaintiffs are appealing.
Read that carefully. The courts are signaling that the more cameras go up and the longer data is retained, the closer this gets to an unconstitutional dragnet. The trajectory matters. That is why stopping or constraining expansion today is not just principled - it is legally strategic.
Louis Rossmann and Proof That Pushback Works
Consumer-rights advocate Louis Rossmann has become one of the loudest voices on this. He flew to Denver to demand at a packed town hall that the city shut down its Flock system, and he launched alpr.watch to help people track upcoming city council meetings and organize against new camera installations in their own communities (Denverite coverage).
And it works. As of mid-2026, more than 80 US cities have cancelled or deactivated Flock contracts, including Austin, Flagstaff, Cambridge, Eugene, and Santa Cruz; Denver rejected a $666,000 contract extension (Futurism, NPR). The EFF documented Austin organizers winning their cancellation outright. This is ordinary residents showing up to meetings and winning.
The Right Solution: Targeted, Accountable, Time-Limited
Opposing dragnet surveillance is not opposing investigation. The alternative is the standard that has protected Americans for a long time: suspicion first, then access.
- Warrants for access. Police can already get a warrant when they have cause. That is the line between investigating a suspect and tracking everyone.
- Short retention. Records on people who are not suspected of anything should be deleted in days, not warehoused for weeks or years.
- No automatic out-of-state or federal sharing. Data collected by your town should not be searchable nationwide by default.
- Public audit logs and reporting. Every search should be logged, and usage reported publicly so abuse is visible.
- Sunset clauses and an opt-in for the community, decided in open meetings, not signed quietly by a department.
Crucially, this is exactly what Michigan’s pending bills propose.
What’s in Front of the Michigan Legislature Right Now
House Bills 5492 and 5493 - a bipartisan package from Rep. Doug Wozniak (R) and Rep. Jimmie Wilson Jr. (D) - would require judicial warrants to access ALPR data for criminal cases, limit data retention to 14 days, and mandate public reporting on use. They have been referred to the House Judiciary Committee (GovTech, bill text). State Senator Jim Runestad has separately raised the privacy alarm in the Detroit News.
Bills in committee are exactly where public pressure is decisive. This is the moment.
What You Can Actually Do
This is the rally call. Pick one and do it this week.
- Find out if your city uses Flock. Check DeFlock’s map. If you do not see your area, file a FOIA request with your city or county for ALPR contracts and usage policies.
- Contact your Michigan state representative and senator and tell them you support HB 5492 and HB 5493. Find them at legislature.mi.gov. One specific, polite message about a named bill carries real weight.
- Show up to your city council meeting. Use alpr.watch to find when surveillance contracts are on the agenda. Public comment is where Austin, Denver, and dozens of others turned the tide.
- Join an organized campaign. The EFF, the Institute for Justice, the ACLU of Michigan, and Fight for the Future’s FLOCK Out all provide ready-made tools and template letters.
- Talk to your neighbors. This issue crosses party lines - the bills are bipartisan for a reason. Privacy is not a left or right value; it is an American one.
The Bottom Line
The cameras are spreading because most people do not know they exist and the rest assume it is already settled law. It is not. The contracts are renewable, the bills are in committee, and the courts have openly warned that this can go too far. Every camera that goes up unchallenged makes the next one normal.
We are not powerless here. We have a working political system, bipartisan legislation already drafted, a string of cities that have already said no, and constitutional law trending our way if we keep the pressure on. The cost of acting is an email and an evening at city hall. The cost of not acting is a permanent record of everywhere you have ever driven, owned by a private company, searchable by people you will never meet.
Be the person who shows up.
Sources are linked inline throughout. This post is informational and advocates only for lawful civic participation. Researched and written with AI assistance and human review, consistent with the transparency policy on this site. Questions or corrections? kevin@glyph.sh.