Wisconsin police used Flock's license-plate camera network on a Navy veteran more than 100 times after he lawfully recorded one of their traffic stops.
The veteran filmed a traffic stop he witnessed, an act protected by law. Police responded by repeatedly running his plate through Flock's automated license-plate reader system, generating over 100 separate lookups. Flock's network links plate-scanning cameras across jurisdictions, letting departments track where a vehicle has been and when. There's no indication he was charged with anything connected to the stop he filmed.
Flock markets its cameras as tools for solving car thefts and finding stolen vehicles, not for monitoring people who record police. A triple-digit query count on one driver, with no apparent criminal predicate, is the kind of pattern civil-liberties advocates have warned these networks would enable once departments treat surveillance access as unlimited.
A hundred-plus lookups on a man who broke no law reads less like policing and more like a habit that got out of hand.