What is Flock Safety and why are its cameras everywhere?

What is Flock Safety? How do its cameras track vehicles and share data across the country? Atlanta-based Flock Safety has built one of the nation's largest license plate reader networks, used by more than 7,000 law enforcement agencies. While reporting on the latest episode of "Curiosities of the South," AJC producer Fraser Jones found himself returning again and again to Flock Safety and the questions surrounding its growing surveillance network. In this episode, Fraser explores how Flock's cameras work, how data is shared between agencies, the privacy concerns raised by critics and what the company says it has done to address those concerns. Editor's note: On Aug. 13, Flock announced it is changing its default ALPR data retention period from 30 days to seven days, though agencies can still choose longer retention periods. Subscribe to the AJC's YouTube channel and watch the full episode on August 17. Credits: AJC | City of Dunwoody | Flock Safety

2:20
AJC | Aug 13, 2026
Today's Video Headlines
More Videos
FROM

Let Me Put U On: How Black women helped preserve mahjong in America

Credits: Keith Lovely Jr / AJC | Estela Muñoz / AJC | Nedra Rhone | The Herald | Getty Images | Imperial Valley Press | Nedra Rhone / AJC

Can you avoid Flock Safety cameras? We put DeFlock to the test.

Privacy advocates behind DeFlock have created a crowdsourced map of automated license plate readers. Credits: AJC | Forbes | Getty | DeFlock | NBC | FlockHopper

The data-sharing surveillance network behind Flock Safety

What happens when thousands of surveillance cameras are connected in a single network? Credits: AJC | DeFlock

Who has the best fried chicken? We put 4 favorites to the test.

We put four Atlanta fried chicken contenders to the test. Which one came out on top? Credits: AJC