After its launch in 2017, Flock Safety—the policing technology company best known for its automatic license plate readers (ALPRs)—spent years working diligently with local law enforcement. Today, however, the internet is ablaze with advocacy against Flock and ALPR technology more broadly. Thousands of communities across the country have used Flock cameras to prevent traffic accidents, catch kidnappers, and investigate other crimes. But now some are beginning to pull them down in response to public pressure. This August, 90 municipalities terminated their contracts with Flock—as did the entire state of Florida, per an order of Governor Ron DeSantis.
Critics of Flock and ALPR technology, predominantly libertarians and leftists, say that the cameras create an unconstitutional system of “mass surveillance.” Some have used this argument to justify sabotaging ALPRs through illegal acts of vandalism and to fuel political opposition calculated to reduce communities’ usage of the technologies.
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Neither response advances liberty. And there’s nothing inherently anti-liberty about the government using new law enforcement technologies, provided appropriate guardrails are in place. Public order is a foundation of our freedoms, and securing it helps keep us free.
A free society depends on public order and the rule of law. Modern policing technologies strengthen that foundation rather than undermining it. Property rights, personal security, and orderly public spaces are fundamental to liberty. Without them, liberty becomes merely theoretical.
Government-owned roads, sidewalks, and public parks might upset some on the libertarian fringe, but they are a reality of modern American life. And with taxpayer funding of these spaces and services comes a reasonable expectation of safety.
New technologies do not undermine this function of policing. Traditional policing already relies on cameras, license-plate readers (commonly equipped in police vehicles), and patrolling officers keeping a watchful eye on public spaces.
In countless instances, these cameras have served justice and upheld the liberty of law-abiding people. They are often used to rescue children from human trafficking, as in the case of an abducted toddler rescued along the Louisiana–Mississippi border with multiagency coordination. And they help catch ruthless murderers, like a mass killer in Oregon responsible for five deaths in a remote, rural location.
Many argue that Flock could put us on a slippery slope toward a mass-surveillance society, as in Communist China. But the United States has constitutional mechanisms for addressing these concerns through greater oversight and restraints on government power. A reactive ban on one technology would do little in itself to curb unconstitutional law enforcement operations or unauthorized abuses.
Public ire directed at Flock or other private manufacturers of ALPRs is focused on the wrong target. Local governments choose whether to contract with Flock and how they utilize ALPRs. The elected officials and bureaucrats setting law enforcement protocols deserve more scrutiny than ALPR companies. Law enforcement misuse of a technology should serve as a spur for greater oversight or a change in leadership, not vigilante attacks against public property or political scapegoating.
Flock may represent a new and unfamiliar application of technology, but new tools in themselves don’t make government action tyrannical. What matters is whether governments are using these tools within clearly defined and sensibly designed legal limits.