Flock Camera
Guides
Plain answers about licence plate readers — what they are, what they record, who can see it, and how to find the ones around you.
How to find the Flock cameras near you
Find the Flock Safety and ALPR cameras near you on a live map of 127,344 documented US plate readers — including which way each camera faces.
Read the guide →What does a Flock camera look like?
A Flock Safety camera is a small dark rectangular box on a slim pole, about 4 metres up, with a solar panel and a black cylindrical lens facing one lane of traffic.
Read the guide →Are Flock camera locations public?
Flock Safety does not publish camera locations, and most agencies are not required to. Here is what is actually public, and where the crowd-sourced map comes from.
Read the guide →How do Flock cameras work?
A Flock camera photographs every passing vehicle, reads the plate with OCR, records make, model, colour and distinguishing features, and uploads a timestamped record.
Read the guide →Did a Flock camera photograph my car?
Whether a plate reader captured your car depends on the direction it faces, not just how close you drove. Here is how to work it out, and how to log it automatically.
Read the guide →Who can access Flock camera data?
The operating agency controls its own reads, but national lookup and agency-to-agency sharing mean far more people can search them than run the cameras.
Read the guide →How long does Flock keep licence plate data?
Flock Safety's standard retention is 30 days, after which non-flagged reads are deleted. Agencies and state law can change that, and flagged reads are kept longer.
Read the guide →Flock camera vs speed camera vs red-light camera
A Flock camera records that your vehicle passed a point. A speed or red-light camera exists to issue you a ticket. Different hardware, different law, different consequences.
Read the guide →ALPR brands: who makes the plate readers on your road
Flock Safety is 82% of documented US plate readers. The other 18% come from Motorola Solutions, Genetec, Axis, Leonardo, Rekor and a dozen more that do the same job.
Read the guide →Plate readers in shop car parks
Retailers are among the largest private operators of licence plate readers. The open dataset documents about 1,650 at Lowe's and 1,050 at Home Depot across the US.
Read the guide →How to report a Flock camera
Spotted a plate reader that isn't mapped? Add it to OpenStreetMap with the right tags and every app built on the dataset improves — including this one.
Read the guide →Flock cameras on your route
You cannot realistically drive around a 127,000-camera network. What you can do is know where the readers are, which way they face, and when you pass one.
Read the guide →How many Flock cameras are there?
137,416 plate readers are documented worldwide and 127,344 in the United States across 49 states. Here is the full state-by-state breakdown.
Read the guide →