# 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.

Source: https://flockcamera.app/guides/are-flock-camera-locations-public
Last updated: 2026-08-15

**No. Flock Safety does not publish a public list of camera locations, and in most states the police departments operating them are not required to disclose one either. What is public is a crowd-sourced map: volunteers record camera positions in OpenStreetMap, which now documents 127,344 US plate readers.**

## What the company publishes

Flock Safety does not release a location list. It publishes a _transparency portal_ programme instead, which individual agencies may opt into. A participating agency's portal typically shows how many devices it operates, how many searches were run, and what the stated policy is - but not where each camera stands.

Participation is voluntary and uneven. Many agencies publish nothing at all.

## What the law requires

This varies sharply by state, and it is the single biggest reason there is no national list.

- **Most states:** no statute compels a department to disclose ALPR camera positions. A public-records request may be answered, partly answered, or refused under a security or investigative-technique exemption.
- **Some states** have passed ALPR-specific statutes governing retention, audit logging and data sharing. These usually regulate the _data_, not the disclosure of camera locations.
- **Contracts are usually public.** Even where locations are withheld, the purchase contract between the agency and the vendor is normally a public record. That is how researchers establish which towns have how many cameras, without knowing the exact poles.

If you want to know about your own town, a records request to the police department or the town council for the ALPR contract is often more productive than asking for camera coordinates.

## What actually is public: the map

Because no official list exists, people built one. Volunteers - coordinated largely through the DeFlock project - record each camera they find in **OpenStreetMap**, tagging it `man_made=surveillance` with `surveillance:type=ALPR`.

This is not leaked data. Every camera in it was observed from a public road by a person who then wrote down where it was. The result is open under the Open Database Licence, which is why many different apps and websites can all show the same map.

The dataset now covers:

- **137,416** plate readers worldwide
- **127,344** in the United States, across 49 states
- **104,883** tagged as Flock Safety equipment
- **121,036** with a recorded facing direction - about 95%
- **8,354** distinct US cities and towns with at least one

## The honest limitations

A crowd-sourced map has real weaknesses, and any site that hides them is selling you something:

1. **Coverage follows volunteers, not deployments.** A blank area means nobody has surveyed it, not that it is camera-free.
2. **It goes stale.** Cameras get moved, added and removed. Entries carry a "last verified" date precisely because that date matters.
3. **Positions are estimates.** Most are recorded from the road or from aerial imagery, so a pin may be a few metres off.
4. **Brand tagging is incomplete.** Some readers are recorded with no brand at all, so brand splits are a floor, not a total.

Flock Safety itself has said its network exceeds 120,000 cameras in the US. The open dataset documents 127,344 readers from all vendors combined, which suggests the map is broadly in the right range nationally while still being patchy locally.

## Using it in the app

The Flock Camera app ships the whole dataset on-device. Open the Map tab, tap any pin, and you get the brand, the operator where it is recorded, the compass bearing, and the date the entry was last verified on the ground. Area Stats gives you a count and a brand breakdown for whatever region you are looking at - the same numbers you would get from a records request, without filing one.

Because the database is local, none of those lookups leave your phone.

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Camera data (c) OpenStreetMap contributors, licensed ODbL. Positions and facing directions are community-mapped estimates.

Flock Camera is a free iOS app and an independent project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Flock Safety, Inc. App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/flock-camera/id6799255747