Aug 19, 2026 5:00 AM

Flock Has a Powerful New AI Tool for Police. We Got Its Code

Flock’s surveillance cameras have already sparked outrage. WIRED reconstructed its next-generation AI system, already in use by some police, to confirm it goes much further than tracking license plates.

Photo-Illustration: Jobanny Cabrera; Getty Images

Vehicle surveillance giant Flock Safety has told the public for years that its technology “cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals.” It has now built a system that does both, an artificial intelligence tool for police that can identify drivers and track vehicles by their patterns of movement alone, WIRED has learned.

You’ve read your last free article.

The intersection of technology, power, and culture. Start your free trial and get access to 5 all-new premium newsletters—cancel anytime.

START FREE TRIAL

Already a subscriber? Sign In

The intersection of technology, power, and culture. Get WIRED today. START FREE TRIAL

Comments (2)

Join the WIRED community to add comments.

TOURINGTEST
BARFLE

In your inbox: This is not your average politics newsletter
WiFi-8 is coming—here’s everything you need to know
Big Story: Young runners are becoming freakishly fast
The new reality of urban surveillance
Take our survey: Do you work in tech? We want to hear from you

Dhruv Mehrotra is an investigative data reporter at WIRED, where he uses technology to find, build, and analyze datasets for accountability journalism. His reporting has examined surveillance, policing, data brokers, platforms, and the government agencies and companies that use them. Before joining WIRED, he worked at Bloomberg News, the Center for ... Read More

Senior Correspondent, Investigations

Dell Cameron is an investigative reporter from Texas covering privacy and national security. He's the recipient of multiple Society of Professional Journalists awards and is co-recipient of an Edward R. Murrow Award for Investigative Reporting. Previously, he was a senior reporter at Gizmodo and a staff writer for the Daily ... Read More

Senior Reporter, National Security

Topicsagentic AI artificial intelligence Policing Police Crime surveillance privacy cars Flock

CBP Workers Allegedly Used Government Databases to Spy on Exes, Crushes, and Colleagues

Records obtained by WIRED detail hundreds of allegations of Customs and Border Protection workers misusing internal tools to look up romantic interests and track colleagues’ cell phones.

Yulia Almazova

Flock Highlighted Police Departments Using Its Tech. Now 4 Face Allegations of Misuse

Flock posted videos on its YouTube channel highlighting at least four police departments whose officers have faced allegations of misusing the company’s tech.

Caroline Haskins

Reverse-Lookup Service Exposed Millions of Photos of People’s Faces

The people-search tool ClarityCheck says its reverse image search service is “private and secure”—but it left a database containing more than 9 million image files exposed.

Lily Hay Newman

Flock’s Plans for Rideshare Dashcams and Coaching Police, Revealed

Plus: A judge rules cell tower dumps unconstitutional, water utility hacks spread to a dozen states, a phishing email opens a missile-parts supplier’s inbox, and a ransomware boss gets 16 years.

Dell Cameron

States Want ICE Agents to Show Their Faces. The Trump Administration Is Blocking Them

Federal lawyers say anti-mask laws would endanger immigration agents, citing an ICE face-recognition art project that doesn’t actually work.

Maddy Varner

‘The Worst I’ve Ever Seen’: Cargo Thefts Have Turned Violent in Pursuit of AI Hardware

Experts allege that two recent incidents in California show the extreme lengths that criminal organizations are willing to go to to steal servers and other gear meant for data centers.

Paresh Dave

AI Scammers Are Better at Building Trust Than Humans

Researchers pitted a person against a Claude agent and found that, after a week of texting, the AI chatbot was more effective at creating “exploitable trust” with others.

Andy Greenberg

OpenAI’s Browser Could Be Hijacked to Spam Your WhatsApp Contacts

Researchers at security firm Zenity found more than a dozen flaws in AI browsers—and managed to get OpenAI’s Atlas to make an unauthorized Amazon purchase.

Matt Burgess

ICE Collected Nearly 1 Million People’s DNA Last Year—Including Young Children

Internal documents show ICE's DNA collection has skyrocketed in the second Trump administration. Now hundreds of thousands of people never convicted of a crime are in an FBI criminal database forever.

Dhruv Mehrotra

He Went Viral for Posting About Flock Cameras. Then Someone Destroyed Them

Steve Eimers, also known as the “Guardrail Guy,” is done calling out license plate readers after two that appeared in his videos were vandalized.

Caroline Haskins

Europeans Are About to Find Out How Entrenched AI Is in Their Daily Lives

New EU rules stipulate that people must be told when they’re interacting with AI or looking at AI-generated or -edited content, leading to fear of “disclosure fatigue.”

Isabella Ward

The Army Is Burning Through Its AI Tokens

Members of the Army received an email informing them that they were rapidly depleting their AI tokens, and needed to limit use.

Vittoria Elliott

Comments (2)

Comments (2)

You Might Also Like

Don't Just Keep Up. Get Ahead