What To Know About Flock License Plate Cameras In Michigan

Police in Michigan are among thousands of agencies nationwide using automated license plate readers to photograph vehicles and add the images to searchable databases.

Flock Safety, the largest provider of fixed license plate readers, says its cameras help police solve crimes, recover stolen vehicles and find missing or endangered people. Civil rights groups warn the same technology can track motorists who are not suspected of crimes and reveal trips to workplaces, medical clinics, religious centers or political events.

Flock says it has deployed about 120,000 cameras across 49 states. Its customers include more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies, along with local governments, businesses, schools, homeowner associations and property managers.

Residents can search Have I Been Flocked by state and police jurisdiction to review Flock audit logs obtained through public records requests. Depending on what records are available, users may see how often an agency searched the system, the reasons officers gave and whether a particular license plate appeared in the logs.

The open-source DeFlock project also maintains a crowdsourced map showing reported locations of automated license plate readers. The map is not an official or complete inventory, but it may identify cameras reported in Michigan.

The map shows most license plate readers are in southeast Michigan, though there are also concentrations in Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo an Flint areas.

Residents can also search police policies, city council agendas, meeting minutes, contracts and purchasing records for terms such as “Flock Safety” or “automated license plate reader.”

Privacy advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation, have called for warrants, tighter limits on data sharing, shorter retention periods and regular audits. Flock rejects the description of its system as mass surveillance, arguing that its cameras capture vehicles only at fixed public locations rather than following them continuously.

Unless local rules or contracts specify otherwise, Flock says vehicle data is automatically deleted after 30 days.

• Read more: Crime-Solving Tool Or Mass Surveillance: Inside Flock’s Camera Network