Every car. Every pass. Logged.
License plate readers don't watch suspects. They watch everyone; recording where you drove, when, and how often, in a database you can't see. We're Franklin County residents who think that deserves a public conversation.
What a Flock license plate reader actually does
Flock Safety is the largest ALPR vendor in the country. Solar-powered cameras on poles along roads and at town entrances, usually installed with little public notice. They don't just read plates.
More than the plate
Flock markets a "vehicle fingerprint" technology. It collects make, body type, color, and marks like a roof rack or bumper sticker. Covering your plate doesn't make your car anonymous.
A movement history
Every read is time-stamped. Across a network, that becomes a searchable record of your routine. Your church, the clinic, the Tuesday meeting, even where you like to eat for lunch.
Reach beyond your town
Agencies can opt into sharing networks letting departments elsewhere, sometimes federal, search local reads. Oversight rules vary and are often undocumented.
Flock's own published figures, 2025; retention is set per contract. Verify before citing publicly, and where you can, cite your municipality's actual contract instead.
Where ALPR surveillance stands in Franklin County
We're building a public record of what's deployed in Franklin County, who authorized it, and who can search it. We publish what we can document and say plainly what we don't yet know.
Observe from public property only. NEVER touch, obstruct, or interfere with equipment.
Where the ALPR cameras are in Franklin County
Every marker below was reported by a member of the public and verified against street imagery where possible. Pan and zoom to check your own commute. This is a floor, not a full count, and the gaps are where we need help.
Spotted a camera that isn't here? Report it to the open DeFlock map. A photo, the pole location, and the direction it faces is enough.
What you can actually do
All lawful, all public, and boring in the best way. Surveillance contracts get signed in quiet rooms; the fix is showing up. Pick whatever fits the time you have.
Ask one question
10 minEmail your borough council, township supervisors, or county commissioners: does our agency use ALPRs, who else can search that data, and how long is it kept? The answer, or the absence of one, tells you a lot.
Do it todayFile a Right-to-Know request
30 minGet the contract in writing. Pennsylvania's RTKL is built for this, and agencies have five business days to respond. Our step-by-step guide is coming; start at the PA Office of Open Records.
Guide in progressSpeak at a public meeting
One eveningThree minutes of public comment from a resident outweighs any petition. Council and supervisor meetings are where these contracts get approved, and where they can be paused or dropped.
Guide in progressMap what you see
OngoingReport camera locations to the DeFlock map so the scope of local surveillance is visible to everyone. From public property only, and never interfere with equipment.
Open the mapAlso in progress: a technical breakdown of how the hardware and hot lists work, and a plain-language guide to the legal landscape in Pennsylvania.
Straight answers about license plate readers
That's the central claim and it deserves scrutiny, not reflexive dismissal. ALPRs do produce investigative leads, and departments can point to specific cases.
What's thin is independent, peer-reviewed evidence that they reduce crime overall. Most success stories come from the vendor or from agencies with a stake in renewal. Before a community accepts permanent tracking of every driver, it should see real local numbers on what the system delivered.
Privacy isn't about hiding wrongdoing. It's about not having a permanent, searchable log of your daily movements held by a private company and queryable by people you'll never meet.
That record shows where you worship, which doctor you see, whose driveway your truck was parked in. Once the infrastructure exists, you don't control who searches it in five years, or what for.
There have also been reports of innocent citizens being pulled over at gunpoint and/or jailed for months because of a false hit from an ALPR camera. That's not safety or justice.
It depends entirely on the contract and the sharing settings the agency chose. Reads are frequently shared across departments, sometimes across state lines, and federal access has been the subject of significant reporting and several municipal audits.
That uncertainty is exactly why we file records requests. Nobody should have to guess.
View records obtained through FOIA requests at Have I Been Flocked?
No. Contracts have been canceled or blocked in deeply conservative and deeply liberal towns alike, usually by the same coalition: people who don't think the government should track everyone by default.
We're volunteer residents with no affiliation to Flock Safety, any vendor, any party, or any government agency.
NO, unequivocally not. We work through education, public records requests, public comment, and democratic pressure on elected officials.
Tampering with equipment is illegal, dangerous, and would hand our opponents the only argument they need. Anyone advocating that is not speaking for us.
Join DeFlock Franklin County
Austin, Texas and Eugene, Oregon both ended their Flock contracts after residents organized. It starts the same way every time: a few neighbors ask for the contract in writing, then show up and say so out loud.