Have I Been Flocked? New Site Reveals If Your License Plate Was Searched by Police Cameras
A free website lets US drivers check if their license plates were searched in Flock's license plate reader database, based on 241 million records.
The site, reported by TechRadar, asks visitors to enter their license plate registration and then returns a report showing if and when their plate was looked up. The database behind the service contains details of more than 241 million Flock searches, covering over 4.6 million license plates.
In addition to showing whether a plate has been searched, the website lets users see the stated reason for each search, such as auto theft or a traffic stop. It also provides a word cloud highlighting frequent search reasons, with terms like "drugs" and "burglary" appearing prominently. Visitors can explore audit reports, accounts of non-criminal activities, searches conducted in partnership with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and data on where license plate readers are concentrated.
Have I Been Flocked? is operated by Footnote4a, an independent editorial project that tracks Flock's activities, the use of its technology, and broader issues of mass surveillance and citizen privacy. The site's records have been compiled from audit logs released by local governments and Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. While not a complete history of Flock searches in every state, the dataset is described as comprehensive.
The website says that license plate registrations entered by users are not saved and are immediately deleted after each query. Sensitive personal information, such as addresses, is redacted from the audit logs. The operators state that "mass surveillance has no place in a free society," and that if data must be collected, "warrants should be used" and "lookups should be rare."