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An interactive map of Flock Cams
- owlninja 7mo agoI added one a few months ago and went to go check it, and there are 2 others almost right on top of it pointing in different directions, I guess that can't be prevented? I'm fairly certain they didn't add two more ALPRs that close to each other.
- ezfe 7mo agoYou can go onto Open Street Map and tidy up the data. I would recommend surveying the actual situation first to ensure you don't mess anything up.
- pilingual 7mo agoSome intersections have 4 or more cameras.
- dopidopHN2 7mo agoOh, they do. Sometimes its different providers. This map is missing info for my area. It's hard to not be in that network
- bigwheels 7mo agoWhen your car gets stolen, suddenly nobody can access the data. Are there any coordinated efforts for widespread scrubbing or removal of these parasitic devices?
- dylan604 7mo agoWhen your car gets stolen, even with camera data, the police will not do anything.
- habinero 7mo agoThe city might call you in a month when it gets towed wherever it was abandoned. The cops aren't going to look for it. That happened to me once.
- bubblewand 7mo agoI've yet to see an amount of property crime that can get the cops to lift a finger. I've seen them ignore a low-six-figures-stolen string of after-hours break-ins at businesses, captured at multiple location on camera with clear shots of the vehicle, legible plates, and faces of the perps. Just straight-up gave the impression they thought anyone believing they might want to look into it was a moron. And no, given where this happened it wasn't because of that "prosecutors won't charge anyway" thing people complain about some places (it's led me to wonder how much of that is cops just looking to pass the blame on cases they had no intention of investigating anyway).
- ergocoder 7mo agoI do blame cops and prosecutors. But it's also your neighbors, friends, and co-workers who yell at cops and prosecutors to not arrest nor charge property crimes.
- StayHuman 7mo agoOn the "coordinated efforts" front, some anecdata: Three separate posts on Craigslist in the Community section about Flock Cameras, trying to increase local awareness. Posted to two different cities, various posting iterations (e.g. with links / without, pics / no pics, etc.). All appeared to post fine when entered, but never saw the light of day and were marked as removed within a few minutes. Any other subject: posts fine. Try it yourself and see what you get.
- runjake 7mo agoGreat site. Caveat: it does not seem to update camera statuses after initial reporting. I see several cameras that were removed long ago, or have been repositioned, but their old statuses remain.
- CGMthrowaway 7mo agoDeFlock is powered by crowdsourced data from the OpenStreetMap community. The map is incomplete! New locations are always being added. Know of a missing ALPR? Contribute to the map: https://deflock.org/report/id https://deflock.org/report/id
- pietervdvn 7mo agoYou can use https://mapcomplete.org/surveillance https://mapcomplete.org/surveillance to delete the cameras from OSM
- snailmailman 7mo agoThis is a quite scary map. They are all over my local area. It may technically be possible to route a drive around them, but if you take the most convenient path between any two points at least one camera will spot you. I'd have to leave my neighborhood through back roads and enter local shopping areas through sidestreets. This data shouldn't even be collected in the first place, let alone consolidated into a national network that any police officer can decide to spy on me through.
- CGMthrowaway 7mo ago> It may technically be possible to route a drive around them That's an interesting idea...
- sodality2 7mo agohttps://dontgetflocked.com/ https://dontgetflocked.com/
- JKCalhoun 7mo agoCool, but… I was hoping for an online game, maybe Escape From Flockopolis. Driving sim (using Google street view) where you try to avoid the Flock.
- baby_souffle 7mo agoI can't speak to flock but I know that other vendors in the space have software designed to calculate optimal locations to maximize probability at least one license plate scan for every trip taken. Presumably that software can then be used to upsell additional cameras because with an increased density your capabilities start to approximate real-time live position tracking instead of just getting approximate locations of hot plates.
- gentile 7mo agoDownload osm data, extract roads and surveillance, gpd overlay how=difference, remove/edit the different osmid's, write to pbf file, convert to obf file w/ osmandmapcreator, import into OsmAnd. Now you have turn by turn navigation around ALPRs on your phone. Edit: link https://github.com/pickpj/Big-B-Router https://github.com/pickpj/Big-B-Router - I tend to find ALPRs that are missing in the OSM data, so keep on updating OSM data.
- cdrnsf 7mo agoRemember, according to Flock's CEO, Deflock is a terrorist organization.
- mikece 7mo agoYes, and according to Steve Ballmer (back in the day) Linux Torvalds was a terrorist. People are allowed to say stupid things.
- jLaForest 7mo agoPeople are allowed to say stupid things....and those people should be held accountable for the stupid things they say
- hsuduebc2 7mo agoEveryone who is not content with the way I do business must be a terrorist for sure. o_o
- technol0gic 7mo agoby "say stupid things," you of course mean "tell bald-faced lies"
- rl3 7mo agoThe most notable one: "Developers, developers, developers!"
- burkaman 7mo agoI don't think this is true, I can't even find anyone else claiming this happened.
- nullsanity 7mo ago[dead]
- dspillett 7mo ago
- pietervdvn 7mo agoIf you spot missing camera's - Flock or not - you can add them to OSM easily with https://mapcomplete.org/surveillance https://mapcomplete.org/surveillance
- culi 7mo agoEverydoor's UI is also quite nice for this. it even lets you enter in the orientation quite easily https://every-door.app/ https://every-door.app/ https://github.com/Zverik/every_door https://github.com/Zverik/every_door
- smalltorch 7mo agoThere's also a application called deflock that lets you map them easy
- fubdopsp 7mo agoYes, that's the submission we're commenting on ;)
- smalltorch 7mo agoHaha. I meant an Android application. The website doesn't let you submit. The app makes it easy to submit.
- slg 7mo agoJust anecdotally looking around my city, it's noticeable that the camera's locations have a much stronger correlation with areas of high wealth rather than high crime.
- nomel 7mo agoGenerally, only addicts steal from poorer people. And, where I am, you're more likely to have a gun if you're poor, because there's more exposure to crime, resulting in a much more realistic understanding that the police won't save you in an emergency.
- downrightmike 7mo agowage theft is a much larger crime
- wahnfrieden 7mo agopolice in the US also steal more than robbers, as a factual statistic
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- baggy_trough 7mo agoThis is great, we can see where more cameras need to be added around the neighborhood!
- cm2012 7mo ago[flagged]
- pwg 7mo agoIf you know where some of them are, you can add the data yourself: https://mapcomplete.org/surveillance https://mapcomplete.org/surveillance
- cm2012 7mo ago[flagged]
- ssl-3 7mo agoCan you elaborate upon the kinds of crime reduction that these systems provide?
- baggy_trough 7mo ago[flagged]
- cm2012 7mo agoIsn't it obvious? > License plate is reported to police associated with a crime. > Cop looks up plate number > Flock Camera shows general status and location of that license plate. > Cops find the car involved with the crime, preventing further criminality.
- rationalist 7mo agoWe're policing future crime now? I think they made a movie about that.
- ux266478 7mo agoSo they're useless for crimes not involving a reported license plate? Sounds like a pretty worthless marginal gain. The Chinese have done it better since their mass surveillance apparatus isn't contingent on reported license plates, or even the involvement of a vehicle. Start a fight on the street and they'll find you. Is America really this incompetent that they can't match a 10+ year old system?
- avsavani 7mo agolove this , give me more cameras please , fuck those criminals.
- unethical_ban 7mo agoComing 2028: Dissent is a crime
- drunken_thor 7mo agoHaha Sudbury and Napanee are the only places in Canada to have them. They are tiny cities where nothing happens. Bored police officers imagining situations where they are needed.
- allthetime 7mo agoUBC campus in Vancouver as well.
- randlet 7mo agoSudbury is 150k+ people so not exactly tiny in terms of Canadian cities (30th most populus).
- glitcher 7mo agoIn my area I'm seeing a few random ones on roadways, but mostly clusters of them in the parking lots of Home Depots, Lowes, and Wal-Marts.
- doctor_radium 7mo agoSame here, but just Lowes stores. That I know of. I surveiled the two local Lowes roughly a month ago and found two cameras not mapped, which I gleefully added myself. Want to send them a snail mail complaint at some point stating they won't be getting my business until they step back from turning us into a police state.
- Ajedi32 7mo agoAre they Flock cameras or bog standard CCTV?
- doctor_radium 7mo agoThe Lowes cameras are definitely Flock. The look is unmistakable. See https://deflock.org/identify https://deflock.org/identify
- dawnerd 7mo agoI contacted them about it too and got the most generic corpo pr about them being essential for the safety of their employees.
- willis936 7mo agoWoof. There is one that I basically must drive by everyday close to where I live. How can I figure out who is responsible for its installation so I can let them know how I feel (and will vote) about it?
- qup 7mo agoIt's probably your city/police. I have two cameras in my small town, but I can avoid them, so I now go out of my way to cross town.
- NoSalt 7mo agoI wonder how long until the site gets taken down. You know ... to protect the children.
- dopidopHN2 7mo agoThe data is persisted in OSM. You can consult it with various non web Client
- sanufar 7mo agoJeez there’s a few all around my uni and surrounding areas, did not know about that at all.
- tonymet 7mo agoI volunteer for my city & county , and I'm a privacy advocate, so I have an ambivalent opinion on Flock cameras. Given the completely untenable demands on law enforcement, and extreme driver recklessness , the only practical way to enforce law and order with drivers is some sort of automated surveillance. Since covid, driver recklessness has been out of control. Running reds, extreme speed, escaping police are all common. Pedestrian and cyclist injuries and deaths remain extreme. At the same time, the public demands more oversight and constraints on police , which reduces their ability to enforce the law. Imagine you are a policy maker, with worse driver behavior, and police force that are less able to enforce the law. What tools would you use to maintain law and order? If you don't want surveillance, you will have to make some other tradeoffs to allow human beings to better monitor the public and enforce the law. They are not omnipotent and omniscient creatures.
- rationalist 7mo ago> Running reds, extreme speed, escaping police are all common. How do these cameras prevent those crimes?
- tonymet 7mo agoplate reading help police track down suspects without pursuit. video recording in general help police collect evidence necessary to convict reckless driving.
- rationalist 7mo agoIt sounds like you're talking about solving crimes, not preventing crimes.
- tonymet 7mo agosolving crime and convicting criminals has first and n-order effects. For one, a few criminals commit most crimes, so locking people up reduces many crimes. Secondly, convictions are a deterrent.
- tmshapland 7mo agoHow do we make this site mainstream? The public would really start to push back if they could so viscerally experience that they are being surveilled multiple times per day.
- seniorThrowaway 7mo agoI think you overestimate the public.
- whimsicalism 7mo agoMuch prefer camera driven enforcement to cop-on-beat driven enforcement.
- saxonww 7mo agoFlock cameras aren't enforcing anything. They collect your license plate and distinguishing details of your car. It's just car X with plate Y detected at location Z at time T. Notably, they are not used for speed detection or 'good driving' detection. You might think that having a constantly-present, objective, impartial camera enforcing a law is better than a sometimes-present, subjective, often not impartial beat cop doing that. But that's not what Flock does. Flock just turns that 'sometimes-present' beat cop into an 'always-present' beat cop, without addressing any of the other beat cop problems.
- jacquesm 7mo agoAnd automatically makes you a suspect in case any crime is committed in the area and you happened to be there.
- nickstinemates 7mo agoNone in my area. Time to disperse. Get out of major cities like the pandemic promised. Fill in this great country we live in. Proliferate the governments surveillance for them.
- LordGrey 7mo agoCoincidentally, a nearby county has just announced that they have begun installing new Flock cameras [0]. Their stated reason is: "Along with the cameras being used to reduce crime, the sheriff’s office said they may also be used for public safety concerns, including AMBER Alerts and Silver Alerts." The cameras are good when we're all on the happy path, but as soon as a bad actor gets involved, all of that surveillance won't look so great. History shows that the odds of that happening are decidedly non-zero. EDIT: Searching for some info on the grant referenced in the article, it appears that a county must match 20% of the grant amount; one example is [1]. I'm sure this looks like a great deal to county officials. [0] https://www.ketk.com/news/crime-public-safety/new-traffic-cameras-in-panola-county-aim-to-boost-public-safety/ https://www.ketk.com/news/crime-public-safety/new-traffic-ca... [1] https://www.beltontexas.gov/news_detail_T11_R1277.php https://www.beltontexas.gov/news_detail_T11_R1277.php
- qup 7mo agoThe odds are 100% that it will be abused.
- culi 7mo agoBecause they already are
- k33n 7mo agoCan you name just one incident of abuse?
- arcanemachiner 7mo agoEdward Snowden. Everything after that is a no-brainer. Hell, everything after Room 641A is a no-brainer.
- jp191919 7mo agoSnowden, a true American patriot.
- craftkiller 7mo agoHuh, none on the upper west side in NYC. Interesting.
- segmondy 7mo agoInteresting ... the police in this case are claiming to be the owners of the camera. https://oaklandcounty115.com/2026/03/03/clarkston-man-accused-of-felonies-for-damaging-license-plate-cameras-in-waterford/ https://oaklandcounty115.com/2026/03/03/clarkston-man-accuse...
- bob1029 7mo agoThe only flock cameras indicated in my town are the canonical Home Depot arrangement. I'm pretty sure it's part of their standard operating procedures at this point. The effect these have had on the in store experience (at my location) is the primary thing that has me interested in limited deployments. Shopping at HD prior to the ALPRs was a horrible time. I think they finally caught the guy who was stealing the little screws out of the irrigation vacuum breakers. You can actually get a complete, unopened factory product most of the time now.
- s1gsegv 7mo agoAnd to think, all it cost was a significant loss of privacy nationwide
- mulmen 7mo agoHome Depot didn’t have CCTV and loss prevention before Flock?
- mixmastamyk 7mo agoWondering what the intersection is with Home Depot cameras and ICE?
- dopidopHN2 7mo agoI don't understand the connection? What is the guy stealing tbe screw was to walk or bike ?
- unclad5968 7mo agoWeird. The city I live in has cameras, but only a few at random intersections. Most of the cameras are on a university campus, home depot, Lowes, and target. Are these normal places to put flock cameras for other cities?
- kurtoid 7mo agoLowe's has their own contract with Flock. I've seen them outside a couple of Targets too
- jmward01 7mo agoSo, our city clearly has other cameras but they are from a different vendor (and don't show up on the map). I wonder how good/bad the other players in the industry are. Flock gets the press, is that just letting someone worse quietly fill in the gaps?
- tadfisher 7mo agoThey are just as bad, and much better at lobbying and PR. They might also be competent at securing access to the data, removing an obvious objection to continued relationships with Flock.
- jppope 7mo agoSo silly question. Flock is making money off of my Name, Image, and Likeness can I request compensation for that?
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- david_shaw 7mo agoIt would be an interesting and potentially useful project to combine these camera locations with Maps routing -- similar to "avoid toll roads," we could "avoid surveillance cameras."
- pugworthy 7mo agoIf you're in the US, stay away from Home Depot and Lowe's if you want to not be around them. It's not universal, but it's surprising how much they are often there. I get it may have its application in theft recovery, but it also happens to have some strong potential for ICE raids for day laborers. I don't think it has much application to theft prevention as I doubt many people even know they are there.
- waterproof 7mo agoReminder that at least in Washington state, all images from Flock cameras are public data and thus subject to public records requests. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules-data-captured-flock-safety-cameras-are-public-records https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/11/washington-court-rules...
- andoando 7mo agoWhy dont they put up a couple drones up high in the sky
- pilingual 7mo agohttps://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/camden-nj-homicides-drone-program/ https://www.cbsnews.com/philadelphia/news/camden-nj-homicide...
- buellerbueller 7mo agoAll this does is incentivize crime doers to steal someone else's license plate first.
- cm2012 7mo agoIt has to be paired with vigorous plate fraud enforcement imo
- buellerbueller 7mo agoRight, I'm sure they'll get right on it.
- Arubis 7mo agoA potentially nice addition to this map would be your closest hardware, paint, craft store, or other spray paint dealership.
- the_real_cher 7mo agoYou can bet money theyre selling this data to private companies like repo men.
- nocoolnametom 7mo agoOne way to possibly get the cameras taken down: insist on requesting the data as it's public data and should be publicly accessible. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/wa-cities-reconsider-flock-cameras-as-judge-rules-their-data-is-public/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/law-justice/wa-cit...
- fc417fc802 7mo agoIt only gets them deactivated until the state legislature "fixes" the "loophole".
- pc86 7mo agoDoes that mean it shouldn't be done?
- fc417fc802 7mo agoBy all means go for it. It's just important to be aware that it's (most likely) a temporary stopgap as opposed to an actual solution to the problem.
- senordevnyc 7mo agoAnd what is the "actual solution to the problem"?
- fc417fc802 7mo agoHow should I know? Presumably it's political. Noticing a flaw doesn't mean one has a workable solution ready to go.
- ribosometronome 7mo agoIf they're not already exempted by law, legislators are likely to carve out exemptions. Federally, the FOIA already exempts the government from releasing data that would violate privacy (which was one of the hurdles to releasing Epstein related documents prior to Congress passing a law to demand it).
- fc417fc802 7mo agoI'm glad the data is being catalogued and made available like this but the interactive map doesn't work for me at all. Seems to be missing clickable zoom controls and gestures on my trackpad only seem to be able to get it to zoom out, not in (I think maybe it's becoming entirely unresponsive when it first registers the zoom in event and dropping the rest of it). Did anyone actually bother to test this on a low end device? More generally, if you're a webdev with a high end workstation it's really important to occasionally spin up a single core VM with less than 4 GB RAM, open a youtube video, and then check how well your page works in a second simultaneously visible window.
- renewiltord 7mo agoThis is pretty cool. I think I'd want a few more on my block. Can an individual request and fund one?
- milkytron 7mo agoNice. The bike trail to my office and a few grocery stores doesn't have any of these.
- superkuh 7mo agoFlock AI cameras run off small solar panels. Having run my own computer systems off small solar panels I know that even a minor shadow or a bit of bird poop on the panel can decrease the output enough the computer eventually cannot run and shuts down. I bet Flock cameras have the same response to a bit of bird poop like substance or shadow.
- 1e1a 7mo agoBirds tend to be attracted to seeds.
- stri8ted 7mo agoIt's clearly true there have been abuses as a result of this technology. And its also clearly true criminals have been caught as a result of the cams, that otherwise would not have been. If you believe the costs of the the abuses, and potential abuses, exceed the benefit, then at least be honest about the trade-off, because there are real benefits. Personally, I believe the costs, on net, are worth the benefits. And in so far as the costs can be further reduced, without loosing most benefits, then great. This is not right or wrong. It's just a question of values, and how you weight the costs vs benefits. Don't down-vote this all at once.
- Forgeties79 7mo agoMy question to you is: how are you assessing the costs? Do you know how many crimes have been stopped as a result of these cams? Do you know the extent to which our privacy is being lost and our data is being used against us or others?
- stri8ted 7mo agoI take into account publicly available information (news articles), factor in personal anecdotes, and reason about human nature and incentives. I know the extent of reported abuses, and I do my best to extrapolate. It's not perfect, but such is life. To be clear, even if we all agreed on the data, I still would not expect everyone to take the same position. There are subjective differences in values.
- Forgeties79 7mo agoI get that but at the very least one should demand evidence to their efficacy
- stri8ted 7mo agoFlock has put out a report claiming 10% crime in the US is solved using their technology. There are of course counter argument, that claim this is not valid. https://www.flocksafety.com/customers/how-many-crimes-do-automated-license-plate-readers-alprs-solve-anyway https://www.flocksafety.com/customers/how-many-crimes-do-aut...
- ergocoder 7mo agoI'm gonna get downvoted for this. But I'd like cameras in my neighborhood. Sure, there's a security risk but there's also a risk of not catching criminals due to lack of evidence. Tons of crimes aren't prosecuted due to the lack of evidence. A security risk doesn't impact average people, and it can be handled more easily.
- pseudalopex 7mo agoPlease don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Intermernet 7mo agoOne of the main arguments against flock is their abysmal security, lack of transparency, and flagrant dishonesty. If they solved these problems then we can have a discussion about the cameras themselves. I personally would have less of a problem with them if the footage was locked down, encrypted and could only be accessed with a subpoena, but law enforcement really want dragnet surveillance, so that's unlikely to occur.
- sciencejerk 7mo agoI personally know 3 victims of brutally violent crime. Flock would have detected, but maybe not prevented, two of these cases, where violence occurred in broad, open daylight near main roads and highways. Crimes occurred in left-leaning, anti-police small midwest city. All of the victims were women. I would encourage anti-Flockers and anti-authority individuals out here to question their motives and make sure that their voices and actions are best aligned with protecting vulnerable individuals (this also includes trafficked illegal immigrants). Seems like many folks here might be more concerned with preventing hypothetical/theoretical harm, instead of REAL harm (violent crime, trafficking, vehicle theft)
- jorts 7mo agoMy vehicle was stolen in an area with Flock cams. It did not help at all.
- TiredOfLife 7mo ago[flagged]
- sciencejerk 7mo agoThat sucks. Sorry to hear it
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- asveikau 7mo ago> Flock would have detected, but maybe not prevented, two of these cases I'm glad you acknowledge this, because it highlights what has irritated me about the discussion of crime in the last ~6 years. People seem to expect that crime can be prevented. Our criminal justice system and system of civil rights can only intervene after the crime has occurred, which means it won't prevent anything. Maybe I've misread you personally, and I don't mean to put it all on you, but I think people with your position tend to vastly overstate the deterrent factor of proposed interventions. Further, only reacting to crime and not seeking to "punish" people before a crime has occurred is exactly how our system should work. When reasoning about crime prevention, a large number of people seem to want police to intervene preemptively. Or they want to punish offenders out of proportion to actual crimes, to prevent recidivism that hasn't happened yet. This type of thinking seems to slide pretty quickly into the "pre-crime" concept of dystopian scifi. We called that stuff dystopian for a reason. In my opinion what we should do instead to prevent crime is to promote social cohesion, in the form of preventing income and wealth disparity, funding a strong social safety net, help for drug addicts and the mentally ill, etc. People who live happier, more stable lives will have less reason to turn to crime. (I will also note, crime is lower everywhere in America vs. a few decades ago. Violent crime peaked in the mid 1990s. So it is in some sense a misguided endeavor completely, focusing on problems that are relatively unlikely.)
- monkaiju 7mo agoDeflock is awesome! https://app.copdb.org https://app.copdb.org is a similar project for mapping police & the violence they commit. Mostly in Utah but recently opened up to include ICE agents, which is talked about on their blog: https://copdb.org/articles/mapping-the-tentacles-of-state-violence/ https://copdb.org/articles/mapping-the-tentacles-of-state-vi...
- 2cynykyl 7mo agoThis is probably not a helpful comment because it's basically a daydreamers fantasy, but here goes... Doesn't all the surveillance concern go away if we just remove license plates from cars? Our plates identify us nearly perfectly.
- Intermernet 7mo agoFlock provide more than just ALPRs. They also have systems that track people. It actually annoys me that people focus purely on the ALPRs when the other cameras are arguably much worse.
- Manuel_D 7mo agoThe reality is that most people are tolerant of, if not supportive of surveiling car traffic. If tracking vehicle movements on public roads is such a bad thing, there'd be overwhelming support for removing license plates from vehicles. The whole purpose of a license plate is to facilitate surveillance of vehicles. But of course, most people aren't in favor of that. They realize that cars are dangerous and behavior like speeding and running red lights needs to be claimed down on. When people are victims of crimes they like it when the police are able to track down the perpetrators - and traffic cameras are good at facilitating that. Outside of the HN bubble there's at lot less reflexive rejection of cameras.
- onetokeoverthe 7mo ago[dead]
- Rapzid 7mo agoCopper Cam.
- nektro 7mo agogreat resource but the expanding dots are a really terrible way to represent this
- insane_dreamer 7mo agoAre these the same as the speed limit cameras (we have a few of those -- no idea if they are Flock or continuously recording)?