Website lets public check if police searched their car’s license plate via Flock system
A new site called “Have I Been Flocked?” lets anyone enter a license plate to see whether a Flock Safety customer has queried it, exposing the reach of police plate-reading.
“Have I Been Flocked?” launched in October 2025 by Cris van Pelt after he left software engineering and enrolled at the University of Iowa’s law school. The platform aggregates fragmented audit logs—some released by law-enforcement agencies, others obtained via public-records requests—into a searchable database containing more than 242 million recorded searches from November 2021 onward. While it cannot confirm a specific car was photographed, it can indicate whether a Flock Safety client, such as a police department or private firm, has looked up that plate.
The site relies on volunteer contributors from the DeFlock Discord community and on donations channeled through the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation, costing roughly $50-$100 per month to run. Flock Safety, an Atlanta-based firm valued at $8.4 billion, provides automated license-plate readers used in over 6,000 communities across 49 states and has been cited in high-profile investigations, yet it faces scrutiny after reports of misuse and inaccurate reads.
In response, the company announced changes to data-retention periods and new tools to flag improper searches, which the ACLU dismissed as a thinly veiled PR move. Investigative reporter Doug MacMillan has already used data from the new site in his reporting.
Why it matters
The tool reveals how widely police plate-reading technology is used, fueling public debate over surveillance and privacy.
How this story developed
- Jul 9 Flock Safety CEO brands transparency group as 'terrorist' amid AI camera controversy
- Aug 8 The Navajo Nation signed a contract to deploy Flock cameras across its reservation.
- Aug 12 Authorities found solar‑panel parts linked to Flock cameras during a search of Sovern’s residence.
- Aug 13 Flock Safety announced it will keep license-plate-reader footage for only seven days and require police to log a case code for every query.
- Aug 13 Former Bibb County sheriff’s deputies were arrested on stalking charges for using Flock license‑plate readers for personal purposes.
- Aug 13 Flock made its audit tool mandatory and reduced the default retention window to seven days.
- Aug 18 Park rangers reported Flock cameras appearing in several national forests.
- Aug 19 West Virginia legislator Chris Anders introduced a bill to ban Flock Safety cameras on constitutional grounds.
- Aug 21 New Bedford Police Department shut down its entire Flock camera system after discovering repeated unauthorized plate searches.
In this story
Related stories
15 in this thread