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On July 23rd, 2026, Clearwater County’s Sheriff John Smith announced that the County would allow their contract with Flock to lapse as Flock had not provided them with the results they wanted. “The Clearwater County Sheriff’s Office is providing notice that we will not be renewing our agreement for the Flock camera system. Our current…
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Idaho Falls will have a city council meeting tonight at 6:30pm. Public comment is open for 3 minutes for both residents and non-residents. City Annex Building680 Park AvenueIdaho Falls, ID 83402
Your Movements Are Being
Tracked Without a Warrant
Automated license plate readers are spreading across Idaho, logging where you go, when you go there, and how often. It’s time to hold government accountable and defend your constitutional rights.
What are ALPRs?
Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) are camera-based systems that capture images of vehicle license plates and use optical character recognition to convert them into searchable data. ALPR systems can record the plate number, time, date, and location of a vehicle, creating a searchable record of where vehicles have been observed. ALPR cameras run continuously. Every vehicle that passes is logged, stored, and made searchable whether or not the driver has done anything wrong, is under any investigation, or has ever had any contact with law enforcement.
Because they can collect information about large numbers of people who are not suspected of wrongdoing, their use raises significant privacy concerns. Extensive databases can allow authorities or other users to reconstruct patterns of a person’s movements over time without a warrant or probably cause. Without clear rules governing collection, retention, access, sharing, and oversight, ALPR technology enables intrusive surveillance and create risks of abuse or misuse of sensitive location information.
What Is Flock Safety?
Flock Safety is an Atlanta-based, out-of-state private surveillance company that leases a network of “Automated License Plate Reader” (ALPR) cameras to law enforcement agencies across the country. Due to the prevelance of their cameras throughout municipalities, they are the most well known ALPR vendor and their name has become synonymous with ALPRs. Flock’s ALPRs offer more features than some others; when a vehicle passes one of these cameras, it automatically captures the license plate number, vehicle make, model, color, and any distinguishing features such as roof racks, tool boxes, damage, dents, political sticker, and many others along with the date, time, and precise location. That data is uploaded immediately to Flock’s private cloud servers.
Flock also operates a nationally searchable network, which allows agencies using the system to query aggregated camera data from other participating agencies across the country, meaning a camera in your Idaho city may share your data with agencies in other states. No warrant required.