In the pantheon of tech that scares people in 2026, there is AI, there are data centers, and then there are automatic license plate readers, or ALPRs.
Most likely, you’ve heard of them by the most common brand name in ALPRs, Flock cameras, made by Flock Safety. They are everywhere in the news lately, thanks mostly to story after story of people trying to destroy them.
In South Carolina, just in the past few months, there’ve been several incidents of vandalism to Flock cameras -- in Irmo, Bluffton, Traveler’s Rest, Ridge Spring, Chesterfield County, Union County, Chester County, and York County, among others. The cameras have been hit with hammers and rocks, knocked (or cut) down, and sprayed with sealing foam.
ALPRs, mistrust, and misuse
ALPRs are automated, AI-driven, always on, not always obviously situated, cameras that record and store the movements of any vehicle that passes by.
The stated purpose of these camera is to give police agencies close-to-real-time data on the movements of crime suspects, fugitives, stolen vehicles, and missing persons.
The problem for a lot of people is that this kind of ubiquitous access to our movements is ripe for abuse.
ALPRs, says Paul Bowers, communications director of ACLU South Carolina, “are used to track protesters. Police will be able to know which political events you attend. They track people, in some cases, who write opinion pieces that are critical of police. It is shockingly common for police to stalk their domestic partners and exes using these cameras.”
Stalking is a common misuse of ALPR cameras. There are numerous allegations of police officers in South Carolina stalking people through Flock data. The Greenville and Colleton County Sheriffs offices have looked into stalking allegations, as have local departments in Mauldin, Greer, and Sumter.
And Bowers says that some neighbors of his worry that the cameras will be used to track immigrants, regardless of whether they have any criminal charge under suspicion.
Flock Safety states that it does not contract with Immigration & Customs Enforcement and that any access or sharing of data between law enforcement agencies is at the discretion of individual client agencies.
“Agencies control whether to share data at all; whether to share one-to-one; whether to share with broader agencies; whether to revoke access at any time; and whether to collaborate with federal agencies,” the company states.
Flock also says it is not crafting a national mass surveillance database with its cameras, and that it is rolling out more security features designed to stanch misuse. Flock’s new Audit Assistance tool, for example, flags suspected misuse attempts and is supposed to be mandatory on its cameras by the end of this year.
The force multiplier
While those reassurances don’t do much to comfort everyone, police agencies in South Carolina are big fans of Flock’s technology.
DeFlock, an internet-based group that opposes the use of ALPRs, tracks the number of these cameras deployed in the U.S. As of Sept. 7, DeFlock has identified 1,415 cameras in 41 counties South Carolina. And the cameras are deployed by local police departments and county sheriff’s departments, in rural and urban areas.
For rural sheriff’s offices, Flock cameras are seen as invaluable tools to keep eyes on large areas that are hard to patrol.
“ They are a force multiplier,” says Chester County Sheriff Max Dorsey. “ We are a small, rural agency. However, we cover a lot of ground. Our county is 580 square miles. Our citizens need law enforcement. They expect a professional investigation, a thorough investigation. It’s hard to do that when we have four to six deputies per shift.”
The Chester County Sheriff’s Office employs 66 patrol officers and investigators. Averaged out, that’s one officer for about every nine square miles of Chester County. But at six officers per shift, that averages out to one officer per every 96.6 square miles -- roughly the size of Milwaukee, Wisc., for every officer to patrol.
So Dorsey is bullish on ALPRs, and says that a few years ago when they first showed up, so were a lot of people.
“ We had a community meeting about this idea of stationary LPRs, and it was received very well,” Dorsey says. “The business community, they were all about it. In 2022, we began an agreement with Flock.”
Combined, the Chester County Sheriff’s Office and the Chester City Police Department deploy about 50 ALPR cameras, which Dorsey says have led to numerous arrests of wanted people and the recovery of several vehicles.
So why the hate, now?
A lot of police agencies in the state and country have had ALPRs in place for two, three, even four years. Until just this year, incidents of vandalism actually weren’t a common thing.
Which begs the question, why are people so upset now, as opposed to four years ago?
Dr. Rutvik Desai, director of the Institute for Mind and Brain at the University of South Carolina, says the anti-ALPR sentiment has moved from an undefined dread to an issue with tangible problems.
“Before, it could have been more an abstract knowledge that there are cameras everywhere, and they are recording cars and things like that,” Desai says. “You don't like it, but it doesn't cause the emotional response.”
More recently, he says, some specifics have come to light about law enforcement officers and Flock company employees using these cameras inappropriately.
“The incidences that were reported were that there was a Flock employee, like a vice president, who looked at children doing gymnastics,” he says.
He’s referring to a 2025 report by 404 Media that Flock Vice President Bob Carter allegedly accessed a camera that could see an Atlanta-area gymnastics class, as a way to demonstrate to clients what the cameras could do. Flock executives apologized to the community and have called the reporting and social media posts about the incident overblown.
Either way, Desai says incidents like these hit a visceral nerve that doesn’t sit well with American culture.
“In America, we have a sort of notion of freedom as very much part of the culture,” he says. “We are not very accepting easily of this whole idea of being watched, surveillance, government can do anything at any time. People are inherently resistant to that. When you hear [about] these incidences … it feels like the whole world is kind of crashing down. “
Faster than the law
Something else Desai says is weighing on people is the tacit understanding that technology is moving faster than the law.
“There is a mismatch between the power afforded by these cameras and the laws and the systems that are in place to safeguard against misuse,” he says. “Right now, we are at a stage where there is far more power, but very little oversight and guardrails.”
South Carolina has no statewide laws governing ALPRs -- no caps on retention time of data, no penalties for misusing the technology, and no warrants needed to access it.
Desai’s concerns about technology evolving faster than laws is shared by many members of the public. On Sept. 1, this very sentiment dominated the public comment session of the Oconee County Council meeting. Resident after resident spoke about the need for robust privacy protections that balance out police departments’ need for good technology to maintain public safety.
Minutes after public comment ended that night, the council voted for the second time to advance a measure to defund the five Flock cameras the County Sheriff’s Office uses (about $15,000). The measure still needs a third reading before it could pass, but if it does, it would make Oconee the first county in South Carolina to defund its Flock service.
Both the Oconee and Chester County Sheriff’s Offices say they have critical safeguards in place to prevent abuse, misuse, and improper access to Flock data. Both say they only keep data for a month, that access is limited, that investigations are accountable, and that ALPR-related activity is strictly monitored.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Strict safeguards imposed by ethical law enforcement officers running buttoned-up agencies might offer some comfort today. But that provokes another profound question -- what happens tomorrow, when good people might not be the ones in charge?
“That's why elections have consequences,” Sheriff Dorsey says. “That's why it is important for citizens to be engaged in what's going on with their elected leaders, potential elected leaders, candidates. It's that important. My advice is, measure your candidates by their character.”
Paul Bowers at the ACLU says that kind of action starts locally.
“People who are effectively pushing back are doing it by going to town, city, and county council meetings and looking up who represents them and writing in,” he says. “If we are going to rein in this technology, it has to start at the local level.”
Bowers says the thing to keep in mind is that nothing is inevitable, even technology.
“There’s a range of opinions on what we should do about these devices now that they are out in our communities,” he says. “If we are going to have them, we should reconsider the contracts that are written by these companies -- and by default, companies like Flock and Axon, and Vigilant, and all these other companies, are going to write contracts that make sure they have maximal access to the data. They can keep it for as long as they can, share it with whoever they want, use it for AI training, use it how they see fit. We don't have to accept that. Brother is here, but we can beat Big Brother.”
