Flock cameras have caused debate across Texas and the United States, as the powerful surveillance technology has been increasingly used by police departments and installed by cities, homeowners associations, school districts and businesses. Now, those curious if they’ve been tracked using the cameras can check for themselves.
The website, haveibeenflocked.com, allows a user to type in their license plate number. Then the website will send back information on search results, letting someone know if an operator on the Flock system asked the database for their license plate through Flock.
“This user is not necessarily a police officer, and a search does not imply you were stopped or investigated,” the FAQs on the site read. “Search policies vary, but many police agencies do not require a warrant or even suspicion to perform a search.”
The data does not show if you’ve passed a Flock camera while driving, only records of searches done by Flock’s customers.
The data on the website includes “audit logs” that track searches made within the Flock system, which are acquired by open records requests.
“The dataset is incomplete; few governments provide easy access to these logs, and the records we obtain are often redacted,” the website reads.
The data is only from records that are already in the public domain, and anyone with audit logs can submit them to the website.
“We believe mass surveillance has no place in a free society, and this data should not be collected to begin with,” the website reads. “If it is collected, warrants should be used, lookups should be rare, and police and private parties, like Flock and HaveIBeenFlocked.com, should not be permitted to act without functional restraints or oversight.”
Flock cameras are all over Houston, and some have been vandalized or cut down as the community pushes back against them.
Officers in Pasadena and Baytown have been investigated for abusing the technology in the past month and there have been dozens of cases across the country of police using the tool for stalking.
League City is the first Texas city to put the cameras on a ballot, weighing in on whether or not the city should use the cameras.