Fortuna said she had a roommate who was stopped by police due to a misread license plate about a year after she learned of the technology. She had already found the readers concerning, but after learning that ALPRs and cameras were set up around the city, Fortuna joined a local group called No ALPRs<\/a>. The coalition has become an important force in the anti-Flock movement.<\/p>\n In August, she participated in a \u201cFlock Walk,” an event where people walk to different cameras and learn more about their usage.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reason that I’m out here today is because of the history of fascism and what it means to take a stand in the beginning before you see everything \u2014 anything \u2014\u00a0criminalized,\u201d Fortuna said. \u201cTo the individuals that don’t care if it doesn’t affect them, it’s only a matter of time.\u201d<\/p>\n The pushback against automated license plate readers, known as the “DeFlock” movement, is growing.<\/p>\n The map below, from DeFlock.org, is a community-led initiative to track where license plate readers are located nationwide.<\/p>\n What are ALPRs exactly?<\/p>\n Automated license plate readers are AI-powered cameras that photograph and analyze images of vehicles within their range. The cameras capture the license plate of cars as well as the make, model, color and individual features, like stickers or roof racks. <\/p>\n Flock Safety is one of the most commonly known companies powering these cameras. The technology creates a database with details on when a car passed a certain location on specific dates and times. Police can then query the database to find vehicles.<\/p>\n Flock also provides AI-powered live surveillance cameras, which capture and analyze video, and drones, according to the Flock Safety website<\/a>.<\/p>\n Who\u2019s behind the local ‘DeFlock’ movement?<\/p>\n The No ALPRs coalition is made of groups like the Texas Civil Rights Project<\/a>, Local Progress<\/a>, Austin Democratic Socialists of America<\/a>, and Grassroots Leadership<\/a>, which have been organizing against the readers. There are also residents, like Fortuna, who joined the coalition.<\/p>\n The DeFlock movement isn’t new. In June of last year, Austin City Council voted<\/a> to end its contract with Flock. At the time, Council Member Mike Siegel was one of the local representatives who voted against a contract renewal in Austin. He is also a member of Local Progress.<\/p>\n “Ever since then, as an elected official and member of national organizations, I’ve been trying to recruit folks from around the country to join us in opposing Flock Safety and opposing ALPRs,” Siegel said. “And one of the most important things that came out of the Austin movement was a collection of community-based organizations that formed what they call the No ALPRs Coalition.”<\/p>\n After Austin, other cities began canceling contracts. Siegel said he and his staff have been reaching out to other elected officials, developing presentations and analyzing the vulnerabilities of the surveillance systems, specifically how they could expose the privacy of citizens.<\/p>\n “I worked closely with a couple of the Pflugerville council members as they were studying their Flock Safety programs and trying to decide whether they should fight to end those programs,\u201d Siegel said.<\/p>\n U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, has also pushed against the cameras. <\/p>\n “We’ve got to stop these AI companies from having your private data,” Casar said in an interview on video podcast The Moment Live. ” … It used to take one FBI agent or one creepy person a lot of work to track someone, but now with AI tools, one person, be they law enforcement or be they just an everyday person on the street, can track literally thousands of people at once.”<\/p>\n Another driver of the DeFlock movement is coming from regular citizens.<\/p>\n In Pflugerville, a resident submitted a public information request for which organizations had been accessing the city\u2019s Flock data. The city had a list of 83 approved vendors who could pull the data, Pflugerville Mayor Doug Weiss said.<\/p>\n The records request showed that 459 agencies across the country had access to the city’s data, the mayor said. It led to a cancellation of the contracts. Shortly after, other cities followed suit, like Leander<\/a>, Bastrop<\/a> and Manor<\/a>, citing data privacy concerns.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we had not discovered that information, that is a scary scenario,\u201d Weiss said in an interview with KUT News. \u201cI don’t know if the vote would have been as unanimous as it was once that information was revealed.\u201d<\/p>\n Lorianne Willett<\/p>\n \/<\/p>\n KUT News<\/p>\n A downed Flock camera lays on the ground near North Lamar Boulevard last month.<\/p>\n One of the loudest voices against the contract was Pflugerville Council Member Rudy Metayer, who is also a part of Local Progress. <\/p>\n “Let’s be blunt here. They’re a terrible company, not a bad partner. A terrible company,” Metayer said at the meeting in late August. “And to see over and over again, them not learning from us. We were in this room, what, six \u2014\u00a0eight months ago? And lying to our face about what the hell they do.\u201d<\/p>\n The Texas Civil Rights Project is another prominent group in the No APLRs coalition.<\/p>\n The project looks into how local governments use the technology, contract renewal dates and any opportunities to intervene before renewal votes, according to Chris Harris, the associate advocacy director for the group.<\/p>\n \u201cWe see Flock cameras and automated license plate readers … as something that ultimately is incompatible with our privacy as people in the community,\u201d Harris said. \u201cAnd we believe that the solution is to take these cameras down and not collect the data about the travel habits of everybody across our community and across our state and our country.\u201d<\/p>\n And, in 2027, the Texas Civil Rights Project is organizing a push against automated license plate readers at the Texas Legislature.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s a two-sided battle. Flock Safety has spent over $2 million on federal and state lobbying since 2025, according to lobbying watchdog Open Secrets<\/a>. In Pflugerville, representatives with Flock Safety sat down over lunch with the council members, where they were informed about the technology and its capabilities. <\/p>\n \u201cWe spent an hour with them telling us all about the system, and that’s where we heard some things about these search capabilities that ended up not being true,\u201d Mayor Weiss said, referring to the system\u2019s data privacy. <\/p>\n Flock Safety did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication. In a statement to Spectrum News<\/a> last month, a Flock representative said the company “supports legislation that creates guardrails for how license plate recognition data is used and shared.\u201d<\/p>\n Opposition to the DeFlock movement<\/p>\n Lorianne Willett<\/p>\n \/<\/p>\n KUT News<\/p>\n A Flock camera stands in a neighborhood on Koenig Lane. Some DeFlock groups have organized “Flock Walks” to identify cameras and explain what they do.<\/p>\n In Austin, Council Member Siegel said Flock Safety has attempted to lobby for the reimplementation of the contracts. <\/p>\n But not all cities or elected officials are on the same page as Austin and Pflugerville. Cities in the Austin area like Kyle, Round Rock and Cedar Park all still maintain their contracts with Flock Safety. <\/p>\n The city of Kyle\u2019s chief of police, Jeff Barnett, said the technology has helped numerous times, including a felony case on Aug. 31. Alonso Echeverria is accused of stealing a car with a 5-month-old baby in the backseat, according to Barnett. “Our investigators used automated license plate reader (ALPR) technology to quickly identify and locate the vehicle, recovering the unharmed infant, who was reunited with the family,” the police department said in a Facebook post<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cDo I think we would have solved it?” Barnett said in an interview. “Yes, but I don’t know how long it would have taken, and I don’t know what else could have occurred or what danger that child could have been in beyond the time that it already took us to find him, which was about 20 minutes in another town.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, Chief Barnett says there are safeguards in place. Officers have to put in a police case number and the nature of the search. There\u2019s also a commander who puts together a monthly report and audit to make sure no one is abusing the information. The city also maintains what it calls a transparency website<\/a>.<\/p>\n The city of Kyle has 35 license plate reader cameras, 12 live view cameras and two drones, as part of its contract with Flock Safety, according to Barnett.<\/p>\n The technology is also used statewide. Even in cities that have ended their contracts with Flock, the Texas Department of Public Safety has placed ALPRs on state roads and highways.<\/p>\n Since June 2023, there have been at least 388,000 queries by the department, according to an investigation by USA Today.<\/a><\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789560011_943_.jpeg\"\/)
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