Hundreds of Flock cameras on Long Island help solve crimes but critics raise alarms about government surveillance

Long Island's roadways are home to hundreds of controversial automatic license plate readers, widely called Flock cameras, and while law enforcement officials say they are a valuable crime-fighting tool, critics have raised alarms about their potential for widespread government surveillance on citizens.

More than 700 of the plate readers adorn poles and other structures in Nassau and Suffolk counties, according to an open-source database on the website Deflock.org that looks at the vastness of the network. It shows a network of more than 140,000 automatic license plate readers across the country. 

But in recent months, several municipalities across the country, including in New York State, have canceled their contracts with Flock Security, one of the largest manufacturers of the technology, founded in 2017, after residents raised concerns about privacy and potential wrongful use.

Susan Gottehrer, the director of the Nassau County chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said more transparency and greater oversight is needed in the operation of the cameras.

"We want to make sure that New Yorkers are living their lives freely, and Nassau County residents and Long Islanders, are living their lives freely and able to be out in public without being tracked," Gottehrer said. 

The NYCLU helped draft legislation that is pending in the New York Legislature to restrict the use of automatic license plate readers for felony investigations and locating stolen vehicles and missing persons. The legislation would also prohibit data sharing outside of New York State and would only allow the data generated from the cameras to be held for 48 hours unless it was being used as evidence.

The plate readers capture the license plate number of a vehicle, as well as its color, make, model and other physical characteristics like bumper stickers, allowing law enforcement to use the data to place suspects in the vicinity of crimes. Critics point to varying rules on how long the data is stored and rules around access to it.

Cameras throughout LI

On Long Island, the cameras have been in use for about two decades. Police have said they've helped law enforcement solve homicides, find stolen cars and make arrests in a variety of crimes. There is no state requirement for police departments to register its license plate readers with the state, Newsday has reported. 

The readers are being used in Long Island's smaller police departments as well, stretching from communities such as Old Brookville and Glen Cove to the Towns of Southold and Riverhead, according to the Deflock database. 

In Hempstead's 11550 ZIP code, for example, the map shows 61 automatic license plate readers. In the 11758 zip code in Massapequa, there are 10. In Ronkonkoma's 11779 ZIP code, the map shows six, while there are 16 in Riverhead's 11901 ZIP code. In total, it appears there are about 725 cameras operating in Nassau and Suffolk counties, according to the crowdsourced data.

But lawmakers in both Nassau and Suffolk have expressed reservations about the use of the technology.

Suffolk County legislators last month sent a letter to Flock, saying constituents have raised privacy concerns, although Suffolk County Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina, in a statement, said the department has usage protocols in place. 

“License plate readers are a valuable law enforcement tool that can assist with criminal investigations as well as cases involving missing or vulnerable people including children and the elderly," Catalina said. "Access to LPR [license plate reader] data is used exclusively for authorized law enforcement purposes."

The commissioner added that searches of its license plate reader database are limited to investigative commands and require a case number, and searches are subject to audits.

"The fixed readers capture still images, not video, and are directed at public roadways, not private property," Catalina said. "The department will continually review its policy to ensure appropriate safeguards remain in place while providing law enforcement with an effective tool to protect public safety." 

Suffolk recently inked a $3.79 million contract with Flock Safety to provide gunfire detection sensors. 

Legis. Delia DeRiggi-Whitton, the Nassau County minority leader, praised the technology but said her caucus would like to work with the Republicans to create "stronger safeguards." 

“License-plate readers are proven crime-fighting tools that have been used successfully in towns and villages across Nassau County for years, but that doesn’t mean the County can’t establish stronger safeguards for data retention, access, and sharing," DeRiggi-Whitton said in a statement. "The debate over public safety and privacy is not new, and we are open to working with our Republican colleagues in the Legislature to strike the right balance." 

A spokesperson for the Republicans on the county legislature didn't respond. A Nassau police department spokesman didn't make Nassau Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder available for an interview about Nassau's fleet of readers.

Database of known sites

Anti-Flock camera activist Will Freeman, a software engineer and privacy advocate, created the website that includes a map of many of the known camera sites in 2024. He didn't respond to a message seeking comment, but on the website said he started it because he was "upset about this trend to blatantly disregard the Fourth Amendment."

Adam Wandt, an expert in police technology and an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, is a strong proponent of license plate readers, but said they need state oversight.

"They're incredible tools to solve major crimes that we have to have in our communities, but they need to be seriously regulated and overseen by state authorities," Wandt said. 

Wandt, however, said Flock, which is based in Atlanta and uses AI-powered software, has lacked transparency around the data it is collecting, which is available to its customers in a searchable database. 

"Realistically, they're run by private companies who have the motivation of profit over our civil rights and liberties," Wandt said. "The Fourth Amendment does not cover corporate America and corporate America will push against the law as far as they can to make as much money as they can. So the question we need to ask ourselves right now is: How far has Flock pushed? Are they violating civil liberties of Americans across the country?" 

Similar concerns have prompted some communities to cancel their contracts with Flock. Secure Justice, a San Francisco-based advocacy group, features a "Flock termination tracker" on its website with a linked list of municipalities that have "terminated, suspended or declined to renew" its contracts with Flock. As of the end of August, the group had documented 352 moves to terminate Flock contracts in 35 states. 

A Flock spokesperson referred Newsday's questions to their website. The company recently announced it would shorten the length of time for data retention from 30 days to seven and mandate an audit tool to flag potential abuses, The Associated Press reported.

Local police have also investigated several instances of plate reader vandalism, primarily on the East End. Last month, a 68-year-old man was charged with stealing two license plate readers from a Shirley intersection. 

The Washington Post recently reported it had found at least 69 instances of police officers across the country being accused of misusing automatic license plate reader data to track or stalk estranged wives, ex-girlfriends and others.

The NYCLU has documented cases of the cameras' data being accessed in questionable circumstances, including in Syracuse, where after the police department opted into sharing its data, the data for drivers in Syracuse was accessed 4.4 million times in a 11-month span in 2024 and 2025. Nearly 3,000 of the queries were related to immigration, the NYCLU said. 

Ryder, an early booster of the technology, told Newsday in 2016 when he was the commanding officer of the department’s Asset Forfeiture and Intelligence Unit, the department had about 50 cameras. 

“It is the No. 1 tool that we use here," Ryder said then. “If I could put them on every block in Nassau County, I would." 
Newsday's Arielle Martinez contributed to this story.