YouTube Video

YouTube Video

YouTube Video

Somewhere between your house and the grocery store this morning, a camera photographed your car. It logged your plate, the time, your make, your model and the exact spot you passed. You didn’t see it. You never agreed to it. And it dropped a fresh dot on a map of everywhere you’ve been.

That camera almost certainly belongs to a company called Flock. What Flock has built should stop you cold.

Flock makes those small license plate readers bolted to poles in neighborhoods, business parks and parking lots. They snap every car that rolls past. The company runs roughly 80,000 cameras across 5,000 communities in 49 states, scanning more than 20 billion vehicles a month.

It started as an anti-car-theft tool. Reasonable enough. But the cameras don’t sit only with police. HOAs run them. Malls run them. Retailers run them. All that data pools into one searchable system.

One city’s cameras were quietly switched to “nationwide” sharing, opening the door to 600,000 searches by 250-plus agencies that never signed a single agreement. In another city, out-of-state agencies queried the database 1.6 million times in seven months. Your daily drive, searchable by strangers with a badge far away. No warrant required.

Now the cameras can fly

The poles were the start. Flock’s newest product is a drone called the Alpha. It reads a plate from 2,000 feet up, hits 60 mph and arrives in 85 seconds. Often before any officer.

A police lieutenant described it like this: An operator watches a plate-reader alert pop, taps a screen and a drone launches from the same software. It follows the vehicle in real time. Flock sells these to private companies’ coast to coast, hovering over malls and warehouses.

The cameras record where you’ve been. The drone watches where you’re going. Together they create something this country has never seen: an automatic, always-on record of how a free person moves through their own town.

You can’t opt out of a pole camera. You’re not powerless, though. If your HOA or city is installing these, show up. Demand it in writing: a strict data-retention limit and zero outside sharing.
Source: Kim Commando newsletter June 3, 2026

Thanks for being here. Just a reminder that financial freedom isn’t a number. It’s the moment “no” stops costing you sleep. I love that for you. — Kim
Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily
 THE KIM CHALLENGE: Forward this to ONE person who needs to hear it today. Pick the person who popped into your head while reading. You know who it is.