The new technology inside surveillance
Police cameras have discreetly evolved into a tools with massive surveillance capabilities.
What Are ALPRs?
Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) are high-speed camera systems that automatically capture all license plate numbers that come into view. These kinds of cameras have been around for a long time, but recently have been given major upgrades. They are used by law enforcement to track stolen vehicles and are helpful for automated traffic enforcement.
What Are PTZ Cameras?
Pan-Tilt-Zoom (PTZ) Cameras are camera systems that can pan, tilt, and zoom to follow moving objects. Law enforcement will use these cameras when investigating crimes or accidents.
How ALPRs used to work
ALPR systems previously served as a simple tool for police departments to quickly detect stolen vehicles and solve crimes when they happened. ALPRs performed a simple lookup to government crime databases when they saw license plates.
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The camera placed on a major roadway captures images of license images of license plates as they pass by.
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The camera uses Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to read the license plate and determine the characters on the plate.
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The license plate is then run against government crime databases like the NCIC and CCIC to see if the plate matches a stolen vehicle or is associated with an open crime investigation.
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If the plate is found to be stolen or associated with an open crime investigation, the camera will capture the image of the vehicle and alert the police department.
How cameras have evolved
Companies like Flock Safety have since added significant new features to ALPR cameras.
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Cameras are now installed in many locations around the city, including neighborhoods, playgrounds, and business areas.
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Cameras come equipped with additional AI capabilities that are capable of painting a full picture of any persons movements and behavior through the city.
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Data collected by the cameras is sent and stored by the camera company. This data is then used to train AI models on your behavior and movements.
Capabilities Then vs. Now
Classic ALPRs
- ✅ Capture images of license plates 24/7
- ✅ Runs license plates against CCIC & NCIC databases
- ✅ City owns the data
- ✅ Installed on major roadways only
New Cameras
- ✅ Capture images of license plates 24/7
- ✅ Runs plates against CCIC & NCIC databases
- 🚩 Installed in neighborhoods.
- 🚩 Collects vehicle tags (color, bumper stickers, dents, etc.)
- 🚩 Collects human data (face, age, race, clothing etc.)
- 🚩 City leases the data from private company
- 🚩 Data is shared outside of Colorado
- 🚩 Uses data for AI training
Artificial Intelligence
Flock Safety and other surveillance companies are rapidly integrating their camera products with Artificial intelligence. PTZ cameras use AI to track humans and automatically follow them around.
Companies like Flock Safety market their systems as a something that canautomatically solve cases. Or even predict crimes before they happen.
Police have already started to lazily trust these AI tools and skip real investigations. In Aurora, Colorado, police wrongfully accused a woman for stealing a $25 package.
FOX 31 • May 2024
Woman wrongfully accused for stealing a $25 package
Littleton, Colorado
9News • November 2024
Castle Rock Police using AI drones in a deal with Flock
Castle Rock, Colorado
How they train AI
The data that is collected from the thousands of cameras that are already installed is sent to cloud servers and to outsourced workers to train AI models at detecting specific objects. The training data is mixed in with other data from around the world to create a massive dataset that they can use to predict whether someone is guilty of a crime.
Police taking the 'easy way out'
Police departments are increasingly relying on AI to solve crimes instead of doing the hard work of investigating themselves. This is a clear sign that they are not interested in solving crimes, but in using technology to make their jobs easier. the priority is not in keeping communities safe but instead in reducing the cost of policing.
AI position tracking
AI position tracking is a feature that allows cameras to track the position of people and objects in real-time. This capability is made possible by the advanced level of data that cameras are now collecting like facial recognition, age, race, walking gait and more.
Surveillance as a subscription service
Instead of local governments owning cameras and data, companies like Flock Safety collect the data themselves and offer a Netflix-like subscription service to municipalities to access the camera footage and their AI crime solving tools.
Do cities own their data?
Flock Safety in particular claims that cities own their data. But there is a lot of fine print that poses major questions.
Data Sharing
With Flock Safety cameras, local police departments choose what other agencies they want to share data with. This level of data sharing can vary from city to city. See the examples below from two different Colorado cities:
Windsor Police Department
Shares with 669 organizations across the country
Lafayette Police Department
Shares data with 90 in-state organizations
City Transparency
In the examples above, the cities of Windsor and Lafayette disclose the organizations they share data with on transparency portals.
Many Colorado cities choose to hide this basic information. Whether or not a city discloses this information is a factor in our scoring system because we believe that the public should be aware of how their data is being shared in and out of the State of Colorado
Why haven't I heard about this?
Because ALPR systems have already been used successfully, it has been very easy for private companies to disguise these major surveillance upgrades inside of already approved "tools".
In concert with very aggressive sales and grant incentives, these cameras have snuck into thousands of small towns without any public awareness.
What Can You Do?
There are several ways you can take action:
Attend your city council meetings
Voice your concerns directly to local decision-makers
Join our 2026 protest
Sign up to get information about Colorado protests in 2026
More ways to get involved
See our get involved page for more ways to get involved
More Resources
StopFlock.com has a very informative page on ALPR surveillance.
alpr.watch is a project tracking upcoming council meetings and other important events.
haveibeenflocked.com has some excellent writeups about the issues and abuses shown by Flock.
deflock.org is the community-created map of ALPR cameras across the country.
Together, we can protect privacy rights and push back against mass surveillance in Colorado.