About Finding Flock

The site does two things. It maintains a map of license plate readers documented by volunteers on OpenStreetMap, the openly licensed world map, refreshed every six hours and browsable camera by camera and city by city. And it publishes reported explainers on the technology in the Learn section. The full data pipeline — where the locations come from, how often they update, and what the known limitations are — is documented on the methodology page.

Alongside them, a license plate lookup checks a plate against Flock search logs that agencies have released through public records requests. The records come from an independent collection of those logs rather than from our reporting, and the plate is hashed in your browser before anything is sent.

Finding Flock is maintained by a small independent team. The site is pseudonymous by design: articles carry no individual bylines, and we do not publish personal details about contributors. That choice puts the weight where we think it belongs — on the sources. Every factual claim here is cited to a record you can check without trusting us, and the map links each camera to its underlying OpenStreetMap entry, edit history included.

We write in a neutral, data-journalism voice. Every statistic is attributed to a named source — a statute, a court filing, a government record, a vendor’s own documentation, or a named news organization — and each article records the date it was last revised.

We document where license plate readers have been reported and how the technology works. We deliberately do not publish guidance on evading, disabling, or interfering with cameras, and we decline requests to add it.

Corrections. If a camera on the map is wrong, moved, or gone, the fix belongs in the underlying data: edit the record on OpenStreetMap, as described in the corrections section of the methodology, and the change reaches this site with the next refresh. For errors in an article — a misquoted statute, a broken citation, an out-of-date figure — email us and we will review and correct it.

Finding Flock is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or funded by Flock Safety, Inc., or by any surveillance vendor or government agency; the full independence statement is on the methodology page. The site is supported by display advertising from the Adsterra network. The network, not us, chooses which ads appear, we sell no placements directly, and no advertiser has any say in what we publish — details are on the privacy page.

Use the contact form or write to info@findingflock.com for corrections, press inquiries, and questions about the data. There are no accounts here and nothing to sign up for, and what the site itself collects when you visit is set out in the privacy notice.