Mapping Every Flock License Plate Reader Near US World Cup Stadiums

Starting connected June 11, shot fans volition beryllium filling stadiums crossed North America to ticker the FIFA World Cup. Those driving to matches successful the United States mightiness besides find themselves being the ones watched: WIRED identified 1,181 automatic licence sheet scholar cameras, oregon ALPRs, wrong a five-mile radius of the 11 US stadiums playing big to the World Cup this summer. Most of those cameras are manufactured by Flock Safety.

ALPRs are acceptable up on roadsides by municipalities, businesses, schools, and backstage groups specified arsenic homeowners associations to continuously log the licence sheet of each car that passes by them. A marketplace survey study prepared for the US Department of Homeland Security says that immoderate providers tin cod different accusation similar the make, model, and twelvemonth of the conveyance and descriptions of bumper stickers affixed to it. Groups that run networks of these cameras tin past query those logs to find matches for circumstantial plates, creating a dossier of wherever a conveyance has gone and when. Flock Safety, successful particular, allows operators to stock their information with different groups connected their network, meaning that depending connected the operator, drivers tin accidentally get caught up successful a nationalist dragnet.

Flock Safety spokesperson Paris Lewbel acknowledged that the institution works with authorities agencies and “other customers” successful areas astir World Cup venues. Lewbel emphasized that Flock’s customers, not Flock itself, “own and power their data, determine if, when, and with whom to stock it.”

Andrew Elvish, the VP of planetary selling for Genetec, which sells ALPR software, says the Canadian institution is focused connected helping organizations negociate parking and isn’t funny successful providing excessive entree to aggregated licence sheet data, which helium says is simply a signifier that radical should beryllium rightfully acrophobic about.

ALPRs are almighty surveillance tools and ripe for abuse: Cops person been accused of utilizing them to allegedly stalk exes and strangers. In 2025, US Customs and Border Protection were recovered to beryllium violating a authorities instrumentality by accessing Flock information astir drivers by Illinois’ caput of state, who said it was “a wide usurpation of authorities law.” Flock employees adjacent person reportedly accessed cameras wrong a children’s gymnastics country and different locations arsenic portion of a income pitch, according to 404 Media. (In a blog post, Flock Safety said that the employees were not “spying connected children” and were “well-intentioned employees who accessed a camera web with the city's explicit permission, arsenic portion of their job.”)

Lewbel, the Flock spokesperson, says that the institution is “aware of a precise tiny fig of incidents of abuse,” adding that Flock Safety does not person a narration with DHS, including CBP, and that agencies extracurricular of Illinois request to accidental that they’re complying with Illinois instrumentality earlier they tin entree Illinois data.

Tracey Ades, a elder manager of selling for Genetec, says the institution does its champion to marque its tools arsenic harmless arsenic possible, but astatine the extremity of the time it's their customers’ instrumentality to deploy. “So the request for authorities to bounds what radical tin do?” says Ades. “That needs to beryllium thought through."

Across the US, communities person started pushing backmost against ALPR deployment and warring for much transparency. Activists person pried audit logs revealing whose licence plates were searched and why, and assembled it into a searchable database. Dozens of cities person terminated contracts, and groups are readying a nationalist week of enactment against ALPRs successful August. WIRED relied connected information compiled by 1 unpaid mapping project, DeFlock, to place wherever ALPRs were located adjacent US World Cup stadiums. Since the information is crowdsourced, it whitethorn not beryllium a afloat representation of each the ALPRs successful a fixed area.