Federal grants bought plate readers and cameras for polling sites in 12 places across 5 states

Short answer: Federal grants paid for plate readers or surveillance cameras explicitly at polling sites or ballot drop boxes in 12 jurisdictions across 5 states (Texas, Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky and Oregon), about $1.07 million ($1,074,627.77). Seven are in Texas, where one FEMA Homeland Security award paid four Dallas-Fort Worth cities $328,843 for plate readers tied to polling places; only Irving's names Flock Safety. Our check of Flock's own inventory found no fixed Flock reader at any of Irving's 38 polling sites; it cannot show mobile units on election day. The midterms are Nov 3.

TL;DR: All 12 award records were verified against USAspending on Oct 29 2026, but recipients write these descriptions and we have not confirmed installation at any site. Since FY2023 FEMA has required states to spend at least 3% of Homeland Security Grant Program money on election security, and in Texas part of it went to police plate readers. Around that record sits the wider Flock network: 64 federal awards naming Flock worth $4.59 million, a federal inspector general paying to search other agencies' Flock data, Lowe's and Home Depot owning 82% of owner-identified private devices, and 40% of 212,892 Flock devices sitting where no state plate-reader law applies.

Key numbers

What	Number	Source, checked Oct 28 2026
Federal grants for plate readers at polling places (4 Texas cities)	$328,843	USAspending EMW-2023-SS-00025
Places with federal grants for cameras at polls or drop boxes	12 in 5 states, $1,074,627.77	USAspending subawards, our search
Irving polling places with a fixed Flock device within 50 m	0 of 38	Flock inventory + Dallas County vote centers
Flock devices in service, 50 states + DC	212,892 (214,073 incl. territories and unassigned)	Flock inventory via Proton's map
DHS grant for readers "at polling locations", Irving TX	$44,400 (Nov 9 2023)	USAspending EMW-2023-SS-00025
Federal award records naming Flock	64, $4.59M award value	USAspending.gov, our filter
Texas state pass-through subawards naming Flock	10, $570,838	USAspending subawards
GSA Inspector General orders for Flock OS access	$67,986 (FY2024-26)	USAspending 47J00025F0020
Owner-identified devices that are private	4,625 of 17,327 (26.7%)	OpenStreetMap tags, our join
Lowe's + Home Depot share of identified private devices	3,782 of 4,625 (82%)	Same join
Devices in places with no plate-reader statute	84,974 (39.9%)	NCSL + inventory
Devices where law does not clearly reach private cameras	175,378 (82.4%)	NCSL + inventory
Paid to Flock in 10 public checkbooks	about $10.9M (a floor)	10 Socrata open-data checkbooks

The record: election money, aimed at polling places

Under one federal award, EMW-2023-SS-00025, FEMA sent Homeland Security Grant Program money to the Office of the Texas Governor, which passed it to local governments. Four of those subawards, made within five weeks in fall 2023, buy plate readers for the polls. In the recipients' own words (the originals are in capitals):

• Lewisville, $139,483.43, Oct 13 2023: "The city of lewisville's election security camera trailers will provide two automatic license plate reader trailers. the deployable license plate reader trailers will allow law enforcement to remotely monitor polling sites and identify potential terroristic behavior and suspicious activity and relay the information to onsite law enforcement personnel."
• Grand Prairie, $101,084.73, Oct 26 2023: "The city of grand prairie's managed surveillance cameras project will provide license plate reader cameras at polling locations across the city of grand prairie. the purchase of the license plate reader cameras will aid in security at election sites allowing law enforcement to monitor polling locations and help in detection and investigation of potential terrorist activity."
• Irving, $44,400.00, Nov 9 2023: "The city of irving's flock camera project will provide an automatic license plate reader system to be placed at polling locations in the city of irving. the license plate reader system will enhance the capability to detect possible issues at polling locations throughout the city and monitor for suspected breech of election security from malicious actors or terrorist organizations."
• Arlington, $43,874.84, Nov 13 2023: "The city of arlington's election security project will purchase deployable cameras, license plate readers and upgrade camera trailers for the police department's tactical intelligence unit. the purchase of this camera equipment will increase security at election sites by allowing law enforcement to remotely monitor polling sites and identify potential terroristic behavior and suspicious activity."

Our check of Flock's own inventory found no fixed Flock reader at any of Irving's 38 polling sites; it cannot show mobile units on election day. Details below.

A plate reader logs every car that passes, with a time stamp. Pointed at a polling place, it would log who drove to vote. Texas has no plate-reader law limiting how long that data is kept (NCSL).

Two cautions. Grant recipients write these descriptions themselves, so they show what the money was approved for, not where equipment ended up. And we have not independently confirmed installation at any specific site. We found no prior reporting on any of the four grants.

Why election money bought police cameras

Election security has been a FEMA priority in this program since FY2020, and starting in FY2023 FEMA required states to spend at least 3% of it there (FY2023 HSGP fact sheet). The four Texas awards are FY2023 money. States choose who gets that slice. Texas sent part of it to police departments, and police bought what police buy.

12 places, 5 states

We searched every federal subaward description from FY2019 to FY2026 for polling and election terms. Using a strict rule (the text must tie cameras or plate readers to polling sites or ballot drop boxes), we found 12 jurisdictions in Texas, Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky and Oregon, worth $1,074,627.77, across the 2020 and 2024 election cycles. Seven of the 12 are in Texas.

Jurisdiction	State	Agency and program	Award and subaward	Amount (date)	Technology	Purpose, verbatim from the record	Vendor	Installation
Lewisville	TX	FEMA HSGP via Texas Governor	EMW-2023-SS-00025, subaward 4903101	$139,483.43 (2023-10-13)	Plate-reader trailers (2)	"The city of lewisville's election security camera trailers will provide two automatic license plate reader trailers. the deployable license plate reader trailers will allow law enforcement to remotely monitor polling sites and identify potential terroristic behavior and suspicious activity and relay the information to onsite law enforcement personnel."	Vendor not named	Not confirmed
Grand Prairie	TX	FEMA HSGP via Texas Governor	EMW-2023-SS-00025, subaward 4896501	$101,084.73 (2023-10-26)	Plate-reader cameras	"The city of grand prairie's managed surveillance cameras project will provide license plate reader cameras at polling locations across the city of grand prairie. the purchase of the license plate reader cameras will aid in security at election sites allowing law enforcement to monitor polling locations and help in detection and investigation of potential terrorist activity."	Vendor not named	Not confirmed
Irving	TX	FEMA HSGP via Texas Governor	EMW-2023-SS-00025, subaward 4898001	$44,400.00 (2023-11-09)	Plate-reader system	"The city of irving's flock camera project will provide an automatic license plate reader system to be placed at polling locations in the city of irving. the license plate reader system will enhance the capability to detect possible issues at polling locations throughout the city and monitor for suspected breech of election security from malicious actors or terrorist organizations."	Flock (named in record)	Not confirmed
Arlington	TX	FEMA HSGP via Texas Governor	EMW-2023-SS-00025, subaward 4904501	$43,874.84 (2023-11-13)	Plate readers, deployable cameras, camera trailers	"The city of arlington's election security project will purchase deployable cameras, license plate readers and upgrade camera trailers for the police department's tactical intelligence unit. the purchase of this camera equipment will increase security at election sites by allowing law enforcement to remotely monitor polling sites and identify potential terroristic behavior and suspicious activity."	Vendor not named	Not confirmed
Oregon Secretary of State	OR	DOJ Byrne JAG via Oregon State Police	15PBJA22GG00606JAGX, subaward JAG-22-01	$300,000.00 (2024-04-26)	Cameras with livestream	"The oregon secretary of state (sos) elections division will pilot the use of security cameras monitoring ballot boxes and ballot processing areas, including livestream monitoring. sos will fund consultation services, cameras, licenses and installation services for remote cameras at select county vote processing locations and ballot drop boxes."	Vendor not named	Not confirmed
Shelby County	IN	FEMA HSGP via Indiana Dept. of Homeland Security	EMW-2024-SS-05105, subaward SHSP-2024-PRIORITY-00001	$136,000.00 (2024-11-08)	Surveillance trailers (4), live feed	"This project will allow real time surveillance at rural voting locations within shelby county communities for local law enforcement agencies that can be used for gathering intelligence ... the trailers will then be deployed to voting locations during elections to gather information and allow local law enforcement to monitor these locations in real time." (excerpt)	Vendor not named	Not confirmed
Daphne	AL	FEMA HSGP via Alabama State Law Enforcement Agency	EMW-2024-SS-05026, subaward 2024-4LOC-ELE-194	$80,000.00 (2024-11-05)	Surveillance trailers	"Purchase portable surveillance trailers to be used at polling sites for election security."	Vendor not named	Not confirmed
Lyon County	KY	FEMA HSGP via Kentucky Office of Homeland Security	EMW-2020-SS-00039, subaward 20-007	$63,100.00 (2020-10-09)	Modular cameras	"Provide funding for the sustainment/building of election security through the purchase of modular security camera systems for voting poll site locations."	Vendor not named	Not confirmed
Killeen	TX	FEMA HSGP via Texas Governor	EMW-2024-SS-05096, subaward 5102801	$48,798.00 (2024-10-17)	Security cameras, door locks	"The city of killeen es - physical site security measures project will fund the purchase of security cameras and integrated secured door locks. this equipment will be installed at 8 locations around the city of killeen that are utilized as polling centers during national, state, regional, and local elections. these physical security measures will assist in protecting the election infrastructure from unauthorized access and potential acts of terrorism that aim to utilize the election system as an attack against the country."	Vendor not named	Not confirmed
Travis County	TX	FEMA HSGP via Texas Governor	EMW-2023-SS-00025, subaward 4901601	$41,586.77 (2023-11-01)	Cameras, data storage	"Travis county's election security - the ready project will provide training, cameras, data storage, and other security equipment to enhance the vote count center and polling sites in travis county. the grant will ensure the integrity of texas elections by protecting electoral systems against compromise or interference."	Vendor not named	Not confirmed
Garland	TX	FEMA HSGP via Texas Governor	EMW-2022-SS-00021, subaward 4923601	$40,000.00 (2023-12-18)	Cameras with live video feed, alarm buttons	"The city of garland's election security enforcements project will fund automatic alert response buttons and cameras to increase security at voting locations within the city of garland. the response buttons and cameras at the city of garland locations will provide real-time/actionable intel from inside each voting facility via a secure video feed and alarm buttons for staff to alert law enforcement in the case of an active threat or terrorist attack."	Vendor not named	Not confirmed
Rainsville (police dept.)	AL	FEMA HSGP via Alabama State Law Enforcement Agency	EMW-2024-SS-05026, subaward 2024-4LOC-ELE-240	$36,300.00 (2024-11-05)	Camera tower platform	"Purchase surveillance platform with camera tower to assist with surveillance at polling sites."	Vendor not named	Not confirmed

All 12 rows were re-checked live against the USAspending subaward API on Oct 29 2026: recipient, subaward number, amount and description match. Texts are lowercased from the original capitals.

The other eight bought cameras, not plate readers: Shelby County, Indiana's $136,000 buys four trailers to deploy "to voting locations during elections" for "gathering intelligence"; Daphne, Alabama's $80,000 buys "portable surveillance trailers to be used at polling sites"; Oregon's Secretary of State used $300,000 of Justice Department money to livestream ballot drop boxes. We left out 19 more awards for cameras at election offices or warehouses, and 8 near misses where one bundled award names both a plate-reader project and an election line without tying them together. Both lists are in the CSV.

We checked Flock's own inventory at Irving's polls

We matched Flock's device inventory against Irving's 38 vote-center addresses for Nov 3 2026 (Dallas County Elections). No fixed Flock device sits within 50 meters of any of them. Two are within 100 meters and ten within 250 meters, about what you get for random points or other public buildings in Irving (not a statistically significant difference). The Irving Arts Center early-voting site is 822 meters from the nearest device.

That does not settle it either way. The inventory's dates start in March 2024, after the grant, and a $44,400 "system" for polling locations reads like portable units. Irving has 2 Flock trailers and 5 portable falconFlex units in the inventory, and their coordinates are a single snapshot, not where they sit on election day.

What would settle it: Texas Public Information Act requests to Irving, Lewisville, Grand Prairie and Arlington for each subaward file, purchase order, device serial numbers and election-day deployment logs for Nov 2023 through Nov 2026, plus the application narratives from the Governor's Homeland Security Grants Division.

The Governor's office: ten Flock subawards

Texas state government passed federal money to Flock projects 10 times in our pull, $570,838 in award value. Nine list the Governor's office as the pass-through; one lists the State of Texas. The Fort Worth record, a "Fusion Center Flock Safety cameras project" meant to "share captured information with other units working to prevent an act of terrorism," shows $0, so the total is a floor (USAspending).

• San Angelo: $73,000 of Homeland Security money for "COSA Flock program FY26," dated Aug 6 2026 (USAspending). That is 22 days before Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state agencies to stop spending on Flock (KWTX, Aug 28 2026).
• Orange: $72,000 of DOJ Project Safe Neighborhoods gun-violence money for 20 cameras, or $3,600 each (USAspending).
• Leon Valley: $49,950, Project Safe Neighborhoods (USAspending).
• Pflugerville: three subawards ($81,201, $70,000 and $33,963), plus $114,674 to the Boys and Girls Clubs of San Antonio for "City of Pflugerville's Flock initiative."

Abbott's office said "most of" city Flock funding comes from the federal government, per KWTX. The receipts show where some of it went first: through his own office. His pause covered state agency spending. These federal pass-throughs are grants his office administers.

The money runs in a loop

We searched USAspending for every award since FY2018 whose description or recipient names Flock, then removed false hits by hand (poultry flocks, flocked swabs, a "Little Flock" bridge). What is left is 64 records worth $4,585,544 in award value. That is the value of awards that name Flock, not money Flock received: many awards also pay for computers or overtime. It is also a floor, because most grant descriptions never name a vendor.

• DOJ pass-through subawards: 26, $2.47M, including Berkeley's $1M gun-violence package that funds "Flock Safety's Nova software" (USAspending).
• DOJ direct grants: 24, $1.20M, mostly Byrne JAG awards to cities like Knoxville, Lakewood CO and Warren MI.
• DHS subawards: 3, $117,400 (Irving, San Angelo, Fort Worth).
• HUD: Green Bay paid Flock Group Inc $57,000 of Community Development Block Grant money, a program for low-income neighborhoods (USAspending).
• Federal contracts: 10, $767,248, of which $520,050 went straight to Flock Group Inc.

The biggest federal buyer is the US Park Police: $433,600 for a Flock plate-reader system in the DC area, signed Sep 25 2025 (USAspending). The VA bought twice ($44,450 in 2023 and $42,000 in 2025), the Air Force twice through a reseller, and the Pentagon's Washington Headquarters Services paid $64,591 for "Flock perimeter license plate reader systems."

An inspector general buys a seat on the network

The General Services Administration's Office of Inspector General has paid $22,000, $22,660 and $23,326 in FY2024, FY2025 and FY2026 through reseller Thundercat Technology. One order describes what it buys: "Regional access to Flock OS platform. Unlimited Region 4 users. Ability to request access to shared data from other law enforcement agencies using Flock OS" (USAspending 47J00025F0020). The latest renewal is dated Jul 1 2026 (USAspending).

That GSA OIG searched one Mountain View, California camera through a nationwide setting was already reported (Techdirt, Feb 2026). What the contract record adds is that the access is a paid, renewed, multi-year subscription whose stated purpose is reaching other agencies' data.

Flock says that in August 2025 "all federal organizations were removed from statewide and national lookup networks" (Flock). The 2026 order describes something narrower: requesting shared data agency by agency. Both can be true. That is the point: whether a federal office can see a town's cameras depends on sharing settings that the town's residents usually never vote on.

So the loop looks like this. Federal grants help local agencies buy Flock cameras. Those agencies' data sits on a shared network. Federal offices pay to request access to it.

What cities actually pay

Ten public open-data checkbooks show about $10.9 million paid to Flock, net of reversals. Riverside County, California paid $6.65 million, nearly all through the Sheriff ($6.58M). Dallas paid $1.76 million in FY2026 alone, $563,800 of it from a "State Grant" fund. Baton Rouge paid $23,150 from its American Rescue Plan pandemic fund (Baton Rouge checkbook).

Riverside's board added 170 long-range cameras for $1,556,000 in January 2026 without competitive bids, citing Flock as the sole source (board item). Grant descriptions price cameras at roughly $3,000 to $6,000 each per year: Orange paid $3,600, Marlborough MA $2,984, Oceanside CA $5,879.

The private network nobody votes on

Flock sells to police, but also to stores, malls, homeowners associations and hospitals. Its inventory (the file behind Proton's map, which we decoded in October) has no owner field. So we built one: we matched each in-service device to the nearest Flock plate reader on OpenStreetMap within 100 meters and read the "operator" tag volunteers entered.

That gives a known owner for 17,327 devices, 8.1% of the inventory. Of those, 12,702 are police or other government, and 4,625 (26.7%) are private.

Inside the private group, two companies dominate. Lowe's has 2,144 identified devices and Home Depot 1,638: together 82% of every owner-identified private Flock device. In OpenStreetMap's raw tags, Lowe's is the single most common operator of a Flock camera, ahead of every police department. Then come Simon Property Group (133), Kaiser Permanente (97) and Dierbergs Markets (63). HOAs total 133, but HOA cameras are rarely tagged, so treat that as a floor.

This is not a national census. Retail cameras are easy to tag because the store name is on the building; police poles are not. So we never extrapolate 26.7% to the full network. What we can say: of devices with a known owner, about one in four is private, and most of those belong to two hardware chains. 404 Media first reported that Lowe's and Home Depot share Flock data with police; device-level counts against Flock's own inventory had not been published.

The timing matters too. In November 2025, Flock's biggest month (15,160 devices added), 402 of the 437 new devices with a known owner were private. In October it was 190 of 242. Those are small samples, and earlier spikes exist (April 2024, December 2024), so read it as a signal, not a trend line.

The gap in the law

We joined Flock's per-state device counts to NCSL's table of state plate-reader statutes. Our denominator is 212,892 devices in the 50 states and DC. Flock's inventory lists 214,073 in service; the 1,181 difference is 82 devices in Puerto Rico, 109 in the US Virgin Islands and 990 with no county attached.

• No law at all: 84,974 devices (39.9%) sit in 25 places with no plate-reader statute, led by Texas (27,469), Ohio (9,400) and Indiana (8,338).
• Private cameras not clearly covered: 175,378 devices (82.4%) are in states whose law does not clearly reach a store or HOA camera. Only California, Kentucky, Arkansas, Iowa and Maine clearly do, and two of those (Arkansas and Kentucky) wrote laws that expand private use rather than limit it.
• No retention cap: 144,607 devices (67.9%) are in places with no statutory limit on how long plate data is kept.

Where the law is silent, the binding rule is Flock's own setting. On Aug 13 2026 Flock said it was "updating our recommendation and default to a 7-day retention," but "existing customers will keep their current, democratically approved retention periods" (Flock). The old default was 30 days. So for most devices, the limit on how long your car's movements are stored is a vendor default that existing customers can keep at 30 days or change.

Some states set caps far longer than Flock's default. Georgia, Flock's home state and its second-biggest market with 28,686 devices, allows 30 months according to NCSL's summary. Colorado allows three years and Alabama five.

The record of misuse

We are not the first to count police misuse of plate readers. The Institute for Justice database tracks abuse across all vendors, and The Auto Wire's running record lists Flock cases. What we added is outcomes, side by side.

We checked the vendor in every personal-misuse case and kept only the 27 where a source names Flock. Of those 27, 26 ended in a firing, resignation or criminal charge. Five have a court record: a Riverside County sheriff's deputy convicted on 10 counts and sentenced to six years (Desert Sun), plus guilty or no-contest pleas in Kechi KS, Costa Mesa CA, Milwaukee and Niceville FL. The rest are charges or agency findings, so those officers are accused, not convicted. One example: an Indianapolis officer charged with 26 counts in a case involving 1,396 searches (Newsweek). The only case with no consequence: Idaho's attorney general found no crime by the Jerome County sheriff, who retired early (East Idaho News).

The other column looks very different. We found 11 documented cases where Flock data was shared across state lines or with federal agencies in ways local rules or residents did not expect:

• More than 4,000 national lookups with reasons like "ICE" or "immigration," run by local police (404 Media).
• A Johnson County, Texas search across 6,800+ cameras in multiple states for a woman who self-managed an abortion; the sheriff calls it a welfare check (404 Media).
• Border Patrol reaching at least 10 Washington agencies' data without their authorization (UW Center for Human Rights).
• 1,400+ ICE or immigration searches on Denver's cameras (ACLU of Colorado), and federal agencies tapping Woodburn, Oregon's network (Hoodline).

In none of those 11 did we find any individual disciplined. The outcomes were policy changes: Flock removed California, Illinois and Virginia from national lookup and paused federal pilots, and cities cut contracts. An officer who tracks an ex loses the badge. A search that sends a town's data to Border Patrol changes a setting.

The pushback, and how Flock responds

We built a list of 60 local and state actions against Flock, each with a source. 33 of them came in August through October 2026, and 19 in September alone. Two governors drove much of that: Abbott's funding pause and Florida DOT's Aug 31 permit revocation. Larger trackers exist: whoapprovedthis.org lists 332 endings, though several of its rows look like approvals or duplicates, and findingflock.com lists 45 verified.

Flock kept growing anyway. Its inventory added 131,268 devices in 2025, about 10,900 a month, peaking in November 2025, months after the first wave of exits. Our inventory snapshot ends in December 2025, so we cannot yet say whether the 2026 wave slowed installs.

Cancelled, but still recording

Ending a contract does not always end the cameras. Evanston, Illinois deactivated its cameras and Flock reinstalled them (Evanston RoundTable). Cambridge, Massachusetts found two cameras installed without the city's knowledge and called it a breach of trust (The Record). In St. Lucie County, Florida, 14 of 66 known cameras had no permit and no owner who would claim them (WQCS), the story Ars Technica covered on Oct 28.

Flock's side

Flock's strongest case is this: it sells a tool that agencies and owners control. "Every piece of data collected by Flock license plate readers is owned and controlled by the customer," the company says, and "ICE does not have direct access to Flock cameras, systems, or data" (Flock). Plate readers do help find stolen cars and missing people, and the officers who abused the system were caught, often by the audit logs Flock provides. On Aug 13 2026 the company cut its default retention to 7 days, required case numbers for searches, and told every police customer to adopt audit tools by year end (Flock).

That is a fair argument, and it is also the problem. If customers control everything, then the rules depend on 50 sets of state laws (25 of them empty), thousands of local sharing settings, and private retailers who answer to no voter. Flock has also pushed back on critics: in January 2025 it sent a trademark cease-and-desist to the developer of DeFlock, a volunteer camera map, which the EFF answered on his behalf (EFF letter). Its federal lobbying went from $90,000 in 2024 to $840,000 to $920,000 in 2025 and $790,000 to $850,000 in the first three quarters of 2026 (the range depends on whether one subcontract is double counted), all through outside firms (Senate LDA filings).

What this means for you

You do not need to wait for a state law. Most of what is in this piece came from public records anyone can request. Here is the move:

1. Check yourself. HaveIBeenFlocked.com helped expose at least one case in our set (Milwaukee). Use it.
2. Ask your council for four documents: the Flock contract and every amendment, the agency's data-sharing list (who can search your town's cameras), the last 12 months of audit logs, and the retention setting actually configured.
3. Look up the grants. Search your city or county name plus "Flock" on USAspending.gov, and download our 64 federal records to start.
4. File a records request. A template that works: "Under [state public records law], I request (1) all contracts, amendments and purchase orders with Flock Group Inc. since 2020; (2) the current list of agencies and organizations with which this agency shares Flock data, and the list of those that share with it; (3) Flock audit logs of all searches of this agency's cameras from [date] to [date], including search reason; (4) the configured data retention period."
5. Ask your local Lowe's, Home Depot or HOA whether its cameras share with police, and with which agencies.

For reporters, councils and advocates who need this kept current, Company Watch tracks any company's federal awards, contracts, lobbying and SEC filings and alerts you when something new lands. It is $99 a month, and we keep fixing it at no extra cost until it does what it promises.

More from us: 252 DOJ grants paid for plate readers, Flock's inventory of 214,073 devices, and everything in AI industry and news.

How we got the data

Every file below is downloadable. All pulls were made Oct 28 2026 (Eastern time).

• Flock inventory (Proton's Flock camera map, binary file /_astro/cameras.CiPXVBuV.bin, 335,701 records, December 2025 snapshot). Decoded with the layout in Proton's own page script: lat, lon, county, date added, device type, status, capability flags. We count status "in service" (214,073). State tables use the 212,892 in the 50 states and DC; we exclude Puerto Rico (82), the US Virgin Islands (109) and 990 records with no county. Limits: no owner field; snapshot ends December 2025. File: data.csv (state counts joined to law status).
• Owner tags (OpenStreetMap via Overpass). Query: all US nodes with surveillance:type=ALPR; kept 116,387 whose manufacturer or brand matches "Flock". Each in-service device was matched to the nearest such node within 100 meters (KD-tree). The operator tag was classified by keyword rules into Public, Private (Lowe's, Home Depot, other retail, malls/property, HOAs, apartments, healthcare, private schools, other business), Vendor-tagged ("Flock..." operators, excluded as ambiguous), Unclassified (1,143 devices) and Untagged. We corrected one false positive from the first pass: "Burbank" was matched as a bank and is reclassified as public. Limits: 8.1% coverage; tagging favors retail; shares apply only to devices with a known owner. Files: operators, private operators, by state, by county, by month, by device type, every owner-identified device.
• Grants for cameras at the polls (USAspending.gov spending_by_award API, subawards=true, FY2019 to FY2026). Keyword sweeps: polling, poll site, polling sites/places/location(s)/centers, voting, voters, vote, ballot, drop box(es), election(s), election security, election sites, election day, plus license plate, LPR, ALPR, Flock, camera trailer, surveillance trailer(s). Every sweep returned under the API's 1,000-result cap, so coverage of reported subaward text is complete. Tiers: A = plate readers explicitly at polls (4); B = other cameras or surveillance explicitly at polls or drop boxes (8); C = cameras for election offices or warehouses (19, not counted); near misses (8, not counted). Limits: only what states report in subaward text; state grant portals, EAC reports and council agendas not yet searched. File: national_polling_cameras.csv.
• Irving polling places vs Flock devices: Dallas County Election Day and early-voting vote-center lists for Nov 3 2026 (38 unique Irving addresses), geocoded with the US Census batch geocoder and OpenStreetMap Nominatim for five misses; Flock devices of every status inside the Census Irving boundary (305); distances computed to every device; baselines of 5,000 random points and 156 other public buildings; one-sided binomial test. Limits: the inventory's dates start Mar 26 2024; mobile units are a single snapshot; 2023 polling lists not checked. File: irving_polling_vs_flock.csv.
• Federal awards (USAspending.gov spending_by_award API). Keywords "Flock", "Flock Safety", "Flock Group", "Flock camera(s)", "Flock ALPR", "Flock LPR", FY2018 to Oct 28 2026, all award types, prime and subawards, plus recipient searches. 1,394 grant hits and 44 pages of contract hits were filtered by regex and by hand to 64 records. Amounts are award values, not payments to Flock, and totals are floors. File: federal_awards_naming_flock.csv.
• Local payments (Socrata open-data checkbooks). Found 160 vendor-payment datasets via the Socrata Discovery API, ran a full-text query for "Flock" on 33, kept rows naming Flock with Group or Safety, netted reversals, and dropped Cook County's two contract rows. 457 rows from 10 buyers. File: checkbook_payments_to_flock.csv.
• Lobbying (Senate LDA). Every filing with Flock as client, latest filing per registrant and quarter. A subcontract (Carlough Solutions, filed on behalf of BGR) may double count $20,000 a quarter. File: flock_federal_lobbying_lda.csv.
• State law (NCSL ALPR statutes, updated Sep 28 2026, plus 2025-2026 bill reporting). Our classes: no statute; statute covering police only or unclear on private; statute clearly reaching private operators. Executive orders count as no law. Limits: built from NCSL summaries, not each statute's text. File: state_laws.csv.
• Misuse cases (court, agency and news records; the IJ ALPR abuse database; 404 Media; local outlets). 46 rows. We checked the vendor in each personal-misuse case and kept 27 where a source names Flock; five that named another vendor or none are kept in the file but excluded from counts. We dropped one Florida row sourced only to a partisan blog. Status is "court record", "charged", "official finding", "public records" or "reported"; only court records are described as convictions. File: incidents_verified.csv.
• Pushback: 60 cancellations, pauses, non-renewals and restrictions from June 2025 to October 2026, each with a source URL; nine rest on an aggregator and are marked. File: pushback.csv.

Unpublished check: on Oct 28 2026 we searched for the Texas polling-place grants ("Irving Flock license plate reader polling locations", "Irving city council Flock Homeland Security grant", and generic "license plate reader" plus polling plus grant searches) and for a device-level count of Lowe's and Home Depot Flock cameras against Flock's inventory. We found neither published.

Sources

• USAspending, EMW-2023-SS-00025 (Texas FY2023 HSGP; Lewisville, Grand Prairie, Irving, Arlington subawards), checked Oct 28 2026
• DHS, FY2023 Homeland Security Grant Program fact sheet, Aug 2023
• Dallas County Elections, Election Day vote centers, fetched Oct 28 2026
• USAspending, GSA OIG order 47J00025F0020, checked Oct 28 2026
• Proton, Flock camera map, pulled Oct 28 2026
• NCSL, ALPR state statutes, Sep 28 2026
• Flock Safety, guardrails announcement, Aug 13 2026
• Flock Safety, Does Flock share data with ICE?, Oct 2026
• KWTX, Abbott blocks state agency Flock spending, Aug 28 2026
• 404 Media, ICE taps into nationwide camera network, May 2025
• 404 Media, Texas cop searched cameras nationwide, May 2025
• 404 Media, Home Depot and Lowe's share data with cops
• UW Center for Human Rights, Leaving the Door Wide Open, Oct 21 2025
• Institute for Justice, ALPR abuse database, checked Oct 28 2026
• EFF, letter to Flock re DeFlock, Feb 2025
• Ars Technica, Florida county won't investigate Flock cameras, Oct 28 2026
• Riverside County Board, Flock amendment, Jan 13 2026