Flock Safety's New AI Tool Tracks Drivers by Movement Patterns Alone

Flock Safety Develops AI Tool That Tracks Drivers Without License Plates

Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company operating across more than 6,000 U.S. communities, has built an AI tool called OS Investigate that can identify and track drivers using nothing but their movement patterns1

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. Previously known as Nightshift, this law enforcement tool represents a dramatic shift from the company's long-standing public claim that its automated license plate readers "cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals"1

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WIRED investigation revealed the system's capabilities after reporters found more than 450 files on Flock's own website, served by its login pages to anyone who loaded them1

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. The code describes 45 tools at the AI's disposal, giving it access to plate scans and camera metadata, arrest records, case files, 911 logs, ballistics results, and commercial databases containing Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, and information about relatives and associates1

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How OS Investigate Works: Natural Language Prompts and Pattern Recognition

The system ships with 69 prewritten prompts that officers can select, review, or edit before submission1

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. Officers can also input prompts of their own through a chatbot interface2

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. One pre-loaded prompt reads: "Find me witnesses based on vehicles most seen in [neighborhood] during [last 14 days] during [daily timeframe]"1

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. The officer fills in the blanks, and the system returns a list of plates, which other tools then convert into names and home addresses.

Of the prompts examined, 19 focus on hunting for patterns rather than looking up records1

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. Fourteen require no plate, no name, and no physical description at all3

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. An officer simply supplies a location, a window of time, and a behavior, and the tool returns people or vehicles that fit3

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. One group of requests asks for vehicles that visited three or more retail locations in a city in three days, or multiple banks in a week, or multiple gas stations between midnight and 5 am1

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The tool includes filters that strip out buses, semi-trucks, work vans, and trailers, meaning searches focus on privately owned and operated vehicles4

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. A delivery driver visiting five shops would come off the list, while an ordinary driver making the same rounds remains1

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Constitutional Concerns and Fishing for Suspects

Privacy and legal experts say the system raises serious constitutional concerns by enabling warrantless surveillance and allowing police to go fishing for crimes without probable cause. Chad Marlow, an attorney with the ACLU, told WIRED that "the difference between a police officer saying, 'Do you see any criminal patterns' or 'Find me criminal patterns' is going to produce two different things"2

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. He noted that the lack of limitations on the prompts enables police to "lead the AI" in what it does2

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Noel Pichardo, a former police officer who reviewed the software, was more direct: "I don't know how else to say this, but this sounds completely insane. I don't know how anyone can argue against the idea that Flock literally tracks people"5

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. Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU, said the gap between what Flock's cameras can do and what the company is already doing leaves "very little space... like China"5

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One particularly controversial feature finds a car's "associates" by counting how often other plates appear at the same cameras within a two-minute window of a target vehicle5

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. The system flags any that show up three or more times above a 0.75 confidence score and returns up to 20 names5

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Growing Backlash and Misuse of Technology

Flock Safety faces mounting criticism over how police use its existing tools. The Washington Post reported that at least 50 law enforcement officials had faced accusations or charges over misusing automated license plate readers technology, with Flock cameras figuring in 46 of those cases3

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. The misuse has included officers allegedly stalking former partners2

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Public anger has spilled into the streets. In June and July, activists spray-painted, taped over, and destroyed Flock cameras across the country, with The Guardian counting at least 33 incidents across 23 states5

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. One Minnesota town found that all of its Flock cameras had disappeared overnight, and the city's police department will not be replacing them2

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On August 13, Flock announced new safeguards, cutting its default data-retention period to seven days, adding automatic lockouts for unusual activity, and requiring officers to attach case codes to searches by the end of 20263

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. However, critics say oversight built for manual lookups may not capture the ethical implications of automated lead generation and editable prompts that OS Investigate introduces3

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What Flock Says and What's Next

Flock spokesperson Paris Lewbel told WIRED that OS Investigate is still in development with a small group of law enforcement partners, that it is separate from the company's license-plate reader technology, and that its capabilities may change before any wider release3

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. The company did not dispute the features WIRED described3

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The confrontation has reached Capitol Hill, where Rep. Thomas Massie is planning a bill that would withhold federal funding from agencies that deploy the technology5

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. Meanwhile, a separate project called "Have I Been Flocked" lets drivers check whether an operator has run their plate through the system, drawing on audit logs gathered through public-records requests to more than 6,500 agencies3

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