Perhaps the surest sign of success for any company is when its name becomes synonymous with the product it sells.
Think Band Aids. Or Kleenex. Or, more controversially, Flock, whose cameras have become the latest flashpoint in America’s — and South Carolina’s — neverending debate over where to draw the line between public safety and government surveillance.
Here in the Palmetto State, the fight over Flock cameras — formally known as automated license plate readers, or ALPRs — is currently playing out in local council chambers, the state attorney general’s office, and soon, the S.C. House and S.C. Senate.
To date, Ground Zero for the local side of that debate has been Oconee County, where its county council voted to cut off funding for the roadside cameras in September, even as Sheriff Mike Crenshaw vigorously opposed the action and requested an attorney general’s opinion on whether it was permissible under state law.
State Attorney General Alan Wilson — better known since Nov. 3 as Gov.-elect Alan Wilson — then took two closely watched actions.
On Oct. 2, his office issued a formal but nonbinding opinion arguing that any regulation of ALPRs was a question for the state legislature, not local governments.
And then, on the same day, he fired off a letter to Flock, expressing his support for critical law enforcement technologies and his concerns about the potential for abuse.
“As attorney general, I have no higher priority than keeping the people of South Carolina safe, and I support law enforcement efforts to use the latest tools available to them in their crime-fighting efforts,” Wilson wrote. “But even the best tools have the potential for misuse. And given Flock’s broad reach, covering more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states, the stakes are particularly high.”
He also demanded answers to five questions within 30 days:
- Does Flock employ any form of artificial intelligence in identifying vehicles or people?
- What restrictions does Flock place on access to data?
- Does Flock help facilitate sharing data across multiple customers, including government agencies, to a “broader network?”
- Who can access this “broader network” of data?
- Does Flock impose any mandatory data retention policies, and if so, what are these policies?
A spokesman for the attorney general’s office confirmed on Nov. 9 that it had not yet received a response from the company.
Growing civil liberties concerns
In a country often described as deeply divided, the most striking thing about ALPR critics may be their ideological diversity.
In Florida, for instance, the doubters include GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, who in August revoked permits for local governments to put the cameras on state roads. And in Washington state, they include Gov. Bob Ferguson, who in April signed the Driver Privacy Act, which restricts where and for what purposes ALPRs can be used, and sets strict limits on data retention and sharing.
That same dynamic is visible here in the Palmetto State, where skeptics run the ideological gamut from the progressive ACLU of South Carolina to members of the hard-right S.C. House Freedom Caucus.
For the ACLU’s Paul Bowers, the growing ALPR backlash is long overdue, particularly in a state where officers with six local law enforcement agencies have been caught misusing the technology, including to track their spouses and acquaintances.
“People are disgusted when they hear about that kind of abuse,” Bowers said. “But beyond that, there are some pretty chilling implications to having a nationwide surveillance network that can log your every movement when you leave your front door — and increasingly, that’s where we’re headed.”
To illustrate his concerns, Bowers pointed to incidents around the country in which officers have used ALPRs to track protesters, women seeking out-of-state abortions and people who wrote op-eds critical of law enforcement in local newspapers.
“There’s a natural ‘ick’ factor to all that,” Bowers said. “People don’t like being surveilled. It feels wrong because it is wrong.”
On the other side of the ideological divide, S.C. House Freedom Caucus Chairman Jordan Pace, R-Berkeley, echoed many of the same concerns.
“Being concerned about government becoming too intrusive is part of America’s DNA,” Pace said. “Remember, the first penny produced in this country said on the backside ‘Mind your business.’”
Still, Pace said, he’ll come into next year’s legislative session looking for ways to balance his civil liberties concerns with the right of private land owners to place cameras on their property and the legitimate needs of law enforcement.
“It’s a question of how do you regulate them to protect the citizens from government overreach,” he said. “It would be great if it was as simple as just banning them, but I don’t think it is.”
Real public safety benefits
In an August op-ed, S.C. Sheriffs’ Association Executive Director Sally Foster acknowledged public concerns regarding ALPR abuse, while noting that the technology “has repeatedly proven its value in protecting victims, locating missing persons, solving crimes, and making our communities safer.”
“South Carolina’s sheriffs reject the false choice between protecting our communities and protecting the public’s trust,” Foster wrote for Bluffton Today. “We are dedicated to delivering modern, effective policing, but never at the expense of the constitutional rights and privacy you deserve.”
In a Nov. 9 interview, Sgt. Paiam Etminan and Cpl. Jason Peiffer of the North Charleston Police Department (NCPD) described how their department uses its ALPR system by Flock-competitior Rekor — and the protections it has in place to prevent abuse.
“We’re not monitoring it 24/7,” Etminan explained. “We only use the license plate readers when we get an alert or when we’re investigating a major incident that would require us to look for suspect vehicles.”
Of particular importance, he said, are the automatic notifications the system sends out when it picks up a plate involving a missing child, an elderly adult, or a wanted felon.
And in terms of preventing abuse, the officers pointed to several policies that enforce accountability, including requirements that officers include their names and the relevant case numbers any time they access the system, automatic data deletion after 90 days, and a log of all requests that commanders can review when questions arise.
What’s more, Peiffer noted, one of the reasons NCPD chose Rekor over Flock was its restricted access to nationwide data.
“It doesn’t have the ability to share with all the other agencies like Flock does,” Peiffer said. “So it eliminated the risk of a person being able to search a car throughout the entire United States. It keeps us inside of North Charleston, alone and segregated.”
Meanwhile at the S.C. Statehouse
Berkeley County Republican Sen. Brian Adams is a retired police officer who has used ALPRs and believes they make communities safer. He’s also one of the people who saw the current uproar coming, and introduced a regulatory bill in 2025 to try to get ahead of it.
“I was trying to tell everybody last year that we needed to put this in place,” Adams said. “Because if you don’t put it in place, people are going to abuse it, and before you know it, everybody’s going to want to get rid of it.”
Adams said he plans to refile his bill, which made it out of committee last session but not to the Senate floor.
Among the restrictions it would include, he said, are a 90-day data-retention limit, a ban on private ALPR operators selling the data they collect, automatic alerts for suspicious police searches and penalties for misuse.
“These are all things where we have to put a regulation on, keep the tool in place and make sure it’s used in a positive way for law enforcement,” Adams said.
Across the aisle, Charleston Democratic Sen. Ed Sutton lauded Adams’ efforts, but said he’ll push for additional restrictions when the bill is considered.
“I saw very similar systems in Afghanistan,” said Sutton, a combat veteran and a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve. “And they were basically developed to hunt people and ultimately kill them. So when I see similar technologies being deployed in U.S. cities, it raises the hair on the back of my neck a bit.”
In particular, he said, he worries about the ability of bad actors, including U.S. adversaries, to hack into national systems like Flock and track the movements of federal officials and everyday citizens alike.
“We know Flock camera logins have been for sale on the dark web,” Sutton said. “So international intelligence agencies don’t even have to employ human capital anymore when they can just compromise these systems. We’re doing their work for them.”
Asked what additional protections he’ll work to insert into the bill, Sutton mentioned warrant requirements except in emergency situations, a stipulation that local data must be stored locally and not in the cloud, strict limits on who can access the information and mandatory cybersecurity training for those operating the systems.
As for whether a bill with those sorts of provisions could actually pass next year, Sutton sounded optimistic.
“I think we can land the airplane,” he said.
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