flockfinder.online - A Public-Records-Backed ALPR Transparency SiteVisit flockfinder.online ↗

Overview

flockfinder.online is an independent civic transparency project that maps Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) camera networks across U.S. cities, using only public records and open government data.

It is operated by The Transparency Project and is explicitly not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Flock Group Inc. or any ALPR vendor or government agency.

Why this project: the niche thesis

ALPR networks have rolled out across U.S. cities for years - largely through vendors like Flock Safety - with limited public visibility into coverage, contracts, and data retention. Local coverage exists but is fragmented per-city; FOIA records exist but stay siloed in municipal archives.

flockfinder consolidates that information into a single, sourced, browsable form: per-city dossiers, a national camera map, a FOIA tracker, and a Cancel Tracker for cities that have ended their ALPR contracts.

What we publish: 4 pillars

flockfinder ships in four product pillars, each designed to answer a different kind of public-information question:

  • Camera Map - a Leaflet + OpenStreetMap national overlay of publicly-known ALPR nodes with city / state attribution. Camera entries are only published when their source is a public document (sheriff press release, council minutes, vendor capex disclosure, redacted FOIA response, etc.).
  • City Dossiers - long-form, sourced profiles of cities with active or recently concluded ALPR deployments. Each dossier lists the number of known cameras, the operating agency, contract terms where public, and the latest FOIA disclosures.
  • FOIA Tracker - a public log of Public Records Requests we have filed, organised by state and city. Citizens and journalists can see what has been asked, what has been answered, and what is still pending.
  • Cancel Tracker - a running index of cities that have voted down, ended, or let lapse an ALPR contract (e.g., Mountain View 2025; Wilkes-Barre, PA). Built so other cities can see how others exited.

Sourcing rules: 100% public records

flockfinder ships with a hard rule on sourcing - the badge is shown on every page:

  • "100% Records sourced from public government documents" - only contracts, council minutes, RFPs, FOIA responses, public-records requests, and capex disclosures.
  • No vendor leak data, no network taps, no inferences from observed plate reads.
  • Every claim links to a primary source hosted on a .gov / .us domain, a municipal archive, or a redacted FOIA response.
  • No AI-generated quotes from officials; summaries are written from the document, not from secondary coverage.
  • Anti-tampering disclaimer on every guide page - the project never publishes instructions that facilitate damage to, disabling of, or tampering with public infrastructure.

Editorial posture & independence

flockfinder is operated independently of any vendor, agency, or political party. Its operating mailing address is PO Box 1, Boston, MA 02101 - chosen on purpose so the project is not bound to any single jurisdiction.

When a city or agency disputes a dossier entry, the project publishes the correction alongside a primary-source note. Corrections are visible in the page history, not silently overwritten.

Tech stack & deployment

  • Next.js (App Router) + Tailwind CSS for fast, JS-optional pages - dossier pages must be readable with JS off because they are public records.
  • Leaflet + OpenStreetMap tiles for the camera map (vendor-neutral base map, no Mapbox key required).
  • Dossier records live in JSON / Markdown with a small SQLite mirror for structured queries (e.g., "show all cities in CA with an active contract").
  • Plausible for privacy-first analytics - no fingerprinting, no cross-site tracking.
  • Editor workflow is pull-request based: changes are diffs and the audit trail is the git history.
  • Static-exported and hosted on Cloudflare Pages for cheap, fast global delivery.

Start with your city - open flockfinder.online.

Other projects