This Searchable Tool Is Helping Track Flock Surveillance Cameras in Your City
The Atlas of Surveillance is a free, searchable database created by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the University of Nevada, Reno to map police surveillance technologies across the United States. It tracks devices such as Flock Safety cameras, drones, facial‑recognition systems and body cameras using crowdsourced data verified by public records and news sources. The tool aims to increase transparency, support public debate, and help communities assess the use and oversight of such equipment.
- ▪The Atlas of Surveillance provides detailed listings of police surveillance tools, including installation dates and source links for each entry.
- ▪Recent controversies involving Flock Safety cameras, such as contract cancellations in Los Angeles and a misuse scandal in Albany, Georgia, have heightened public scrutiny of automated license‑plate readers.
- ▪The database relies on volunteers who gather information from government documents, press releases, news articles, and verified social media posts, offering a more reliable alternative to open‑source apps like Deflock.
- ▪Researchers and journalists use the Atlas to identify gaps in local oversight, such as missing policies on data retention or usage guidelines for surveillance equipment.
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| Original publisher | CNET — News |
| Canonical URL | https://www.cnet.com/news/privacy/this-searchable-tool-is-helping-track-flock-surveillance-cameras-in-your-city/ |
| Publication time | 2026-07-24T01:25:29Z |
| Retrieval time | 2026-07-24T01:33:28.553Z |
| Last seen | 2026-07-24T01:33:28.553Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | yIU4MRm9iiM9 |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
News > Privacy This Searchable Tool Is Helping Track Flock Surveillance Cameras in Your City The Atlas of Surveillance database is the largest-ever repository of police surveillance technologies in the US. Tyler Lacoma Editor / Home Security and Smart Home Tyler has worked on, lived with and tested all types of smart home and security technology for over a dozen years, explaining the latest features, privacy tricks, and top recommendations.… Read full bio Tyler Lacoma Editor / Home Security and Smart Home Read full bio July 23, 2026, 9:25 pm ET 3 min read Recent coverage of Flock Safety, the fast‑growing US surveillance technology company, reveals how opposition to automated license plate readers is playing out at the local level.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at CNET — News.
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