In 1984, the Thought Police weren't looking for criminals. Neither is Flock Safety
99% of the plates they scan belong to people suspected of nothing.
242 cameras are watching Upstate South Carolina right now. Every car that passes gets photographed. That data goes into a national network. And nobody voted on any of it.
How it works
The camera logged your plate 30 seconds ago.
Primary node · 01 / Capture
It photographs every car. Every single time.
Flock Safety puts cameras on poles at intersections and along roadsides. Small. Solar-powered. Easy to miss. Every car that drives by gets photographed. Your plate number, vehicle make, color, and location get uploaded to Flock's servers. Every time. The camera doesn't wait for suspicion. It reads everything and checks later.
02 / Ingest
Your data leaves the county immediately.
That data doesn't stay in your county. Flock runs a national network. Police from other states can search it. Federal agencies can too. Researchers found three separate ways federal agents get into local camera data — including a back door that let outside agencies search without anyone knowing. Flock's CEO denied having federal contracts on camera in July 2025. He admitted it three weeks later. Every drive you've taken is in there.
03 / Access
Your local cops can't stop it.
No SC city or county has passed an oversight ordinance. The cameras went up, the data started flowing, and no rules govern how long it's kept. None of it requires a warrant. Your local police can't turn off the federal access. And neither can you.
Case studies
Upstate SC / Camera Network
Cameras are
already watching.
No rules attached.
Flock Safety cameras are up across Upstate SC: Greenville, Spartanburg, Anderson, and surrounding areas.
Greenville: Greenville PD runs 57 Flock cameras. The first batch went up in January 2021, paid for with federal civil asset forfeiture funds. No city ordinance. No council vote on oversight. There are still no rules about who sees the data, how long it's kept, or who checks how it's used.
Spartanburg: City PD runs 15 cameras. The county's were deployed under Sheriff Chuck Wright… who pled guilty to federal criminal charges in October 2025 including wire fraud and corruption. A convicted criminal had unrestricted access to a system tracking where you drive. Neither the city nor the county has an oversight policy.
From Greenville to Spartanburg to Anderson and beyond: Cameras first, questions never. No Upstate city or county has passed an oversight ordinance. Even when other cities tried, it didn't matter. Local governments can't control where the data goes once it's in Flock's network.
The official count undersells it. When Greenville went looking for more cameras, its own RFP required the new ones to connect with HOA and neighborhood cameras too. The city's SafeWatch program asks residents to register their personal surveillance cameras with police. At least one Greenville HOA already runs its own license plate reader. The 57-camera figure is a floor, not a ceiling.
documented
ordinances
votes
Map tiles by OpenFreeMap · OpenMapTiles · © OpenStreetMap
Camera data from Deflock.org, a community-sourced map of Flock Safety camera locations. Help keep it updated by reporting cameras you find.
Active legislation
Four bills. All stalled.
Four bills to rein in license plate cameras are sitting in SC committee right now. None have had a hearing. As of March 2026, they're just waiting. That changes when legislators hear from you.
One bill goes further than the rest. H4675 would ban Flock's cloud storage entirely, force all camera data onto state-owned servers, prohibit AI-based vehicle tracking, and block federal data access. If it passed, every existing Flock contract in SC would be void. The other three bills (S447, H3155, H4013) only regulate what government agencies can do with camera data. They don't touch what Flock does with it. All four need a hearing.
Last updated: March 2026
H4675 is the strongest bill but hasn't had any committee action since its January 2026 referral. S447 has gotten the furthest of the other three: it cleared a Senate Judiciary subcommittee, but the full committee hasn't acted. H3155 and H4013 haven't had any committee action at all. A separate lawsuit (SCPIF v. SLED) is challenging the state's existing license plate database in court. How that turns out may affect how urgently legislators move.
Bill status is checked automatically each week during the legislative session.
From the Blog
Latest Posts
Inside the Lawsuit to Shut Down SLED's Unauthorized Surveillance Database
SLED's plate surveillance database has no legislative authorization and no audit trail. A lawsuit and four bills are racing to decide its future.
Court filings show 430 million plate scans, a 35% error rate, and 2,000 users with no audit trail. A lawsuit wants to shut it down.
Flock Told the Patent Office One Thing. They Tell Your City Another.
What Patent US11416545B1 Says About the Cameras on Your Roads
Flock Safety says their cameras don't identify race, gender, or ethnicity. Patent US11416545B1, granted in August 2022, describes a system that does exactly that. Every Flock camera in South Carolina is hardware that could run this software. No SC law prevents it.
H4675 Is the Strongest ALPR Bill South Carolina Has Ever Seen
Four bills to regulate license plate cameras are sitting in committee. One of them would void every Flock Safety contract in the state. Here's what H4675 does, where it falls short, and why it needs a hearing.
How to Fight License Plate Surveillance in Your SC Community
5 concrete steps any South Carolinian can take to push back against ALPR cameras: find what's in your area, file records requests, show up at council meetings, and support H4675.
Bought With Your Money
How Greenville Built a Surveillance System Nobody Voted For
We filed a public records request for every Flock Safety contract the City of Greenville has signed since 2019. 96 pages came back. They show a surveillance program funded with seized money, signed by a police chief under investigation, and expanded for six years without a single council vote.
Citizen Toolkit
Take action beyond the call.
Request Records
Four FOIA templates. Ready to file.
- Camera location data — which roads, which neighborhoods
- Data retention policy — how long your plate is kept
- Federal data sharing — who outside SC can see it
- Flock contract — what your city actually agreed to
Speak Up
Show up to council. Say exactly this.
Full talk track for public comment. Rebuttals for common pushback. Council handout PDF to leave behind.
Spread the Word
Cards, one-pager, conversation starters.
Four business card designs. Print on Avery 8371. Leave at coffee shops, hand out at events.
Know Your Rights
The 4th Amendment. What SC is missing. What other states did.
Six states have passed ALPR limits. South Carolina has none. Here's what the law says, what the pending bills don't cover, and what you need to know before you speak.
Common objections
But what about…
99.5% of the plates Flock scans belong to people not suspected of anything. Flock's cameras don't just record plate numbers. They log vehicle make, color, and travel patterns for every car that passes. That's a record of where everyone goes.
Source: EFF
Your legislators need to hear from you
Four bills sitting in committee.
Zero hearings. Zero votes.
That changes when you call.
The Upstate has 242 cameras and no rules governing them. Your legislators need to hear from you. Find your district below and we'll help you draft the message in under two minutes.