Flock Safety's OS Investigate identifies drivers by movement patterns alone

Flock Safety, the company behind millions of license-plate cameras, has quietly developed OS Investigate, an AI-powered police tool that identifies drivers and tracks vehicles based purely on movement patterns. Unlike Flock's original system, which only matched plates against wanted lists, OS Investigate lets officers start with a location, time window, and behavior — no plate or name needed. The tool ships with 69 prewritten prompts, discovered in code on Flock's own website, giving it access to 45 tools: plate scans, camera metadata, arrest records, 911 dispatch logs, ballistics results, and commercial databases containing Social Security numbers, birth dates, and relatives. One prompt finds witnesses by vehicles most seen in a neighborhood over 14 days; another builds dossiers on the top three people arrested twice in two years, mapping their homes and pulling service calls.

Flock says the product is in development and being tested with a small group of law enforcement partners. But the software's design inverts the company's original privacy stance, which claimed it could not recognize, identify, or track individuals. Of the 69 prompts, 19 hunt for behavior patterns and 14 require no plate, name, or description at all. Outputs convert plates into names and addresses, then run "workups" — one-command background checks across police records and commercial data. Legal and privacy experts say the tool raises serious constitutional concerns, granting warrantless access to vast movement records and casting suspicion on innocent drivers based on where and how often they drive. Flock faces bipartisan pressure, officer misconduct cases, and vandalism of its cameras nationwide.