Grounding the Flock: Confronting Police Surveillance of Mobilities

This article explores the integration of AI-surveillance functionality into urban infrastructures to question how the monitoring of mobilities could engender vulnerabilities, particularly for minoritized or stigmatized groups in society. Focusing on the automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) system deployed in the United States by the company Flock Safety, I show how this system acts as a communicative network that exposes people to discriminatory police surveillance. I argue that the network properties of Flock's system facilitate the application of far-right policing cultures across jurisdictions, allowing for unlawful targeting of women seeking reproductive care, immigrants, and vulnerable others irrespective of state or city prohibitions against such profiling. The article concludes by reflecting on countersurveillance efforts to expose Flock's surveillance network and challenge its discriminatory policing logics.