Flock's OS Investigate lets police search by movement pattern

For years, Flock Safety told the public its cameras "cannot recognize, identify, or track individuals." A WIRED investigation republished by The Next Web says the surveillance firm has now built a tool that does both.

The tool is called OS Investigate. Flock first called it Nightshift. WIRED reporters Dhruv Mehrotra and Dell Cameron said they reconstructed it from files exposed through Flock's own login pages, and the code showed its prompts, its search forms and its intended workflows.

Of the prompts WIRED examined, 19 focus on patterns. Fourteen need no plate, name or physical description at all. One prompt looks for likely witnesses, finding the vehicles most often seen in a neighbourhood over the past 14 days. Another flags vehicles that visited three or more shops in three days. One prompt starts with people arrested more than twice in two years, maps their homes and orders a detailed "workup" on three of them.

Chad Marlow, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, told WIRED the danger was that officers could go fishing for crimes. The lack of limits on the prompts, he added, lets police "lead the AI." "The difference between a police officer saying 'Do you see any criminal patterns' or 'Find me criminal patterns' is going to produce two different things," Marlow said. A former officer who reviewed the software, Noel Pichardo, was blunter, saying it showed Flock "literally tracks people."

Flock spokesperson Paris Lewbel said OS Investigate is in development with a small group of law-enforcement partners, that it is separate from the company's licence-plate product, and that its capabilities may change before any wider release.

The company raised $275 million in March 2025 at a $7.5 billion valuation, in a round led by Andreessen Horowitz; Business Insider has since put its valuation at $8.4 billion. Its cameras are now spread across more than 6,000 communities. This month, the Washington Post reported that at least 50 law-enforcement officials had faced accusations or charges over misusing plate-reading technology, and Flock cameras figured in 46 of those cases. It lands the same week as two other stories on our surveillance tracker: ICE barring agents from wearing Meta AI smart glasses on duty, and teen boys using Meta Ray-Bans to film girls in US schools.