Editor’s note: The video above is from previous coverage.

ATLANTA, Ga. (Atlanta News First) — An Atlanta-headquartered technology company is facing a sweeping federal class-action lawsuit alleging its nationwide vehicle surveillance network violates the privacy rights of millions of everyday drivers.

The lawsuit, filed Aug. 25 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, accuses Flock Group Inc. (Flock Safety) of building an unchecked, pervasive surveillance grid.

The system, which operates more than 120,000 automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras across the country, reportedly captures and stores billions of vehicle scans every month.

The lead plaintiff, Grace Schulte of Dahlonega, Georgia, claims in the complaint that innocent citizens cannot perform routine daily activities — such as driving to work, school or the grocery store — without being captured, cataloged and stored in Flock’s central databases.

The complaint alleges Flock’s integrated camera and software platform does more than read license plates. It captures high-resolution images of vehicles, pins precise locations and keeps timestamps, often photographing the drivers and passengers inside.

Law enforcement agencies can share access to these files, allowing users to track vehicles beyond their local jurisdictions.

“Notwithstanding their doing nothing to warrant law enforcement surveillance, [citizens] nevertheless are aggressively and pervasively surveilled, with their likenesses and vehicle information captured, stored, and disseminated,” the lawsuit states.

A core focus of the complaint is the alleged vulnerability of Flock’s database to law enforcement abuse and technological inaccuracies.

The lawsuit highlights a series of recent Georgia Bureau of Investigation arrests in mid-2026 involving police personnel accused of using the database for unauthorized, personal tracking.

The complaint points to a “recurring pattern” where Flock allegedly marginalizes these incidents of personal abuse — including stalking and harassment — as exceptionally rare misconduct by “bad apples.”

The suit also challenges the cameras’ technological reliability, citing a case in Roseville, California, where local police reported that Flock cameras misread license plates in 71% of the automated alerts sent to officers.

The lawsuit notes that even accepting Flock’s optimal-condition accuracy claims of 93% to 96%, operating at a scale of 20 billion monthly reads still results in up to 1.4 billion inaccurate records entering the surveillance network every month.

Schulte is seeking to represent a nationwide class consisting of all individuals in the United States whose license plate data has been collected by Flock since Jan. 1, 2024.

The five-count complaint alleges invasion of privacy, negligence, negligent design, failure to warn and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The lawsuit asks the federal court to certify the class, award compensatory, consequential, and punitive damages, and grant injunctive relief to address systemic architectural gaps in Flock’s safeguard systems.

Flock Safety has not yet filed a formal response to the complaint in federal court.

In early August, Flock announced it was changing its default data retention period from 30 days to seven days. The company also said it will require all law enforcement customers to adopt its “audit assistance” feature by the end of 2026.

The automated tool, launched earlier this year, uses machine learning to flag abnormal search patterns for administrator review.

This is a developing story. Check back with Atlanta News First as we learn more.

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