What Is DeFlock? The Crowdsourced ALPR Camera Map

By State of Surveillance Published: 2026-08-09

The Short Version

  • DeFlock is a separate, volunteer-run project, not part of this site. State of Surveillance does not host a camera map. DeFlock's map lives at maps.deflock.org[9]. It describes itself as "an open-source project mapping license plate readers"[1].
  • deflock.me and deflock.org are the same project. A request to deflock.me returns an HTTP 301 permanent redirect to deflock.org (checked 9 August 2026). The mobile app is still branded DeFlock.me[10].
  • Camera locations are crowdsourced into OpenStreetMap, not a private company database[4].
  • As of 9 August 2026, OpenStreetMap carried 138,351 features tagged as ALPRs worldwide, 127,878 of them in the United States[6][7].
  • It maps where devices are. It does not show what any camera recorded, who searched it, or whether an entry is still accurate today.

deflock.me, deflock.org, and Which One Is Real

Both names lead to the same project, because the project uses both. The website is canonical at deflock.org. A direct request to deflock.me returns an HTTP 301 permanent redirect to https://deflock.org/, and so does www.deflock.me. Both were checked on 9 August 2026.

The .me name has not been abandoned, which is why it still draws searches. The project's iOS app is published under the name DeFlock.me, with the bundle identifier me.deflock.deflockapp, listed by Tech BS LLC and first released on 7 November 2025. Its App Store description reads "View and contribute to an open map of public mass surveillance devices"[10]. The Android build carries the same identifier[11]. A search for "deflockme" is usually a search for the app, or for the address someone saw before the redirect went in.

One caution comes from the project itself. Its site carries a standing disclaimer that other websites and social media accounts using the DeFlock name are unaffiliated[1]. A similar name is not evidence of a connection.

What DeFlock Actually Is

DeFlock is an open-source, volunteer-driven effort to record the physical locations of automated license plate readers on a public map. Its stated mission is "to shine a light on the widespread use of ALPR technology, raise awareness about the threats it poses to personal privacy and civil liberties, and empower the public to take action"[2].

The project's README breaks the work into three parts[4]:

  • View. A map populated from OpenStreetMap data showing crowdsourced ALPR locations "along with their type and direction they face".
  • Report. Instructions for adding a camera you have spotted, using a standardised tagging system.
  • Identify. A catalogue of ALPR makes and models, with photographs, so a contributor can tell one device from another before tagging it.

The codebase is MIT-licensed and the public repository was created on 30 September 2024[4]. The map has since moved into its own repository and runs at maps.deflock.org, which also advertises privacy-oriented route planning across the United States[9].

Who Runs It, and the Cease and Desist

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, in a piece published on 26 February 2025, names Will Freeman as DeFlock's creator[5]. Development happens in the open under the FoggedLens account on GitHub, and the iOS listing names Tech BS LLC as publisher[10]. The site refers to partner groups alongside a national account, so treat it as a small core plus volunteers rather than a fixed organisation.

Flock Safety, the largest ALPR vendor in the United States, sent Freeman a cease-and-desist letter claiming the project diluted its trademark. EFF took the case pro bono and refused, writing that the demand had "no legal basis" and that the project sits "well within its First Amendment rights", pointing to carve-outs in federal anti-dilution law "for any noncommercial use of a mark and for any use in connection with criticizing or commenting on the mark owner or its products"[5]. The map stayed up.

How a Camera Gets on the Map

This is the part most explanations skip, and it explains both the project's strength and its gaps. DeFlock does not run a private camera database. Submissions go into OpenStreetMap, the public, openly licensed world map. There are two reporting routes[3]:

  • The DeFlock mobile app, a simple interface for use while walking around, published as free software for "viewing and submitting surveillance cameras with OpenStreetMap"[11].
  • The OpenStreetMap web editor (iD), for more detailed reporting in a browser. The project maintains a customised build of that editor tuned for submitting ALPRs[4].

Either way, the contributor places a point and tags it using OpenStreetMap's surveillance scheme: a feature marked man_made=surveillance carrying surveillance:type=ALPR, usually with the direction the camera faces and the manufacturer where identifiable[13].

Two consequences follow. The dataset is not DeFlock's property, so anyone can download, audit or reuse it under OpenStreetMap's licence, and the project disappearing would not take the data with it. And the map is only as good as the volunteers who walked the streets, which drives every limitation below.

How Much Is Actually Mapped

Published counts move quickly, so the date attached to a number matters more than the number. When EFF wrote about the project on 26 February 2025, DeFlock had "mapped out more than 16,000 individual camera locations, more than a third of which are Flock Safety devices"[5].

Because the data lives in OpenStreetMap, the current figure can be checked independently rather than taken on trust. OpenStreetMap's official tag statistics service, taginfo, reports 138,351 features carrying surveillance:type=ALPR worldwide, 138,210 of them single points, with data current to 9 August 2026[6]. Geofabrik's regional taginfo instance for the United States extract reports 127,878, also current to 9 August 2026[7]. That is roughly an eight-fold rise in the seventeen months since the EFF figure.

Two caveats. These count OpenStreetMap features carrying the ALPR tag, the pool DeFlock's map draws from, and they will not always match the live counter on DeFlock's homepage, which is served from an interface the site's robots file asks automated clients not to query. And a mapped camera is one a volunteer found, not one drawn from a registry, so the figure is a floor rather than a census.

Does It Only Cover Flock Cameras?

No, and the tagging data shows the split precisely. Of the 138,351 ALPR-tagged features worldwide, 119,635 record a manufacturer, and 101,470 of those name Flock Safety, cross-referenced to the company's Wikidata entry[6][12]. That leaves about 18,165 attributed to another vendor and about 18,716 with no manufacturer recorded.

The project is deliberate about this. Its homepage states that Flock is not the only ALPR vendor and that others engage in similar practices[1]. Its public identification catalogue is organised into 33 folders, one holding generic profiles and the rest named for individual vendors including Genetec and AutoVu, Rekor, Verkada, Avigilon, Axis, Axon, Bosch, Iteris, LiveView Technologies, RedSpeed, Ubicquia, PlateSmart and Altumint[8]. The name says Flock, the scope does not.

Note the direction of travel: Flock devices were "more than a third" of entries in February 2025 and are about 73% of all ALPR-tagged entries now (85% of those that record a manufacturer). That reflects both Flock's growth and where volunteers have concentrated, and it is not a measurement of Flock's true share of all ALPRs on US roads.

The Limits Worth Knowing

Coverage follows volunteers, not deployments. An empty patch means nobody has surveyed it, not that there are no cameras. Cities and places with active local privacy groups are mapped far better than rural areas.

Freshness is largely unrecorded. Cameras get moved, replaced and decommissioned, and a map point does not know that. To gauge how the dataset handles this, we examined the 120 tags most frequently recorded alongside surveillance:type=ALPR in OpenStreetMap taginfo on 9 August 2026. No verification-date tag appears in that list: no check_date, no survey:date, no disused: variant. The only provenance tags present are source, on 2,445 features, and note, on 1,274[6]. So the overwhelming majority of entries carry no recorded date of last check, and age cannot be read off an individual point. Correction works as it does everywhere in OpenStreetMap: any contributor can edit or delete a wrong node. We found no published DeFlock policy on pruning stale entries among the deflock.org pages we retrieved, and the in-app user guide sits on a host whose robots file asks automated clients not to fetch it, so we did not read it. Treat that question as unverified.

It maps hardware, not data flows. The map can show that a reader sits at an intersection. It cannot show what that reader recorded, how long footage is kept, which agencies can search it, or whether any search broke policy. Those answers come from contracts and audit logs obtained through public-records requests.

Identification is a judgement call. A contributor has to recognise a device from the roadside, which is why the identification catalogue exists. About 18,716 ALPR-tagged features carry no manufacturer at all[6], and mistakes between similar-looking units are plausible.

Coverage is heavily US-centric. Roughly 92% of ALPR-tagged features worldwide sit in the United States on the 9 August 2026 figures[6][7].

Where This Page Ends and the Other One Begins

This page answers "what is this project, and can I trust its numbers". It does not walk you through using the map, and this site does not run a map of its own.

For the practical side, spotting a Flock unit on a pole, checking your routes on DeFlock's map, the legal position on plate covers (illegal in most US states), and the civic steps that have got cameras switched off, use the companion guide: how to find and avoid Flock ALPR cameras near you.

What to Watch

  • Whether the data stays in OpenStreetMap. The project has been building its own tile pipeline, with a repository created on 19 July 2026 for an automated vector-tile build of ALPR data, and its README lists Cloudflare storage for ALPR points and tiles[4]. Pre-built tiles are a performance decision and OpenStreetMap remains the stated source of truth, but if submissions ever moved into a private store, the openness that makes these numbers checkable would go with it.
  • Route avoidance as a feature. maps.deflock.org now offers route planning around cameras[9], built in a separate repository created on 12 April 2026. Expect that, rather than the raw map, to draw the next round of attention.
  • Whether freshness tagging catches on. If verification dates start appearing on ALPR nodes in volume, the dataset gets far more useful for arguing about specific cameras in front of a city council.
  • Renewed legal pressure. The 2025 cease-and-desist failed publicly[5]. Whether a vendor tries a different theory against a crowdsourced map is open.

Related Coverage

Sources

  1. DeFlock, project site and homepage. No publication date given; content retrieved 9 August 2026.
  2. DeFlock, About. No publication date given; retrieved 9 August 2026.
  3. DeFlock, Choose Your Reporting Method. No publication date given; retrieved 9 August 2026.
  4. FoggedLens/deflock, source repository and README (MIT licence). Repository created 30 September 2024; metadata and README retrieved 9 August 2026.
  5. Electronic Frontier Foundation, "Anti-Surveillance Mapmaker Refuses Flock Safety's Cease and Desist Demand". Published 26 February 2025.
  6. OpenStreetMap taginfo, statistics for the tag surveillance:type=ALPR. Data current to 9 August 2026.
  7. Geofabrik regional taginfo, United States extract, surveillance:type=ALPR. Data current to 9 August 2026.
  8. FoggedLens/identification-catalog, DeFlock's ALPR make and model catalogue. Repository created 13 April 2026; contents retrieved 9 August 2026.
  9. DeFlock Maps, the project's ALPR camera map and route planner. No publication date given; retrieved 9 August 2026.
  10. DeFlock.me on the Apple App Store. First released 7 November 2025; listing metadata retrieved 9 August 2026.
  11. FoggedLens/deflock-app, the project's free-software mobile app. Repository created 17 July 2025; retrieved 9 August 2026.
  12. Wikidata, Flock Safety (Q108485435). Retrieved 9 August 2026.
  13. OpenStreetMap Wiki, Tag:man_made=surveillance. Retrieved 9 August 2026.