Flock Exposed - Motorola Solutions and Vigilant
Flock is not the only company running a nationwide license plate surveillance network. Motorola Solutions, the communications giant, owns Vigilant Solutions - one of the largest ALPR operators in the country - and its capabilities in some ways go further than Flock's.
Facial Recognition Bundled In
Integrated into the ALPR systems Vigilant provides to law enforcement is facial recognition technology and an image database. Facial recognition technology has been demonstrated to yield false matches disproportionately for people of color, leading to wrongful arrests.
Source: AFSC Investigate, company profile of Motorola Solutions
Vigilant's own marketing describes a mobile tool letting officers capture a facial image in the field, compare it against a nationwide gallery beyond their own agency or jurisdiction, and share results with other agencies to accelerate investigations - explicitly promoted as working with high or poor-quality probe images pulled from social media, doorbell cameras, cell phones, and CCTV footage, and analyzing over 350 facial vectors per face.
Source: Vigilant Solutions facial recognition product marketing (MOBILCOMM authorized reseller); CDCE, Motorola Solutions Mobile Companion product page
A Commercial Data Pipeline, Not Just a Police One
Motorola's Vigilant ALPR business makes its camera network available for commercial use as well as law enforcement, with enterprise customers and police agencies drawing on the same underlying dataset.
Source: WPDE, "Flock vs. automated license plate readers: What are they, and who are they for?"
Motorola owns two of the most significant names in the ALPR field under one roof: Vigilant Solutions, which serves law enforcement, and Digital Recognition Network, which serves commercial customers - together running one of the largest plate-reading camera and data operations in the country.
Source: Rain Intelligence, "Up the Supply Chain: Motorola's License-Plate Class Action and the Turn Toward ALPR Operators"
That commercial arm has old roots: a 2015 Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals decision described how Vigilant Solutions, then still independent, developed license-plate technology used by Digital Recognition Network to sell cameras to vehicle-repossession companies, which mounted them on tow trucks that photographed every plate they passed, along with date, time, and GPS location - data DRN then sold on to auto finance and insurance companies.
Source: WPDE, "Flock vs. automated license plate readers: What are they, and who are they for?", citing U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, 2015
The California Class Action
An amended class action complaint against Motorola and its subsidiary Vigilant, filed by the law firm Gibbs Mura, alleges the company knowingly facilitated unlawful cross-jurisdictional sharing of Californians' ALPR data with out-of-state and federal agencies without notice or consent.
Source: Gibbs Mura, A Law Group, "Motorola License Plate Reader (ALPR) Privacy Lawsuit"
The complaint's named plaintiffs live in Merced, California, and allege their movements were recorded and tracked daily by ALPR devices installed near the entrance to the University of California at Merced during 2025 and 2026.
Source: Legal Newsline, "Motorola targeted with class action over license plate reader cameras"
The lawsuit describes Motorola's cameras as capable of capturing driver data at speeds up to 150 miles per hour, even in complete darkness, deployed indiscriminately across high-volume roadways, retail zones, parking facilities, and educational institutions - photographing and logging every vehicle that passes, including make, model, plate number, GPS coordinates, timestamps, and high-resolution images of drivers and passengers, all fed into a centralized platform called the Vigilant VehicleManager database.
Source: Class Action U, "Motorola Solutions Faces Privacy Class Action Over Mass Vehicle Surveillance and Illegal Data Sharing"
The complaint further alleges Motorola supplements these records with artificial intelligence tools capable of analyzing more than 17 years' worth of stored data to flag a vehicle of interest.
Source: Class Action, "Class Action Lawsuit Claims Motorola Solutions License Plate Readers Violate California Privacy Laws"
The lawsuit stresses that ALPR systems like Motorola's can be used for what it calls nefarious purposes, such as tracking and locating protesters, people attending religious events, or persons with a particular immigration status - and the amended complaint separately alleges these systems can threaten people seeking constitutionally protected healthcare, including access to abortion and gender-affirming care.
Source: Class Action, "Class Action Lawsuit Claims Motorola Solutions License Plate Readers Violate California Privacy Laws"; Gibbs Mura, A Law Group, "Motorola License Plate Reader (ALPR) Privacy Lawsuit"
Legal analysis of the case notes that California's ALPR statute imposes its core duties on an "operator," defined as any entity that operates an ALPR system, as well as on end users who access the data - and the complaint pleads that Motorola is both at once, a distinction that matters because a company whose product is the plate-reading network itself has a harder time arguing it is not covered by the law.
Source: Rain Intelligence, "Up the Supply Chain: Motorola's License-Plate Class Action and the Turn Toward ALPR Operators"
A History Of Trust Concerns
Well before this lawsuit, the Electronic Frontier Foundation flagged a 2019 incident involving the ACLU of Northern California's reporting on Vigilant-hosted license plate data being accessed by a private company, the Irvine Company - with Motorola responding that the incident predated its ownership of Vigilant but committing to work with Vigilant to review the matter.
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation, "Here's Why You Can't Trust What Cops and Companies Claim About Automated License Plate Readers"
In Baltimore, civil society organizations have specifically raised concerns about the Baltimore Police Department's use of Vigilant Solutions' database, citing its invasion of privacy and its chilling effect on free speech and political dissent.
Source: Baltimore Brew, "Expansion of BPD's license plate reader capability is dangerous - and flying in under the radar"
Security Vulnerabilities
The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued an advisory on Motorola Solutions Vigilant license plate readers, describing a vulnerability that could let an attacker modify the device's bootloader using custom arguments to bypass authentication and gain access to the file system, including password hashes.
Source: Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, ICS Advisory ICSA-24-165-19
Questions to Ask Your Town
Does your town use Motorola or Vigilant ALPR cameras rather than, or in addition to, Flock's? If so, does the system include facial recognition, and if it does, who is allowed to run a face through it and under what justification? Has anyone verified whether your town's ALPR data is shared with the commercial Digital Recognition Network side of Motorola's business, or with out-of-state and federal agencies? How many years of stored data can be searched against a single plate, and who approved that retention period?
This page will be updated as more factual sources become available.