Where FlockScanner's Flock camera data comes from

This page explains, in plain language, where FlockScanner's camera location data comes from, how often it updates, and its limitations. It's the canonical reference for data provenance on this Site — other pages link here rather than repeating the detail.

Where the ALPR camera data comes from

Camera locations come from OpenStreetMap (OSM), a global open-data mapping project maintained by volunteer contributors. FlockScanner includes OSM features tagged man_made=surveillance with surveillance:type=ALPR — that is, locations OSM contributors have identified as automated license plate reader hardware — limited to the United States at launch.

How often the Flock camera map updates

A fully automated process runs on a nightly schedule: it downloads the latest OpenStreetMap extract covering the United States, filters it down to just the ALPR-tagged surveillance features, converts that into a lightweight geographic dataset, and rebuilds the interactive map and the state/city directory pages from it. Because the pipeline is automated and unattended, any given night's data reflects whatever the OpenStreetMap community had tagged as of that extract — nothing more, nothing less.

3. License & Attribution

Camera location data is licensed under the Open Database License (ODbL).

Camera location data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (ODbL).

This attribution appears on the interactive map and on every state and city directory page, as required by ODbL.

What FlockScanner does not do

FlockScanner does not independently field-verify any camera location. We do not send staff or contractors to confirm that a camera physically exists at a mapped point. We rely entirely on the OpenStreetMap community's own tagging and its existing quality-control norms. See our About page for exactly what the word "verified" means when it's used elsewhere on this Site.

5. Corrections

Because FlockScanner has no independent editorial control over this dataset and no user-submission system of its own, corrections happen upstream, inside OpenStreetMap itself. If you spot an incorrect, outdated, or missing camera, use our Report a camera page, which routes you to OpenStreetMap's own editing tools. Once the correction is accepted into OSM, it flows through automatically on the next nightly sync — FlockScanner has no separate process to edit the data directly.

How camera vendors are identified

Where present, FlockScanner labels a camera by manufacturer (Flock Safety, Rekor, Motorola Solutions / Vigilant, Genetec, or "unknown") based solely on OpenStreetMap's manufacturer tag. Not every OSM contributor fills in this tag, so vendor identification is inferred from crowdsourced tagging alone — it may be incomplete, approximate, or absent for many cameras. An "unknown" label means the tag was missing or unrecognized, not that FlockScanner has confirmed the hardware is unbranded.

7. Update Cadence

The sync runs nightly. Each successful run republishes a fresh copy of the map and directory pages; there is no manual, on-demand refresh available to Site visitors.