Dishonesty and Lack of Transparency from the NC State Highway Patrol Office

May 21, 2026: (Updated 5/22/2026 with more communications from the NC SHP)

During the Super Bowl in February this year, Amazon ran an ad claiming how great mass surveillance was because it could help you find a lost dog if it ran away. Amazon's brand, Ring, would use a giant surveillance network of AI cameras to find lost dogs. Understandably, the reasonable people who saw that ad were, at minimum, creeped out because they realized the consequences of a large scale AI powered surveillance network. At the time, Amazon, Ring, and Flock had a partnership. Seeing the potential growing network of mass surveillance, I had just sent in multiple records requests to various agencies to see if they had any partnerships with 3rd parties, including Flock, Amazon, or Ring [1]. Thankfully, as a result of that dystopian ad, Flock and Amazon/Ring cancelled their partnership [2].

This was my request and the response I recieved.

If you read the documents they're mundane documents. Basically, NC State Highway Patrol has systems that look into commercial vehicles and make sure the drivers aren't driving distracted. Not ideal, but could be worse. Either way, still not responsive really for the Flock question. At this point I should have followed up and pressed the issue, since they specifically didn't mention Flock. However, life got in the way and I forgot to follow up.

Fast forward to last week, and there's reporting that the NC State Highway Patrol is using Flock [4]. I followed up with my initial request asking for clarification. Here was my follow up, along with their response.

Finally, acknowledgement that they at least have the cameras or access to them. But nothing more... all comments should go somewhere else. After three and a half months the NC State Highway Patrol finally disclosed that they were doing exactly what I asked the first time around. Prior to me asking in February, I do not believe the NC State Highway Patrol mentioned anything about Flock cameras in any of their press releases and I don't think there had been any other news reporting on the partnership.

Is this terribly shocking? No. Of course not. Government officials lie or "forget" to include responsive documents in records requests all the time. However, if the NC State Highway Patrol is going to surveil the entire state, they should a least be transparent. Of course, they shouldn't be surveilling the entire state.

“One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much." The NC State Highway Patrol was dishonest with a simple records request, I don't have any faith they will be honest when given much greater surveillance powers.

Ryan Brown
info@deflocknc.org

UPDATE: 5/22/2026

The NC SHP has returned my latest email, written 5/18/2026, with more disinformation. I wasn't asking if we gave data to Flock. I asked if they had access to Flock. How are these people serious...

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