Texas officer used Flock ALPR network to search for a woman suspected of abortion
The officer gained access to the records of safe states.
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- A Texas deputy used Flock's license plate network to search for a woman suspected of self-managed abortion.
- Johnson County Sheriff's Office and Flock said it was a welfare check for a missing person; no warrant was issued.
- The query accessed data from 83,000 cameras across 6,809 law enforcement networks, including states where abortion is legal.
- Advocates warn ALPR tools can track vehicles across state lines, weakening abortion protections and enabling mass surveillance.
Key Takeaways by nexos.ai, reviewed by Cybernews staff.
The Sheriff’s office says the search was triggered to perform a wellness check for a missing person.
In May 2025, a deputy with the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office in Texas ran a query through Flock Safety’s Automated License Plate Recognition (ALPR) system to look for a woman suspected of having a self-managed abortion, which is illegal in Texas.
According to the documents obtained by 404 Media, the search log included phrases “had an abortion, search for female.”
The query provided the officer with access to a network of 83,000 cameras used by 6,809 law enforcement networks, including states where abortions are legal and protected. No warrant was issued for the search.
The AI-powered Flock ALPR system captures every car that comes into its cameras’ view, recording license plate, timestamp, location, and direction of travel. The data is stored in a central cloud.
The system then matches the data with a searchable database used by law enforcement agencies and issues an alert.
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Within the Flock network, queries are justified by filling free-text fields, and “investigation” is usually named as the reason for the search.
Following 404 Media’s story, Johnson County Sheriff Adam King and Flock Safety said the system was used to conduct a “welfare check” for a missing person, as her family worried about her safety.
The company called the report “false” and “clickbait.”
Pro-choice activists, however, aren’t convinced by these explanations.
Kate Bertash of the Digital Defense Fund, a pro-abortion technology and advocacy organization, told 404 Media that anti-abortion groups have a track record of secretly recording license plates at clinics.
She said that the ALPR system, which allows tracking of vehicles “over time and across state lines,” limits protection even for those who live in safe states.
After the Supreme Court overturned federal constitutional protection of abortion in 2022, 13 states, including Texas, have imposed a total abortion ban, according to Guttmacher Institute’s tracker.
Pregnancy termination is allowed only to save a mother’s life, yet in reality, women report being denied care even in the case of medical emergencies, as physicians fear being wrongfully accused of facilitating abortions.
Fears over mass surveillance
Rights advocates accuse the Flock ALPR system of enabling mass surveillance and facilitating warrantless searches.
The company’s CEO, Garrett Langley, recently dismissed the criticism, saying the system doesn’t violate the Fourth Amendment.
He told The Drive, “So far, in our belief and what will be for a long time, the courts have deemed this is not a warrantless search; this is a valid product as it relates to the Fourth Amendment. So I don’t see any change there.”