Flock Safety has stopped telling customers where its license plate cameras are made, dropping the “Made in the USA” claim it once used prominently, according to a Wired review of the company’s marketing materials. The change comes as the Atlanta-based startup faces a nationwide protest movement over its surveillance technology. Dozens of local governments have halted use of the cameras, and Congress is weighing legislation that would cut federal funding to states that fail to limit license plate readers.
Current and former employees, supply chain analysts, and US import records reviewed by Wired show that Flock’s cameras have long depended on non-custom parts from suppliers around the world. Records from ImportGenius indicate the company has increasingly imported commodity cameras, radar systems, and other components from Primax Electronics in Thailand; Primax is based in Taiwan and also has manufacturing in China. Analyst Lynn Hughes said some shipments include radar, possibly for sensor pods attached to the cameras. Flock spokesperson Paris Lewbel said all products the company builds comply with the National Defense Authorization Act, which bars government contractors from using parts made by certain Chinese tech companies.
Flock CEO Garrett Langley has said he built the first cameras in his Atlanta home, where drills scarred his dining table. In a 2021 marketing video, he described the company’s value as aggregating and packaging parts into a waterproof, consumer-friendly device. Early prototypes used cameras pulled from Android phones bought on Alibaba, wired to batteries and soldered onto a solar panel, aiming to prove a useful device could be built from parts costing a few hundred dollars. Assembly later moved to a corporate office, then to a warehouse in Atlanta, as the company secured homeowners association contracts.
Marketing language shifted over the years. Flock described its cameras as “manufactured in the United States” in 2019 and “made in the USA” in 2020, then told customers in 2021 that assembly was handled by Flock Safety in Atlanta. A person familiar with the matter said final assembly later moved to contract facilities in North Carolina and Wisconsin run by East West Manufacturing and Plexus, part of an effort to keep production in North America and respond quickly to customer needs. A 2023 brochure said the cameras were designed and manufactured in the US, while parts still largely came from Asia; by 2024, partners could produce 500 cameras a day.
East West removed a mention of Flock from its website case studies in mid-May as public backlash grew, though a 2021 LinkedIn video promoting its work for the company remains online. Wired could not determine where the cameras are assembled now; a marketing presentation this year does not name a location. Flock also stored cameras in self-storage units around the country for installation crews, a system one former employee called janky, according to Wired.
In July, the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration cited Flock for allegedly failing to promptly report a June incident in which an employee was hospitalized for a leg amputation, records show. The injury occurred at a Flock audio and video equipment manufacturing site in Houston, Texas, though it is possible the location was a camera and the injury happened during installation or maintenance. Flock is contesting a proposed penalty of about $9,500 and says it reported the injury quickly.
Cris van Pelt, creator of the anti-Flock project Have I Been Flocked, said the lack of transparency about the supply chain points to a bigger oversight problem, since a compromise in any part of it would go unnoticed. Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said domestic manufacturing does not substitute for accountability over how surveillance systems are built, sold, and used.
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