Flock Isn’t Just a Camera Company. In NC, It’s a Licensed Private Investigator.
Flock says its cameras ‘just read license plates.’ North Carolina’s own licensing records tell a fuller story: Flock Group Inc. holds two active state licenses — and one of them is a private investigator license.
Flock Safety tells the public its cameras “just read license plates.” North Carolina’s own licensing records tell a fuller story. Flock Group Inc. holds two active state licenses — and one of them is a private investigator license.
The license it was forced to get
The first is the one Flock spent years fighting before it got it: a Security / Alarm Systems license (No. 367626-CSA, qualifying agent Ralph La’Warren Taylor). North Carolina is the only state that requires ALPR vendors to hold a security-systems license under Chapter 74D, and Flock ran cameras here for years without one — until the state’s Alarm Systems Licensing Board investigated and a Wake County judge ordered the company to stop installing cameras in North Carolina except through a licensed third party. Flock finally obtained its own license in July 2024. It is now renewed through August 31, 2028. (The full licensing fight, from the Board’s own file.) Running the cameras is the part Flock had to be forced to get licensed for.
The license it volunteered for
The second is the one no one made it get. Under license No. 876980, qualifying agent Robert Lee Hubbs, Flock Group Inc. is registered with the North Carolina Private Protective Services Board as a Private Investigator — valid through September 30, 2028.
In North Carolina, a private-investigator license (Chapter 74C) is what the state requires to gather information about people — their identity, their movements, their associations — and furnish it to someone else. It is the license of an investigations business, not a camera vendor.
Why a “plate reader” needs a private eye’s license
A company that only reads plates would have no use for a private investigator’s license. A company building Nova — Flock’s own product, documented by 404 Media, that “jumps from a license plate to a person” by fusing camera data with commercial data-broker records — has every use for one. So does a company that holds a U.S. patent on tracking vehicles and people across unrelated cameras. The state record shows the license; it does not state Flock’s purpose for holding it. But the license a company chooses to obtain is a plain answer to the question of what business it thinks it is in.
You don’t get a private investigator’s license to read a license plate. You get one to investigate people.
Sources
- N.C. Private Protective Services Board — licensee record for Flock Group Inc., PI license #876980 (the record (PDF) · live state lookup).
- N.C. Alarm Systems Licensing Board — licensee record for Flock Group Inc., Alarm license #367626-CSA (the record (PDF) · live state lookup).
- The Board’s full production on Flock’s licensing history — the 2022 investigation, the 2023 Wake County orders, and the “ALPRs are alarm systems” determination — is mirrored at the Internet Archive. (Our full write-up.)
General information for public discussion, not legal advice. License records reflect the state’s public license lookups as of September 19, 2026; a license record shows the license held, not the licensee’s stated purpose. Corrections: mark@deflockilm.org.
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