Has Your Car Been Searched?
There’s a tool that can reveal who’s been searching Flock’s cameras — but it only works once the records are obtained. Here’s how it works, and where North Carolina actually stands.
Have I Been Flocked publishes Flock audit logs — the records of who ran searches and why. One important thing to understand up front: it is not a live, automatic lookup of every plate everywhere. It can only show data that someone has already obtained through public-records requests and uploaded to it. Where that data exists, it’s powerful — it’s how a driver caught a Milwaukee officer running 179 personal searches on a romantic partner and her ex (more on misuse here).
Where North Carolina stands right now
Here’s the honest part: coverage in North Carolina is still limited. You may not find data for our area on the site yet, simply because the audit logs here largely haven’t been collected and posted. And when New Hanover County’s Sheriff’s Office did release records to us, the names were redacted — blacked out so no one can see who searched (we wrote about that here). The tool is only ever as good as the records the public can pry loose.
And there is a deeper, structural reason a North Carolina plate may never appear at all. Have I Been Flocked is built entirely from records people obtain through public-records requests — but North Carolina’s ALPR statute makes captured plate data and the associated search logs confidential (§ 20-183.30 et seq.), so an in-state request generally cannot pry loose the searchable, per-plate record that some other states’ laws do. In practice, a North Carolina driver’s plate usually surfaces on the tool only when an out-of-state agency searched it and that state’s public-records law forced the log into the open. So a blank result for a North Carolina plate does not mean your car wasn’t scanned or searched — far more often it means the search stayed inside a system North Carolina keeps closed. That is exactly the accountability gap this campaign exists to close.
Why the gap is the story
That blank space isn’t a flaw in the tool — it’s the very problem we’re fighting. Accountability only exists when residents force these records into the open. It’s why we keep filing public-records requests, and why we’re demanding the county and Sheriff publish complete, unredacted audit logs the public can actually check. The more data we obtain and contribute, the more a tool like Have I Been Flocked can tell every one of us.
What you can do
- Look at haveibeenflocked.com — and if there’s nothing for our area yet, understand that absence is the story, not the absence of a problem.
- Demand unredacted audit logs from the County Commissioners and Sheriff Ed McMahon: who searched, when, and why.
- Support the records fight — sign the petition and share what we’ve already uncovered.
You’re not a suspect. So stop being tracked like one.
It takes one minute. Add your name, then tell your county commissioners to cancel the Flock contract.