UNC Wilmington Doesn’t Use Flock. It Said So in Writing.
We asked New Hanover County’s own university whether it runs license-plate surveillance. Its answer, in a signed records response, was clear: no Flock, no ALPR cameras, no plate database. We publish it because a clean answer deserves to be on the record as plainly as a troubling one.
DeFlockILM files the same ALPR/Flock public-records request with agencies across North Carolina, including every UNC System campus. Some produce audit logs that name thousands of outside agencies searching their cameras. UNC Wilmington’s answer was the opposite — and just as worth publishing.
What UNCW said
On August 27, 2026, through Assistant General Counsel Samantha B. Taylor, the University of North Carolina Wilmington responded to our June 28 request. In its own words, UNCW “does not currently operate any Flock or other ALPR cameras on campus and does not have any data recorded by such cameras,” and it has never operated a Flock Safety system. That means no plate data, no retention schedule, no search audit logs, no data-sharing agreements or MOUs, and no ALPR policy — because there is no ALPR system to govern.
We take that at face value, and we credit it. When we ask a question this pointed, a complete, signed “no” is exactly the kind of answer the public records law is for.
Two honest footnotes
Precision cuts both ways, so here are the two details UNCW disclosed that keep the picture accurate.
Parking enforcement uses four LPR cameras — but not the networked kind. UNCW told us its parking staff run four LPR cameras mounted on two vehicles that drive the campus reading plates in the lots, checking them against a closed, internal parking-permit database only. These require a human operator, lack the automatic always-on functionality of a Flock reader, and are not connected to any outside network or hotlist. They exist to write parking tickets, not to track movements — a meaningfully different tool, and we note the distinction rather than blur it.
A free ALPR demo ran for six months — from a different vendor — and has ended. The single record UNCW found responsive was a no-cost ALPR demonstration provided by KNC Technologies on its “Cloudrunner” system, from December 2025 through June 2026. Not Flock — a competitor. The University says the demonstration has ended and it no longer has access to the Cloudrunner system or its data. It is a small but useful reminder that Flock is not the only company putting free ALPR trials in front of North Carolina institutions, and that a “we don’t have Flock” is not always the same as “we never touched ALPR.” Here, UNCW volunteered both halves.
One more detail about the demo vendor, from a different set of records. When we asked the N.C. Security Systems Licensing Board about the ALPR industry’s licensing, its files turned up something specific about KNC Technologies — the company behind the “Cloudrunner” system UNCW trialed. In September 2024, the Board cited KNC for unlicensed activity under North Carolina’s security-systems law and entered a consent agreement. In other words, the vendor that offered New Hanover County’s university a free plate-reader demo had itself been dinged by the state for operating without the license the law requires. UNCW walked away from the trial; the licensing question it raises is one we are still pressing statewide.
Why we publish a clean answer
It would be easy to only spotlight the agencies that hide the ball. But the point of this project is the record, whatever it says. UNCW — the largest institution in New Hanover County — asked the question and answered it fully: no Flock, no ALPR surveillance network, and a candid account of the two edge cases. That is what accountability looks like when it goes well, and it belongs on the tracker next to the cases that went badly.
It also sharpens the contrast at home. The university in the middle of the county can say plainly that it runs no plate-surveillance network. The Sheriff’s Office, which does, still redacts the name of every agency that searches its 2.98 million-query network. One of these institutions chose to tell the public exactly what it does. The other has not.
Sources
- University of North Carolina Wilmington, Office of General Counsel (Asst. GC Samantha B. Taylor), written response to DeFlockILM public-records request, August 27, 2026 — quoted above. Mirrored, unaltered, at the Internet Archive.
- DeFlockILM — the full UNC System ALPR rundown · the records repository.
General information for public discussion, not legal advice. Quotations are from UNCW’s August 27, 2026 records response. This article alleges no wrongdoing by UNC Wilmington, which produced a full response. Corrections: mark@deflockilm.org. First published August 27, 2026.
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