Same plate reads. Without the surveillance brand.
Flock made cloud LPR a household name. They also made it the subject of federal lawsuits, security disclosures, city-council removals, and a steady drip of investigative reporting on what their cameras are actually being used for. Corvid does the LPR work. Pass on the headlines.
The four things you trade away with Flock.
The feature checklist looks similar. The terms don't.
Theirs. Want LPR on the cameras you've already paid for? Buy Flock cameras anyway. Forklift, please.
Yours. Bring Axis, Vivotek, Hikvision, Dahua, Hanwha, anything ONVIF. Or buy Corvid cameras. Your call.
A Flock rep, from somewhere far away, who's never met your customer or installed a camera in their life. Your local integrator? Cut out.
Your local security integrator. The one who already installed your CCTV, your access control, your alarm. Channel-only — Corvid doesn't sell direct.
In Flock's network. Quietly visible to other agencies — sometimes federal — that you didn't approve. Welcome to the news cycle.
In your tenant. Inter-agency sharing is opt-in per deployment. Every share is logged. Your audit committee can name names.
Federal lawsuits. Cameras that took photos of journalists' kids. Cameras that hold-tested unauthenticated. Cities yanking the contract. Pick a week.
We don't sell to ICE. We don't have a national plate-share network. We don't ship cameras with default credentials. Boring is a feature.
The receipts.
Six things that have shown up in actual reporting on Flock in the last 18 months. None of them have shown up about Corvid. We'd like to keep it that way.
The Institute for Justice sued Norfolk, VA in late 2024, alleging the Flock-powered system tracked every driver in the city without a warrant. Similar suits are forming in other cities.
Multiple state and local agencies have been reported running Flock searches on behalf of ICE / DHS, despite some jurisdictions explicitly prohibiting that data use. (404 Media, Wired, Sacramento Bee.)
Researchers documented Flock devices accessible via the public internet without credentials — turning surveillance cameras into a public stream. (Forbes / 404 Media reporting.)
Public-records pulls have surfaced repeated cases of officers searching the Flock network for non-criminal purposes — including ex-spouses and abortion-related travel — using bogus case IDs.
Sedona, AZ removed its cameras after public pushback. Oakland rejected a contract. Multiple Massachusetts and Illinois cities have hit pause. The trend isn't slowing down.
Newsroom investigations have surfaced Flock images that include faces of minors and other identifying detail Flock's marketing said wasn't being captured.
Sources: Forbes, 404 Media, Wired, Reuters, Sacramento Bee, local-press coverage, Institute for Justice case filings, municipal council minutes. Corvid is not affiliated with Flock Safety; Flock is a registered trademark of Flock Group Inc.
Side by side.
The full feature comparison.
| Feature | Corvid | Flock Safety |
|---|---|---|
| Sales model | Channel-only — sold through certified integrators | Direct sales to municipalities + HOAs |
| Camera hardware | Bring your own (any IP / ONVIF) or buy Corvid cameras | Flock cameras only |
| Gateway | Software — runs on PC, NUC, Pi, LTE modem, or another camera | Proprietary cellular hardware |
| Hot lists | Federal, state, custom | Federal, state, custom |
| Make / model / color | Yes | Yes |
| Mobile in-car LPR | Yes | Yes |
| Phone as a camera | Yes — Corvid mobile app | No |
| Full VMS (video, not just plates) | Yes — same camera does both | Limited |
| Parking (occupancy / dwell / zones) | Yes | Newer offering |
| Audit log | Every action, every share, queryable by your records team | Limited |
| Default inter-agency sharing | OFF — opt-in per deployment, every share logged | ON in many deployments |
| Pricing | Per-camera, set by your integrator | Per-camera, set by Flock |
Your reads. Your decision.
License plate reads are public-record data. But who sees them, for how long, and which other agencies they get pushed to — those should be the customer's call, not the platform vendor's default.
- Reads stored in your tenant. Corvid doesn't resell them, broker them, or roll them into a national network without your explicit per-deployment opt-in.
- Inter-agency sharing is opt-in per deployment. You decide which other agencies see your reads, on what schedule, with what retention.
- Every share is logged. Every query is logged. Your audit committee can reconstruct who saw what, when — something that's been notably hard to do with Flock's national network.
Corvid's default posture is privacy-conservative. Custom retention windows, opt-in sharing, and full audit logs are built in — not features hidden behind a sales gate. Talk to us about your jurisdiction's requirements before you have to talk to your local newspaper about them.
Flock cut you out. Corvid puts you back in.
If you're a security integrator who's ever lost a deal because Flock walked into your customer's council meeting and closed it for them — this is the platform you fight back with. Corvid is sold exclusively through you. Same plate reads, same alerts, same hot lists, same mobile in-car LPR. Different relationship.
And every camera you sell pays you yearly. Your renewals calendar is your business now, not a leakage point to a SaaS rep.
Same job. Different terms.
See Corvid running live. Then talk to your local integrator about what it costs in your zip code — without the lock-in, without the lawsuit, without the surveillance brand.