By admin 
Editor’s note: The story has been updated to reflect the cameras used in Forest Acres are not Flock cameras and the city disputes the accuracy of /DeFlock’s crowd-sourced data. (Updated 6 p.m. 8/25/26)
Read more SC woman doctored receipts to collect thousands from insurance, officials say
The national debate around Flock cameras, the increasingly ubiquitous technology that records the license plate information of passing cars, has many Midlands drivers asking the question: where is my car being seen as I go around town?
As with most other things these days, the answer is online.
The website DeFlock has created a crowd-sourced map of cameras all over the country, showing where cameras have been placed at the street level and what agencies are using them.
In the Columbia area, cameras can be seen clustered in the Five Points area, where there are four — although only two of those are Flock cameras. Others can be seen clustered around MUSC’s downtown medical center and Charlie W. Johnson Stadium, through the Olympia neighborhood and around the Roost apartments.
There are relatively few in the capital city’s downtown core, where a single Flock camera stands sentinel at the intersection of Bull Street and Elmwood Avenue. But no fewer than 10 blanket the Prisma Health Richland campus, while five cover West Beltline Boulevard between Two Notch Road and Farrow Road, and four watch Sunset Drive in north Columbia between Medical Park Drive and River Road. In the St. Andrews area, nine can be spotted running along Broad River and Bush River roads.
DeFlock allows users to share the location of new cameras as they are installed across the country. It was started in 2024 by a software engineer mapping cameras around his hometown of Huntsville, Alabama, and has since grown to cover 125,000 license-plate readers made by Flock Safety and others.
Atlanta-based Flock Safety has become the main face of the growing use of license-plate readers. Law enforcement say its portable, solar-powered digital cameras can help solve crimes and make arrests by reading the license plates of passing cars, which can later show up in a search by any police agency using the technology.
In the Midlands of South Carolina, Flock and similar cameras have exploded exponentially in the last few years, as a timeline of additions to the web map show.
But critics say the spread of the cameras just makes it easier for everyday citizens’ movements to be monitored, and several police officers have been accused of misusing the system to spy on innocent people.
Cameras on the DeFlock website can be added by anyone who spots a new camera that pops up around town or on their daily commute. But in South Carolina, activists with the local group DeFlock SC work to ensure the tagged locations and the make and model of camera indicated is accurate. Its volunteers try to visually confirm the tagged cameras, including using devices that can scan for Wi-Fi or Bluetooth signals emitted by the monitoring equipment.
They hope spreading awareness of the cameras, and their uses and potential abuses, will lead the public to push back against their widespread use.
“We want to raise awareness with the general public,” said Mary Dowd, who works with the DeFlock SC-affiliated Eyes Off GSP in the Greenville-Spartanburg area. “We’re trying to do canvassing and educational events, and we’re also working towards a sign campaign, (which) would be to create and distribute signs to put under Flock cameras” and make them more noticeable to passersby.
Earlier this month, Flock Safety announced new safety features to its network that would flag abnormal searches and shorten the company’s data retention period from 30 days to seven.
Read more SC earmarks sent to McMaster. How would next governor handle lawmaker projects?
But concerns that the technology impinges on citizens’ privacy haven’t stopped local governments from using the technology. The town of Irmo is spending $400,000 to triple the size of its Flock network. The town currently has 11 Flock cameras, which the DeFlock map shows them on College Street and Columbia Avenue, as well as three on Royal Tower Drive and one on Chadford Road near H.E. Corley Elementary School and Friarsgate Park.
“If a child is abducted, a violent criminal flees our town, or a family is desperately waiting for answers after a loved one goes missing, I never want to look them in the eye and say, ‘We could have used technology that might have helped, but we chose not to,’” Irmo Police Chief Bobby Dale said last month while advocating for the expansion.
Just south of town, several more are clustered around the commercial stretch of Harbison Boulevard and Columbiana Centre mall.
Even Chapin has a few, pointed at Columbia Avenue coming off of Interstate 26 and then where Columbia crosses the train tracks onto Chapin Road.
Moving south there are eight clustered around Lexington Medical Center and five pointed at Columbia Metropolitan Airport. Out toward Lexington, the cameras can be found on the main approaches to town: Augusta Road, Sunset Boulevard and South Lake Drive.
Meanwhile, on the other side of Columbia, there are three non-Flock license plate-reading cameras covering the intersection of Beltline Boulevard and Forest Drive in Forest Acres, plus three more at Forest and Trenholm Road. Three separate cameras cover the approaches to A.C. Flora High School and Crayton Middle School.
Through a spokesperson, the city of Forest Acres challenged the accuracy of the website’s data.
“The Forest Acres Police Department (FAPD) has never contracted with Flock Safety and does not operate Flock cameras within the city’s jurisdiction,” wrote city Communications Director Lynnsey Baker in an email. “We understand and respect the public’s interest in the use of camera technology and have consistently been transparent that the City of Forest Acres does utilize license plate-reading cameras for public safety purposes. These cameras are not Flock cameras.”
She added, “Crowdsourced websites can be useful resources, but the information they contain is subject to human error and is not always verified by the agencies or jurisdictions identified.”
In the Midlands, the DeFlock map shows use agreements with the Camden, Chapin, Elgin, Irmo, Lexington and Gaston police departments as well as the Richland and Kershaw sheriff’s departments, the State Law Enforcement Division, S.C. Department of Public Safety, Columbia Metropolitan Airport, Lexington Medical Center and Santee Cooper.
Opponents say they hope wider awareness of the technology will pressure state and local leaders to scale back the use of these cameras or ban them altogether, as Oconee County did earlier this month.
They are trying to find out more about the camera’s operations through freedom of information requests, including a feature on the website HaveIBeenFlocked.com that allows users to search for records of individual license plates.
Read more SC earmarks sent to McMaster. How would next governor handle lawmaker projects?