National press points readers to the crowdsourced camera map

The Hill, the Washington political outlet owned by Nexstar Media, published an explainer this week directing readers to the crowdsourced national map of automated license plate reader cameras and inviting them to look up reported camera locations in their own neighborhoods.

The piece embeds the map maintained by DeFlock, the volunteer project founded in 2024 by software engineer Will Freeman. According to the article, the map’s camera locations come from volunteers and the OpenStreetMap community rather than from any company or government agency, and Nexstar noted it could not independently verify the locations. The map records cameras from multiple manufacturers, not only Flock Safety.

The article repeats Flock Safety’s own figures: the company says it partners with more than 5,000 law enforcement agencies across roughly 6,000 communities. Syndicated versions of the reporting carried by Nexstar stations state that about 90 cities have rejected or canceled camera contracts [verify: the 90 figure appears in the WPIX syndicated version; confirm it also appears in The Hill’s text] and cite national camera counts ranging from nearly 100,000 to more than 118,000 depending on the version [verify: reconcile the count against DeFlock’s current figure].

The explainer marks a shift worth recording: national political press treating camera location lookup as a service to readers, alongside its note that backlash has grown in recent months. Local contract decisions remain where the record is made, and those are tracked in the jurisdictions directory.

Read the original reporting: The Hill.