Flock cameras are seemingly everywhere. So, too, is talk about Flock.

Take this response from Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, when asked about the cameras at his monthly news conference on Thursday:

“Yeah, [I’m] deeply troubled and share those same concerns. There’s been stories now coming from agencies across the United States where law enforcement individuals have accessed those cameras for personal reasons, for reasons outside of the law enforcement chain. I think Americans should be deeply concerned about that,” Cox said.

“I don’t think we should say, ‘Hey, just trust us,’” he continued. “I don’t think that that should be the response at all.”

He stopped short of putting Flock on the chopping block, though. Instead, he said he’d asked the Utah Privacy Governing Board to review the statewide rules on cameras.

To truly understand the scope of Flock and similar surveillance camera systems like it — typically lumped into a category called automatic license plate readers (or ALPR) — you have to do a lot of digging. That’s what a team of The Salt Lake Tribune’s reporters is doing right now; in fact, we’re in the process of getting every ALPR contract with every city in Salt Lake County to learn more.

That public records process takes time, though, so we wanted to give you some quicker information on what we know about ALPR cameras around the valley.

Where you can find them

The community’s interest in surveillance cameras has culminated in a nationwide tracking project called DeFlock. Founded by Will Freeman, an Alabama-based software engineer and privacy advocate, in October 2024, the site has grown significantly since then to include 135,000 cameras and counting nationwide.

DeFlock relies on people tracking the trackers: each camera has a photo taken of it, a location logged, and any other obvious information about the device, put into an open-source database. As with pretty much all community-driven projects like this, the accuracy of the data can be out of date or otherwise wonky.

Nevertheless, it’s probably our best current data on the status of cameras across the country. Click around on DeFlock’s map, embedded here, to find camera locations near you.

How Utah’s camera count compares

Objectively, Utah is middle of the road in terms of Flock cameras: both in total count and population-adjusted count. We rank 26th for the former and 28th for the latter.

However, a look within Utah tells a different story. Looking at the DeFlock map overlaid with city boundaries, we were able to count documented cameras in each of the top 20 cities in the state by population.

Salt Lake City has the highest number of ALPR cameras in the state, according to DeFlock, with 88.

Interestingly, that’s not the Utah city with the highest number of cameras per capita, though. That honor goes to rural Hanksville in Wayne County. Despite the town’s population of 158, there are two cameras pointed in each direction on State Route 24, near the Hollow Mountain gas station and convenience store.

As noted, we’ll have much more reporting on this topic moving forward. Whether you balk at Flocks on your crosswalk or not, follow The Tribune’s coverage.