Starting on June 11, soccer fans will be filling stadiums across North America to watch the FIFA World Cup. Those driving to matches in the United States might also find themselves being the ones watched: WIRED identified 1,181 automatic license plate reader cameras, or ALPRs, within a five-mile radius of the 11 US stadiums playing host to the World Cup this summer. Most of those cameras are manufactured by Flock Safety.
ALPRs are set up along roadsides by municipalities, businesses, schools, and private groups such as homeowners associations to continuously log the license plate of each car that passes by them. A market survey report prepared for the US Department of Homeland Security says that some providers can collect other information like the make, model, and year of the vehicle and descriptions of bumper stickers affixed to it. Groups that operate networks of these cameras can then query those logs to find matches for specific plates, creating a dossier of where a vehicle has gone and when. Flock Safety, in particular, allows operators to share their data with other groups on their network, meaning that depending on the operator, drivers can accidentally get caught up in a national dragnet.
Flock Safety spokesperson Paris Lewbel acknowledged that the company works with government agencies and “other customers” in areas around World Cup venues. Lewbel emphasized that Flock’s customers, not Flock itself, “own and control their data, decide if, when, and with whom to share it.”
Andrew Elvish, the VP of global marketing for Genetec, which sells ALPR software, says the Canadian company is focused on helping organizations manage parking and isn’t interested in providing excessive access to aggregated license plate data, which he says is a practice that people should be rightfully concerned about.
Here’s WIRED’s complete guide to the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
ALPRs are powerful surveillance tools and ripe for abuse: Cops have been accused of using them to allegedly stalk exes and strangers. In 2025, US Customs and Border Protection were found to be violating a state law by accessing Flock data about drivers by Illinois’ secretary of state, who said it was “a clear violation of state law.” Flock employees even have reportedly accessed cameras inside a children’s gymnastics room and other locations as part of a sales pitch, according to 404 Media. (In a blog post, Flock Safety said that the employees were not “spying on children” and were “well-intentioned employees who accessed a camera network with the city’s explicit permission, as part of their job.”)
Lewbel, the Flock spokesperson, says that the company is “aware of a very small number of incidents of abuse,” adding that Flock Safety does not have a relationship with DHS, including CBP, and that agencies outside of Illinois need to say that they’re complying with Illinois law before they can access Illinois data.
Tracey Ades, a senior director of marketing for Genetec, says the company does its best to make its tools as safe as possible, but at the end of the day it’s their customers’ tool to deploy. “So the need for legislation to limit what people can do?” says Ades. “That needs to be thought through.”
Across the US, communities have started pushing back against ALPR deployment and fighting for more transparency. Activists have pried audit logs revealing whose license plates were searched and why, and assembled it into a searchable database. Dozens of cities have terminated contracts, and groups are planning a national week of action against ALPRs in August. WIRED relied on data compiled by one volunteer mapping project, DeFlock, to identify where ALPRs were located near US World Cup stadiums. Since the data is crowdsourced, it may not be a full picture of all the ALPRs in a given area.
Check out a few of the stadiums below.
WIRED tallied 53 ALPRs surrounding the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. Of those, 39 were manufactured by Flock Safety and 14 were made by Motorola Solutions.
The city will host eight World Cup matches and will also be hosting the 2028 Summer Olympics. Anti-surveillance activists say the city has used the events to nab more funding and expand its surveillance efforts, including by installing more ALPRs.
Out of all the World Cup stadiums in the US, WIRED counted the greatest number of ALPRs—323 Flock cameras—around the NRG Stadium in Houston, Texas, which will host seven matches. Harris County, where the stadium is located, recently renewed its contract with Flock Safety for nearly $869,000. Harris County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Jason Spencer says the office has access to 480 of the manufacturer’s cameras around the county but that those are located outside of the Houston city limits.
Atlanta, which also happens to be the headquarters for Flock Safety, has a large number of ALPRs around Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where eight matches will be played. WIRED counted 188 Flock cameras, 39 Genetec cameras, and 13 cameras made by Motorola Solutions.
Motorola Solutions is also behind the ALPR app Mobile Companion, which protesters in Maine allege is being used by DHS agents to surveil people. Motorola Solutions did not respond to a request for comment.
In the greater Atlanta area, law enforcement agencies have made other technology purchases in preparation for the World Cup. About 30 minutes north of the stadium, the Cobb County Police Department recently got approval to enter into a $9.6 million contract with policing technology giant Axon Enterprise for anti-drone tech, which it said was in preparation for both the World Cup and America 250 events.
Near the MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, where eight matches including the final will take place, WIRED identified 28 ALPRs manufactured by Motorola Solutions and 13 Flock cameras. It’s extremely difficult to get to the stadium by walking or biking, since it is surrounded by highways (though that hasn’t stopped various people from trying it). Most of the Flock cameras are located along New Jersey Route 3, one of the main ways to get to the stadium from New York City and Long Island.
Every World Cup host city in the US has some number of ALPRs surrounding their stadiums. Though cities in Canada and Mexico are also hosting World Cup matches, DeFlock’s crowdsourcing effort doesn’t extend to those countries, so it’s unclear how prevalent ALPRs are there.
For those who would prefer to watch the World Cup rather than be watched on their drive to the stadium, there are options. One of the infrastructure contributors to DeFlock built a navigation app called FlockHopper, which lets users choose between the fastest route and a route with the least amount of ALPRs. It’s available only for iOS right now, but its creator hopes to launch an Android version soon.
Of course, if you’d like to avoid ALPR surveillance altogether, there’s always the option to watch the tournament from the camera-free comfort of your couch.
The post Mapping Every Flock License Plate Reader Near US World Cup Stadiums appeared first on Wired.
