(Above) A Flock Safety representative demonstrates 'Nightshift,' the artificial-intelligence investigative product later renamed 'OS Investigate.' The video on which this watercolor is based can be watched below.
New Flock Software Updates are Designed to Track People by Linking Camera Data, Police Records and Personal Details
When Sheriff Ed McMahon defended plans for more than 20 surveillance cameras around New Hanover County, he described a system aimed at public safety. Eight of the cameras have pan, tilt, and zoom capabilities. The remaining cameras are automatic license plate readers (ALPRs).
That may describe the current hardware, but it does not describe the future of Flock Safety's AI business model. Flock is already selling Nova, a platform that pulls law-enforcement and public-record data into a single search. The company is also testing OS Investigate, formerly named Nightshift, which uses artificial intelligence to turn data into leads on possible suspects and witnesses.
Flock's roadmap reaches far beyond scanning license plates or monitoring park trails.
Flock Nova: The Data Platform That Knows All About You
An archived webpage supplied to Cape Fear Beacon preserves a dedicated Flock Nova product page from early 2026. Flock later removed it. The page included a mock suspect profile with the man’s name, age, email address, and known associates.
That example marks a new threshold in Flock surveillance. Flock presents Nova as a system that can build a profile of a person and map the people around them. Yet Flock has not publicly acknowledged that capability.
(Below) A screenshot from Flock Safety’s removed Nova product page shows a mock search returning a person’s name, age, address, email, warrant alert and known associates. The search panel indicates Nova can pull from police records, public records, OSINT and other data sources.
Flock markets Nova as a real-time platform for investigations and agency operations. This software allows agency employees to search records-management systems and computer-aided dispatch data from the same screen. Nova extends the search to public records and other data sources. The results of a search may include license-plate-reader hits and jail records. Here's how Flock's blog explains it:
"Flock Nova is a public safety platform that consolidates pre-authorized datasets for investigators. Built to address the increasing complexity of modern crime investigations, it breaks down traditional information silos by integrating data from Records Management Systems (RMS), Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD), jail systems, License Plate Readers (LPR), Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT), and public records.
"The key to understanding Flock Nova is that it consolidates, actions, and visualizes connections in data that a law enforcement agency already has access to and is using. Imagine you have an entire filing room full of documents, photos, and spreadsheets from the past 50 years, and you’re trying to find information on one event. Flock Nova is like the tenured Executive Assistant who put that first filing cabinet — and every one since — into that room, and knows exactly where to go when you need one file."
Flock continued:
"...we have decided that Flock Nova will supply the following data sources: public records information, Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT), and License Plate Reader (LPR) data. The Flock Nova tool can also enable agencies to connect their Records Management Systems (RMS), Computer-Aided Dispatch (CAD), and data from jail systems, as well as all of the above from other agencies who agree to share that data."
Flock said each law enforcement agency chooses which data sources connect to Nova. Agencies also set each user’s access and decide which partners may receive case information.
What Is OSINT?
Open-source intelligence, or OSINT, is information collected and analyzed from publicly available sources. It can include material gathered by commercial services from public sources.
Common OSINT sources include:
- Social-media profiles, posts, photographs, and connections
- Websites, forums, blogs, and news archives
- Names, phone numbers, email addresses, and usernames
- Business, property, court, and professional-license records
- Domain registrations, IP-address records, and website history
- Public photographs, videos, maps, and location information
The disappeared web page promoted case mapping and a tool that listed a suspect’s associates. It also described coordination between agencies, with access set by each user’s role. Flock presents Nova as a separate add-on to the Flock camera system.
Nova remains in Flock’s current bundles despite the removal of its dedicated page. Flock has also published a Nova explanation.
Flock commercially offers Nova, although individual agencies may receive it through trials or pilots. Some features were apparently unfinished when the archived page was captured. Flock marked dashboards and reporting as “coming soon.”
What Does Nova Cost?
Flock does not publish a flat price for upgrading to Nova. Its pricing page says costs depend on the technology, number of sensors, software package, and size of the community. Agencies must request a custom quote.
A Michigan government purchasing contract provides a public benchmark. Under that price schedule, an agency with 301 to 500 sworn officers would pay $100,000 annually for Nova Customer Data. Adding Nova OSINT Data would cost another $20,000, bringing the combined annual price to $120,000.
New Hanover County reports 445 sworn officers, which would place the Sheriff’s Office in that tier. A pilot, bundled agreement, negotiated discount, implementation work, or additional data connections could change the final price. In November 2025, Laredo, Texas, (with over 500 sworn officers) considered a $145,000 purchase of Nova investigative software and Nova OSINT Data.
Flock Tracks Suspects and Innocent People with OS Investigate
WIRED revealed OS Investigate in its article “Flock Has a Powerful New AI Tool for Police. We Got Its Code” after reporters found 69 prewritten prompt templates among more than 450 code files served from Flock’s online portal. Anyone who loaded those pages received the files, although the working police system remained behind an authentication wall. WIRED used the exposed code to reconstruct portions of the interface. Fourteen prompts could begin without a license-plate number or other identifier. WIRED reporters Dhruv Mehrotra and Dell Cameron wrote:
"The software, originally called Nightshift and more recently renamed OS Investigate, ships with 69 prewritten prompts that officers can select, review, or edit, and then submit to the AI. Officers can also input prompts of their own.
"The suggested prompts sit in a cache of more than 450 files that WIRED found on Flock’s own website, served by its login pages to anyone who loaded them. The code describes 45 tools at the AI’s disposal, giving it access to plate scans and camera metadata, arrest records, case files, dispatch logs, ballistics results, and commercial databases that contain Social Security numbers, dates of birth, phone numbers, email addresses, relatives and associates."
The system is not limited to checking a known vehicle. An investigator can start with nothing more than a location and time. OS Investigate can then search for possible witnesses and patterns before building profiles of people and vehicles.
A video supplied to Cape Fear Beacon shows a presentation about Nightshift before Flock renamed it OS Investigate. In one demonstration, an officer entered only a suspected travel pattern between Oakland and San Francisco and a 1–5 a.m. time window. The presenter said Nightshift would return LPR results, compare them with CAD data and criminal history, suggest a convoy search for associates, and repeat the search every night.
(Below) A Flock representative demonstrates 'Nightshift,' now called 'OS Investigate,' and explains how the AI tool can run recurring pattern searches, compare license-plate-reader results with dispatch records and criminal history, and suggest investigative leads. Video supplied anonymously to Cape Fear Beacon.
New Hanover Taxpayers Funding Their Own Surveillance: ShadowDragon Allows the Sheriff’s Office to Stalk People and Their Private Lives
Sheriff McMahon may not be using Flock's Nova or OS Investigate, but his office purchased ShadowDragon, a product with far fewer guardrails.
An invoice obtained by Cape Fear Beacon shows that New Hanover County purchased four 12-month subscriptions to ShadowDragon’s SocialNet/Horizon package for the Sheriff’s Office. These licenses, costing $13,399.92, allowed up to 1,000 queries per day for each subscription. The invoice confirms access during that period. By itself, it does not show whether the county renewed the subscriptions in 2026.
(Below) An invoice obtained by Cape Fear Beacon shows the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office purchased four 12-month subscriptions to ShadowDragon’s SocialNet/Horizon package. The $13,399.92 purchase provided up to 1,000 queries per day for each subscription.
The ShadowDragon platform is not a license-plate camera system. Its SocialNet collects open-source intelligence while Horizon analyzes and displays the connections it finds. Carahsoft’s description says the combined tools search hundreds of publicly available sources, including social media, forums, dark-web sources, and breach data.
The company says SocialNet can connect online aliases to identities, map associates, trace activity across platforms, and use available location signals to infer locations and movement. (That is individual tracking through a person’s digital trail, not continuous GPS monitoring.)
What remains unknown is where those results go. ShadowDragon says SocialNet operates through Horizon, and the company promotes support for outside integrations. Flock says Nova can receive OSINT and other agency-approved data. Those capabilities make integration possible, but they do not prove New Hanover County connected ShadowDragon to Flock Nova, OS Investigate, Axon, or any other platform. The tools may remain separate. Records released so far do not answer the question.
New Hanover County Needs to Answer
New Hanover County’s Flock contract does not list Nova, OS Investigate, or Nightshift. However, evidence about ShadowDragon is clear. An invoice shows that the Sheriff’s Office purchased four 12-month subscription licenses for ShadowDragon’s SocialNet/Horizon technology, which is capable of tracking individuals.
New Hanover County owes residents a complete accounting of every surveillance tool in use, not just products carrying the Flock brand. That accounting should identify all Flock products, including pilot and beta features, and state which agencies and users can search them. The county also needs to disclose whether the four ShadowDragon subscriptions were renewed or used in a mass-surveillance capacity. The results should be public.
The Sheriff’s Office has proven itself to be willing to procure mass-surveillance hardware and a database service that provides intimate information on individual residents. However, McMahon has yet to provide an explanation that reconciles these systems with the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches.
How much surveillance is too much for this sheriff?
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