DRIVER MISTAKENLY TICKETED BY FLOCK CAMERA

Our Take

This is exactly the kind of story we warned you'd start seeing more of. Flock Safety markets its cameras as a force multiplier for police, but what happens when the database the system leans on is stale, wrong, or just slow to update? A driver gets a citation in the mail for something that isn't even true anymore. Credit to WSB-TV's Michael Doudna for pressing on how this happened and whether it's a one-off or a pattern — that's the reporting this technology demands, because the companies selling it sure aren't volunteering the error rates.

Notice what's missing from the story as described: any real accountability mechanism for the person who got the bogus ticket. ALPR hits get treated as reliable evidence first and questioned later, which flips the burden onto ordinary drivers to prove a negative. Multiply this by thousands of plates scanned daily across Atlanta and Cobb County and you get a system where mistakes aren't edge cases — they're a predictable cost of running mass surveillance infrastructure with zero public auditing.

If there's a Flock camera on your street, you deserve to know it's there and how it's being used against you. Check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and if you want to push back on these systems in your own town, our take-action page has concrete steps for raising this at your next city council meeting.