Brendan Keefe: Must See: Flock Safety Calls Police on Reporter Brendan — Part 1/7

Our Take

Brendan Keefe was standing on a public road doing what reporters are supposed to do — watching installers at work — and Flock Safety's response was to dial 911 and frame it as harassment. Three Milton, Georgia officers rolled up within minutes. That's not a security protocol, that's a company trying to make an inconvenient witness disappear. Credit to Keefe and the Daily Beltway crew for keeping the cameras rolling through all of it; this is the kind of documentation that matters.

The irony writes itself: a company that tells the public they're free to "opt out of society" if they don't like being tracked block after block, mile after mile, can't tolerate a single reporter opting into basic observation of its own hardware going up on a public right-of-way. Barring independent media from law enforcement conferences and yanking a journalist's hotel reservation isn't the behavior of an organization confident in its own transparency pitch — it's the behavior of one that knows scrutiny is bad for business.

This is exactly why outside documentation matters so much in the fight against ALPR sprawl: the company controls the narrative in press releases and city council pitches, but incidents like this show what happens when someone just points a camera back. If there's a Flock camera near you, check the map and see what's already watching your street, then head to take action to push back at the local level.