Murfreesboro police back off Flock Safety integration as city council approves new drone licenses
The short version: Murfreesboro police reportedly shelved a Flock Safety integration but quietly picked up new drone licenses for live remote video feeds, per WSMV 4 Nashville.
Our Take
Credit to WSMV 4 Nashville for catching the sleight of hand here: Murfreesboro backs away from one surveillance tool while its city council green-lights another. That's not a retreat from mass surveillance, it's a lateral move. Drones with live-feed licenses give police the same kind of persistent, warrantless watching that ALPRs do, just from the air instead of the curb.
This is the pattern we keep seeing nationwide: public pressure kills one program, and a less scrutinized one slides through the same meeting. Flock cameras get headlines because they're bolted to poles on your street, but drone feeds streamed straight to an officer's laptop deserve just as much scrutiny — arguably more, since they can follow people in real time without any fixed, mappable location.
If Murfreesboro genuinely stepped back from Flock, good, but don't let that distract from the drone vote. Check our camera map to see what's already tracking your area, and hit take-action to push your own council to debate this stuff in the open instead of burying it under a headline about the thing they didn't do.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WSMV 4 Nashville, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.