Brendan Keefe: Must See: Flock Safety Calls Police on Reporter Brendan — Part 6/7
The short version: Flock Safety called 911 on a reporter filming its camera install on a public street, revealing how thin-skinned a company tracking millions of plates really is.
Our Take
Let that sink in: a company that photographs every car passing one of its cameras, no warrant needed, dialed 911 because a journalist pointed a camera back at them. Credit to Brendan Keefe and the Daily Beltway crew for sticking with this story through seven parts — the optics here do more damage to Flock's public-safety pitch than any op-ed could.
Flock loves to tell towns it's just a neutral tool helping cops solve crimes, and tells skeptical residents they're free to simply avoid the roads it blankets if they don't like being tracked. But when the tables turn and someone documents its own employees doing routine installation work in public, three Milton, Georgia officers show up in minutes. Barring independent press from its law enforcement conferences and allegedly canceling a reporter's hotel to keep him out fits the same pattern: a company far more comfortable surveilling the public than being observed by it.
This is exactly the asymmetry we track at DeFlock The USA — a private surveillance network with government-level reach but none of the transparency obligations that should come with it. Check our camera map to see what's watching your own streets, and if you want to push back locally, our take-action page has concrete steps.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Daily Beltway, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.