Your Emergency Call Is Losing to a Flock Camera Right Now!?
The short version: A Speedify video flags Flock cameras eating into FirstNet bandwidth meant for first responders, raising fresh questions about who really benefits from this surveillance buildout.
Our Take
Credit to Speedify for digging into something most coverage of Flock Safety misses entirely: the network layer. FirstNet was built post-9/11 as a dedicated, priority cellular lane for firefighters, paramedics, and cops responding to actual emergencies. If license plate readers are chewing up bandwidth on that same network just to stream parking lot footage to the cloud 24/7, that's not a minor technical footnote — it's a sign of how little scrutiny went into deploying thousands of always-on cameras onto critical infrastructure.
This is the pattern with Flock everywhere: the pitch is always public safety, but the execution routinely sacrifices the very systems public safety depends on, whether that's bandwidth, data security, or basic transparency about who's watching the feeds. A camera network that can degrade emergency communications is a camera network that was never properly vetted before it went up on your street corner.
If you want to see how many of these devices are already running in your area, check our camera map, and if you think your town council should be asking harder questions before approving more of them, our take-action page has a starting point.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Speedify, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.