Flock Worker Called 911 on a Reporter Filming Its Camera in Public

Our Take

Credit to Verified Privacy VPN for surfacing this clip: an InvestigateTV reporter standing on a public sidewalk, filming a Flock Safety technician work on one of the company's license plate readers, and the technician's response is to call the police. Not a request to step back, not a polite "please don't film me" — a 911 call. That reaction tells you everything about how the industry views public accountability. The camera can watch you, log your plate, and feed that data into a nationwide network, but point a phone at the camera's own installer and suddenly it's treated as a threat worth dispatching officers over.

Filming in public is legal. Full stop. That a company built entirely on recording people in public spaces would bristle at being recorded itself is the kind of irony that should embarrass Flock's PR team more than it apparently does. It also raises an uncomfortable question: if routine maintenance on a surveillance camera triggers a panic call, how transparent is this company really willing to be about where these devices go up, who installs them, and what oversight exists once they're live?

Incidents like this are exactly why independent documentation matters. We keep pushing our camera map because communities deserve to know where these ALPRs are watching from, regardless of how uncomfortable that makes the people installing them. If you want to push back on secretive rollouts in your own town, our take-action page is the place to start.