Flock cameras face increased scrutiny as concerns grow over privacy

Our Take

When a national morning show gets a surveillance CEO on camera apologizing, that's not a PR win — that's a company on defense. Anna Schecter's interview, as reported by CBS Mornings, has Flock's chief acknowledging misuse of its license plate reader data by law enforcement in at least some cases. That's a striking admission from a company that has spent years selling itself to city councils as a neutral, crime-fighting tool with airtight guardrails.

We've said it before: the problem was never hypothetical. Once a nationwide network of plate-reading cameras exists, it will get used for things far beyond the stated mission — tracking people across state lines, sharing data with agencies that have no business seeing it, and doing all this with almost no independent oversight. An apology after the fact doesn't undo months or years of logged movements on people who were never suspected of anything. Policy promises are easy to make on camera; audits and enforcement are the hard part, and that's where the real test is.

This kind of mainstream scrutiny matters because it's how public pressure builds — reporters asking the questions city councils and state legislators too often skip. If you want to see whether Flock is watching your own neighborhood, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back locally, our take action page has the tools to start.