Lynchburg council members to introduce resolutions on Flock cameras after privacy concerns

Our Take

Credit to WSET ABC 13 for covering a story that too often flies under the radar: elected officials actually pumping the brakes on Flock Safety before the contract ink is permanent. According to the report, Lynchburg council members Chris Faraldi and Marty Misjuns are moving to introduce resolutions addressing ALPR use after constituents voiced privacy concerns. That's a notable reversal from the usual script, where these networks get installed quietly and oversight gets bolted on later, if ever.

This is exactly the kind of local friction that matters in the bigger fight against mass surveillance. Flock's pitch is always public safety, but the underlying system is a database that tracks every plate, every direction, every time, with retention and sharing policies that can shift without a public vote. When council members start asking who sees this data, how long it's kept, and whether it ever leaves city hands, they're asking the questions every city should have asked before the cameras went up, not after.

Lynchburg residents watching this unfold should push for binding policy, not just a resolution with no teeth, and keep an eye on whether the cameras' data-sharing footprint is disclosed publicly. If you want to see what's already deployed near you, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for your own council to catch up, our take-action page has tools for making noise before the vote, not after.