Town Renews Contract with Flock Even After Learning Employees Watched Public Pool
The short version: Dunwoody, Georgia renewed its Flock contract even after learning employees reportedly watched a public pool, and officials shrugged.
Our Take
404 Media's reporting on Dunwoody, Georgia cuts to the core problem with ALPR and camera networks: once the infrastructure exists, it rarely stays confined to its stated purpose. A contract sold as a tool for catching stolen cars or hit-and-run suspects apparently became a way for someone to watch people at a public pool. That's not a hypothetical slippery slope civil liberties advocates warn about — according to this report, it's what already happened, and the council renewed the contract anyway.
This is the pattern we track constantly: access creep, lack of audit trails, and elected officials who treat resident outrage as background noise rather than a mandate to act. When a city council can be told their surveillance vendor's cameras were misused and still vote to keep writing checks, it tells you who they think they're accountable to — and it isn't the people being watched. Credit to 404 Media for pushing this story into the open instead of letting it die in a city council meeting nobody attended.
If you want to know whether your own neighborhood has this kind of gear pointed at it, check our camera map, and if your town is weighing a renewal like Dunwoody's, see our take-action resources before the vote happens without you.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of 404 Media, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.