Knox County Commission is set to discuss flock cameras at a workshop tomorrow.
The short version: WBIR reports Knox County Commission will hear directly from Flock Safety reps at a workshop, a format that favors the vendor's pitch over public scrutiny.
Our Take
Credit to WBIR Channel 10 for flagging this before it happens rather than after the contract's signed. That's exactly when the public needs to pay attention — not at the ribbon-cutting, but at the workshop where the pitch gets made. When a company like Flock Safety shows up to present to commissioners directly, you're getting a sales meeting dressed up as a policy discussion. There's no outside voice in that room pushing back on retention periods, data-sharing agreements, or who else gets access to Knox County's plate data once it's flowing into a national network.
This is the pattern we see over and over: local officials, often well-intentioned and under pressure to "do something" about crime, get a polished presentation about hotlists and wrong-way driver alerts, and far less about the audit trails, the third-party query logs, or the fact that these cameras capture everyone's movements, not just suspects. Knox County residents deserve a workshop that includes someone other than the vendor explaining what this system logs, who can search it, and how long that data sits in a database before anyone asks.
If you're in Knox County, now's the time to show up, ask questions, and demand real answers before the vote — not after the cameras are bolted to poles. Check our camera map to see what's already deployed near you, and visit our take-action page for tools to push back at the local level.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of WBIR Channel 10, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.