Palm Bay Unhoods Flock Surveillance Network: Inside the Dragnet, the Leaked Codebase, and the Dais

Our Take

Thomas Gaume's reporting on Palm Bay pulls back the curtain on something we see over and over: a city flips the switch on a Flock Safety network, pauses it when questions get uncomfortable, then quietly resumes operations like nothing happened. The fact that this story reportedly touches a leaked codebase and the inner workings of the local dais suggests there's more going on here than a routine public-safety procurement — it points to the kind of opaque decision-making that keeps residents in the dark about how their movements are being logged.

This is the pattern that makes ALPR dragnets so dangerous. These systems don't just watch for stolen cars or Amber Alerts — they build a searchable record of everywhere your plate has been, retained and shared across jurisdictions with little public oversight. When a network goes dark and comes back without a real community reckoning, that's not transparency, that's inertia protecting the surveillance status quo.

Credit to Thomas Gaume for digging into the technical and political layers most outlets skip. If you want to see whether a camera like the ones in Palm Bay is watching your own neighborhood, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back on your city council, our take-action page has the tools to get started.