Police misused Flock Safety data. Here's how we found out.
The short version: The AJC's investigation shows what happens when local cops get a searchable database of everyone's movements: they use it for personal reasons, not just crime-fighting.
Our Take
Credit where it's due: the Atlanta Journal-Constitution did the unglamorous work of filing records requests and tracking down audit logs to show something we've been saying for a while — once a mass surveillance tool exists, it gets misused. Not hypothetically, not eventually, but repeatedly, by officers who decided a license plate reader network built to find stolen cars and wanted fugitives was also a handy way to check up on an ex, a neighbor, or someone they just didn't like.
This is the predictable failure mode of ALPR systems. Flock and departments that deploy its cameras love to talk about "guardrails" and audit trails, but an audit trail only matters if someone actually reads it, and most of the misuse the AJC found came out through persistence and public records requests, not proactive policing of the police. The data exists, it's searchable by anyone with a login, and the incentives to peek rarely line up with the incentives to get caught. Multiply dozens of known Georgia cases by every jurisdiction running these cameras and you start to see the real scale of the problem.
If you want to know whether your own commute, your kid's school route, or your church parking lot is being logged by one of these cameras, check our camera map. And if you'd rather your city council hear from residents before it signs another Flock contract, our take-action page has concrete steps for pushing back.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Atlanta Journal-Constitution, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.