Task force meets on Flock camera misuse, Georgia lawmaker stops short of promising fix

Our Take

Credit to Atlanta News First for keeping a spotlight on this: Georgia has had a law on the books governing ALPR data since 2018, and yet here we are in 2024 watching a task force convene to talk about "misuse" like it's a fresh discovery. That's the pattern with Flock Safety nationwide — jurisdictions bolt these cameras to light poles first and ask legal questions later, if ever. A task force meeting is not a policy. It's a photo op with a sign-in sheet.

What stands out in this report is the lawmaker stopping short of promising an actual fix. That's the tell. When the people with subpoena power and a vote won't commit to tightening audit trails, banning data-sharing with out-of-state agencies, or putting real teeth into violations, you're looking at a system designed to look accountable without being accountable. Georgia's 2018 statute already proved that a law on paper means nothing if nobody's checking whether departments follow it — officers have repeatedly been caught running plates for personal reasons, feeding data to ICE-adjacent networks, or just not logging searches at all, with little consequence.

This is exactly why we built our camera map — so residents don't have to wait on a task force to find out how many Flock units are scanning their commute. If you're in Georgia or anywhere else watching officials slow-walk oversight, don't just watch the hearing clips: push your own city council for the audit logs, and check our take-action page for how to file public records requests and demand real guardrails before the next camera goes up.