Flock worker calls police on our reporter
The short version: An Atlanta News First reporter filmed a Flock Safety technician working on a public street, the tech fled, and police were called on the journalist instead of anyone at Flock — a telling reversal of who gets to watch whom.
Our Take
Let that irony sink in: a company that exists to photograph every car that passes a given point, indefinitely, without a warrant, had one of its own contractors bolt the second a camera was pointed back at him. Brendan Keefe of Atlanta News First didn't trespass, didn't hide, didn't lie about who he was — he stood on a public road in a marked van and took pictures of a public utility pole. That's legal. It's also, apparently, alarming enough to get the cops called, while Flock's nationwide dragnet of your license plate, timestamp, and location gets a shrug from most local governments that sign the contracts.
Credit to RickieBobbieNO26 for surfacing this clip and to the Atlanta News First team for actually testing the double standard instead of just writing about it. The lesson here isn't really about one skittish technician — it's about an industry that has built its business model on the public having zero expectation of privacy while its own vendors expect exactly that. If Flock's cameras are fair game on every street corner in your town, then filming Flock's people doing their job on that same street corner should be a non-story. The fact that it isn't tells you everything about who these systems are designed to watch, and who they're designed to protect.
If you want to see how many of these cameras are already logging your daily commute, check our map, and if you're ready to push back on a local contract, our take-action page has next steps.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of RickieBobbieNO26, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.