Flock Cameras: Why they are Bad

Our Take

Credit to Josh Tolley and James Fletes for giving this issue airtime on The Logical Podcast. The more people outside the usual privacy-advocate circles start asking "wait, why are cameras tracking every car that drives through town?" the better our odds of actually rolling this back. Flock Safety has spent years marketing itself as a quiet, uncontroversial public-safety upgrade, and conversations like this one chip away at that framing.

Here's the thing that doesn't get said enough: this isn't about being pro-crime or anti-police. It's about the fact that a private company is building a searchable, nationwide database of where your car has been, sold to local agencies with almost no public debate, minimal retention limits, and documented cases of misuse and data sharing well outside the original pitch. Once that infrastructure exists, it doesn't stay narrowly used — it gets expanded, networked with other jurisdictions, and treated as a default investigative tool for anything, not just the violent crimes used to sell it to city councils.

If this conversation got you thinking about what's actually posted on your streets, go check our camera map to see what's been documented near you, and if you want to push back, our take-action page has concrete steps for showing up at city council meetings and asking the questions these companies would rather nobody ask.