'Are they keeping tabs on me?'; Palm Beach County scrutinizes Flock cameras

Our Take

WPBF 25 News captures the question that keeps popping up in county commission meetings and neighborhood Facebook groups alike: "Are they keeping tabs on me?" It's the right question, and the fact that Palm Beach County officials are now being forced to answer it publicly is a credit to residents who refused to let these cameras go in quietly. Flock's pitch is always the same — find stolen cars, solve crimes — but the hardware doesn't know the difference between a wanted felon and a mom driving her kid to soccer practice. It logs everyone, every time, and keeps that data around far longer than most people realize.

What usually gets lost in these local news segments is scale. One camera on one street corner feels harmless. Thousands of them networked together, shared across agencies and sometimes across state lines, is a different animal entirely — it's a de facto location-tracking system for anyone who drives a car in Palm Beach County. Scrutiny is good, but scrutiny without teeth just means a nicer PowerPoint at the next commission meeting. Residents pushing back need actual retention limits, audit logs, and real consequences for misuse, not just reassurances from the vendor.

Credit to WPBF 25 News for putting this in front of viewers instead of letting it slide through as a routine public-safety upgrade. If you want to see how many of these cameras are already watching your own commute, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for your county to "scrutinize" its way to a solution, our take-action page has concrete steps for showing up at the meetings that actually decide whether this gear stays or goes.