My statement on Flock abuse to the Dallas, Georgia City Council.

Our Take

Credit where it's due: Alec Miller didn't just post a hot take online, he showed up to a city council meeting and put his concerns about Flock Safety abuse on the public record in Dallas, Georgia. That's the unglamorous, necessary work of accountability — local officials vote to fund and deploy these ALPR networks, and local officials are the ones who can vote to rein them in or rip them out. A candidate using that platform to question how these cameras are actually being used is a healthy sign for a democracy that too often treats surveillance contracts as a rubber-stamp line item.

We don't have the specifics of what 'abuse' Miller is alleging, and we're not going to speculate beyond what's in the video. But the broader pattern across the country is familiar: departments buy Flock systems promising narrow use cases, then the access logs reveal searches for reasons that have nothing to do with the original justification, or data gets shared with outside agencies with little oversight. Public meetings are one of the only places residents can force those questions into the open before a vote, rather than after the cameras are already bolted to the pole.

If Dallas, Georgia has Flock cameras — or you want to find out — check our camera map. And if you want to raise these same questions at your own city council, our take-action page has tools to help you do it.