Carey Flock Camera to Be Removed Over Public Concerns in Idaho

Our Take

Credit to Idaho News 6 for covering a story that's easy to overlook because the town is tiny: Carey, Idaho got its Flock Safety camera pulled after residents pushed back. That's the system working the way it's supposed to — a sheriff's office that installed surveillance infrastructure without much public input is now backpedaling and promising to ask for feedback before deciding on the other 15 cameras countywide when the contract comes up next spring.

This is a pattern worth paying attention to. Flock cameras get installed quietly, often through a single vendor pitch to a sheriff or city council, with little debate about who gets access to the data, how long it's retained, or whether blanket license-plate tracking of every car passing through a town of a few hundred people is proportionate to whatever crime problem it's supposed to solve. It usually takes someone noticing the camera and asking questions before any of that gets scrutinized. Carey did that. Most towns don't, simply because most people don't know these cameras are going up until they're already running.

If you want to know whether your own town has one of these, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for a contract renewal to have your say, our take-action page has steps for raising this with local officials before the next vote, not after.