speaking out against Flock cameras in lebanon tennessee #flockblockmiddletennessee
The short version: A Lebanon, Tennessee resident's public pushback against Flock Safety cameras shows how local voices are driving the #FlockBlock movement across Middle Tennessee.
Our Take
Credit to Mikal Qualls for doing what too few people do: showing up and saying, on the record, that they don't want automated license plate readers logging every car that passes through their town. Lebanon, Tennessee is a small dot on the map, but it's exactly these local fights — city council meetings, public comment periods, neighbors talking to neighbors — that decide whether a community ends up networked into Flock's nationwide surveillance system or not.
What makes these cameras different from a cop sitting in a cruiser is scale and memory. Flock doesn't just watch, it records, timestamps, and stores the movements of everyone who drives by, searchable later by any agency with access, and increasingly shared across jurisdictions far beyond city limits. Once that infrastructure goes up, there's rarely a sunset clause. The window to stop it is before installation, which is exactly when a video like this one does the most good.
If you're in Middle Tennessee or anywhere else wondering whether your town already has these cameras installed, check our map to see what's been documented near you, and if you want to push back the way Qualls is doing, our take-action page has concrete steps for getting it in front of your own local government.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Mikal Qualls, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.