False accusations raise privacy concerns with Flock

Our Take

This is the nightmare scenario critics of Flock Safety have been warning about for years: a citation issued off the back of automated license plate reader data, and an innocent person left to do the police department's homework for them. Credit to 9NEWS and reporter for digging into Chrisanna Elser's case — it's a rare instance where the person accused actually had the time, tech savvy, and personal footage to fight back. Most people don't.

That's the real danger here. Flock's pitch to cities is that its cameras and AI-flagged alerts make investigations faster and more "objective." But faster isn't the same as accurate, and when a system built on mass scanning of every passing car gets it wrong, the burden of proof quietly flips onto the citizen. Elser had to build her own evidence file to undo a false accusation. Most people cited off a network of cameras they didn't know existed, and can't audit, won't have that option — they'll just eat the citation, the record, or the reputational damage.

Cases like this are exactly why we track where this infrastructure is going up in the first place — check our camera map to see what's watching your streets — and why we push people toward concrete steps to push back at the city-council level before a wrongful citation becomes your problem too.