Flock Employees Summon Police Over People Filming Its Public Cameras

Flock Safety, the surveillance vendor behind roughly 120,000 automated license plate readers nationwide, is facing mounting backlash over its ALPR network — canceled municipal contracts, proposed and enacted bans, and a steady drip of alleged misuse cases. The company says it has addressed privacy concerns and claims growth is outpacing cancellations 10-to-1, so new and upgraded cameras keep going up. Two documented incidents this year highlight an awkward contradiction: while Flock’s business rests on recording the public without consent, its field workers have twice called 911 on people who tried to record them.

In the more detailed case, InvestigateTV reporter Brendan Keefe put on a press-marked vest, displayed press credentials, and filmed a technician installing an upgraded camera on a public street near Atlanta. The installer packed up, drove off, and called police claiming he was being followed and harassed; three police cars ultimately stopped Keefe in Milton, Georgia, for about 17 minutes before letting him go. On body-camera footage the officer relayed the installer’s worry about being identified and ending up ‘in the news,’ and even suggested the press ‘be a little more careful on who we put on TV’ — prompting Keefe to point out that a public worker’s expectation of privacy is precisely the objection critics raise against Flock itself.

A nearly identical dynamic played out in June in Smyrna, when a Flock quality manager called police on a group of YouTubers filming outside a distribution center, repeatedly floating the possibility they were armed despite admitting he’d seen no weapons — and leaning on the company’s cozy relationship with law enforcement, which the dispatcher openly praised. Flock told InvestigateTV it does not object to the public or press photographing its cameras or staff, but says workers may call police when they feel threatened. The episodes crystallize the central tension in the surveillance debate: a company that normalizes pervasive, non-consensual recording invoking privacy and police protection the moment its own operations are the ones on camera.