Six police employees in Savannah, Georgia, were just fired for misusing the Flock Safety camera system. The official story is a win for accountability: bad cops caught, bad cops fired. We are supposed to feel safer.
But before you celebrate, ask yourself a question: What happens to those fired officers next? If history is any indicator, they’ll just take their badges and their bad habits to another agency—like ICE—for a higher salary. Firing people after the damage is done isn’t a safeguard. It’s a PR strategy.
When you build a surveillance tool with no guardrails, you aren’t selling public safety. You’re selling a stalking license.
We keep blaming the “bad apples” in uniform, but we are ignoring the orchard. The real oversight gap isn’t a lack of police department policy. The real danger is the technology architecture itself.
Flock Safety markets these cameras as passive, automated tools that just read license plates. But in reality, they are massive, unregulated databases that track your every move. And the company built them with broad access and zero real-time auditing. They made post-hoc punishment the only accountability mechanism.
Firing a rogue cop for abusing a database is like punishing a bank robber after handing them the vault code and leaving the door open.
This isn’t an accident. It’s a design choice. Flock could easily implement role-based access controls, multi-factor authentication for sensitive queries, or automated flags when an officer runs a plate outside their jurisdiction. The technology exists today. But they don’t build it in, because adding safeguards costs money and slows down the “operational efficiency” they sell to police departments.
So the burden falls entirely on the individual cop’s conscience. And when that cop inevitably uses the system to stalk an ex, track a rival, or harass a citizen, Flock washes its hands. “We just make the tool,” they say. “We can’t control how it’s used.”
Bullshit.
If you manufacture a weapon, you are responsible for the safety switch. If Flock’s technology architecture allows broad access without real-time auditing, they are enabling the abuse. Period.
We don’t let pharmaceutical companies sell poison and blame the user when people die. It’s time to hold surveillance tech to the exact same standard.
This case in Georgia isn’t an isolated incident. As police departments across the country adopt these systems, anyone could be subject to unauthorized tracking. Your commute, your doctor’s appointments, your protests—everything is logged, searchable, and easily weaponized against you.
Until we shift the legal liability to the companies building these surveillance dragnets, no one is safe. Stop suing the cops. Start suing Flock.
FAQ
Q: Isn't it the police department's job to monitor their own officers?
A: No, because departments are buying these systems specifically to bypass manual work. If the vendor sells a tool that requires constant, active human oversight to prevent abuse, they are selling a defective product. The safeguard must be built into the code, not left to an overworked sergeant.
Q: What's the practical implication of suing the tech company?
A: It forces a market shift. If Flock faces legal liability for unauthorized tracking, they will immediately implement default access restrictions, real-time auditing, and automated red flags. The abuse stops before it starts, rather than being punished after the fact.
Q: But don't we need these cameras to solve violent crimes?
A: This is the false dilemma surveillance companies sell. You can have a tool that tracks a suspect's vehicle in an active kidnapping without giving every officer with a login the unchecked ability to stalk their ex. The issue isn't the existence of the tool; it's the reckless lack of access controls.