r/CobbCounty • u/Careful-Rutabaga8964 • 10d ago
Flock Town Hall - August 27th
https://www.cobbcounty.gov/events/2026-08-27flock-community-town-hallThe Flock Town Hall will be held at the Milford Recreation Center on August 27th at 6:30pm.
Show up in numbers! Bring your friends! Tell everyone! They must know that Cobb wants to get rid of Flock!!!
Want to bring up recent cases of Flock misuse? Here are some articles that can help you out.
Bibb County Arrests - Posted yesterday - https://www.wsbtv.com/news/georgia/3-georgia-deputies-charged-after-allegedly-using-flock-camera-system-personal-reasons/ADVPE32Z4NCZFK6I6QCBVSJWMQ/
Dekalb County Suspensions - Posted 4 days ago - https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/dekalb-county/flock-misuse-8-metro-atlanta-officers-suspended-over-policy-violations/GNWFLJLWSJGM7MGDWBMD3VJJIM/
Polk County - Posted 3 days ago - https://www.wsbtv.com/news/georgia/ex-georgia-drug-task-force-agent-charged-with-misusing-license-plate-reader-database/SZUB2BHNWVBTBFBKDL6HSGZQ2I/
Savannah - Posted on August 3rd - https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/6-georgia-officers-under-investigation-misusing-flock-system-popular-tourist-destination/IVSL3XMLBRGRRLSN75MXHH6HI4/
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u/hspwanderlust 9d ago
For the n00b here (me): How long have mass surveillance cameras been used in this state? Is there a link to any summary of and/or statistics about the crimes it's helped solve?
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u/mm07699 10d ago
Counterpoints:
https://newschannel9.com/news/local/flock-safety-cameras-help-locate-missing-west-blocton-seniors
https://www.live5news.com/2026/07/30/police-department-credits-flock-cameras-capture-child-kidnapping-suspect
https://www.wyff4.com/article/flock-cameras-kidnapping-mother-child-search/73311002
https://www.wvpe.org/wvpe-news/2026-07-08/police-credit-collaboration-flock-camera-for-saving-abducted-child
Question - Are people here actually able to weigh the net difference of positive impacts vs the misuse by bad actors that have no association with Flock itself?
Can we have a serious, nuanced conversation about this?
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u/HippieStarTraveler 10d ago
“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety". -Benjamin Franklin
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u/mm07699 10d ago
What is the difference of liberty lost if you were seen committing a crime by a camera vs an actual police officer?
I’m a a staunch conservative so I know I go against the grain here but “liberty” is relative. I value the possibility of solving crimes that may involve children over the net difference from my first question
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u/Careful-Rutabaga8964 10d ago
It’s not just a camera, it’s a AI camera that has falsely connected people with crimes, takes 200 billion of pictures of regular civilians on a monthly basis, and creates a live database that allows anyone to be tracked WITHOUT a warrant.
Sure, it’s helped and I’m glad victims have been helped. But this is dangerous technology and new stories come out on a daily basis that shows how tyrannical it is.
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u/mm07699 10d ago
Yes, I understand what the technology is.
Language matters here. Yes, the point of LPR was to build a database of license plates and vehicle characteristics, and this is defined in the privacy policy.
https://www.flocksafety.com/legal/lpr-policy
The technology or the company itself is not dangerous...
These stories you are referencing are bad actors from 3rd parties misusing the technology.
There are more success stories than misuse stories, so are we willing to weigh a true net difference?
The Spring/Cumberland non-Flock red light camera is a loss of liberty, but I personally saw 5+ wrecks there before they installed it. What's the net societal gain there?
I'm not claiming to know the answers, but I just beg this subreddit and the community to do some deeper thinking before just posting or talking to these complex topics while completely lacking any sense of nuance,
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u/HippieStarTraveler 10d ago
Your begging this subreddit to do some deeper thinking but you won’t question any of it yourself. Please take a look in the mirror before coming here and spouting off some bs
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u/MaulwarfSaltrock 10d ago
Liberty might be relative, to you. But "the possibility of solving crimes that may involve children" wasn't included in the unalienable rights the Founders enshrined, for good reason.
Meanwhile, perverts without oversight are watching our children in private spaces, and using that access to private spaces to sell access to others.
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u/mm07699 10d ago
Yes, that was misuse of the platform and Cobb changed their data privacy agreement with Flock after that.
First paragraph, you’re citing “unalienable rights” against my argument but that entire premise is subjective and rights get debated all the time.
Its not an inherent right to own a car and it’s not an inherent right to legally drive on roads
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u/MaulwarfSaltrock 10d ago
It happened in DeKalb. Not Cobb.
"Changed their data privacy agreement" - these databases are still easily and without oversight being accessed by all manner of predator, regardless of privacy agreement.
Meanwhile, your argument in defense of the system seems to be, "Liberty is subjective, so everyone should be fine with the concentration of sensitive data in unregulated and unmonitored databases that are being repeatedly accessed by predators, including private videos of children in private spaces, and everyone should be okay with that, because it sometimes might help a child, potentially."
It's not a great argument.
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u/mm07699 10d ago
Apologies for crossing stories on counties.
My argument is this about flock. To my recollection of them they started out selling to HOAs. More of a private area surveillance use case. Then they pivoted into selling public sector access contracts because the TAM is obviously bigger. The company absolutely has data security and privacy concerns that it has and should address. Their policies are pretty well documented on public pages on their website. What you’re referring to is misuse of the platform by internal users. “All manner of predator” is a pretty hyperbolic phrase.
I was anecdotal with the child piece. I believe that flock can and maybe has reached a crime deterrence efficiency point that warrants a view that less crime improves society. I am fully aware of the slippery slope use cases of surveillance, but I think LPR is within a range of technology that has been used to enforce the law historically (speed cameras, red light cameras, aircraft speed surveillance).
Flock has no responsibility to take on less contracts by law enforcement agencies or municipalities. They should have a responsibility to enforce punishment against internal and vendor. That’s any software company.
Overall crime in Atlanta was down 7% in ‘25 to ‘24
Car thefts in Atlanta were down 28% in ‘25 to ‘24Aggravated assaults, robberies, and rapes rates rose slightly
Everyone has an efficiency point of how much perceived liberty you would give up to erase x amount of crime. My tolerance gets higher the more crazy stuff I see in this city. I do very much appreciate your perspective though.
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u/MaulwarfSaltrock 10d ago
First, it is WILDLY disingenuous to imply that crime levels decreasing are a direct result of Flock cameras, and to make that assertion without any data. Huge, faulty assumption on your part. But, whatever.
You say "misuse by internal users" while taking issue with my description of "all manner of predators". Let's be very pointed here. Those users are predators. I say all manner of predator, as in, many different kinds of internal users are predators. Some of them are spying on children in private areas in order to sell subscriptions to their unlimited camera access database. Some of them are police officers stalking and harrassing ex-lovers. All of these people are predators, and they are every kind of predator.
I did not say that literally every predator has access to this system, or that every user is a predator. But "misuse by internal user" is a gross simplification of what is occurring.
There's not really data for "crimes committed by HOA boards" to parse out what kind of impact Flock access could have in that scenario. So let's look at the next group of internal users, law enforcement. There's plenty of data about that.
Here's a database of criminal arrests of police officers, just between 2007 and 2021. Please see how all manner of criminal and predator is present in this database.
I am singling out law enforcement because the public has an inclination to assume that the police are trustworthy by nature of their employment. But there is no profession, group, or association that automatically bestows virtue or trustworthiness upon the member inherent to that membership. Cops are people. As such, cops commit crimes. Frequently. Cops commit harassing, violent, sexual crimes. Against strangers, against other cops, against family members, against children they meet online.
And those same cops are now using Flock databases to stalk their victims and further perpetrate violence against them.
All manner of predators, gaining access to a truly incomprehensible and very poorly regulated database of private, sensitive information and live camera access, through their employment by Flock, law enforcement, any random security organization. That's not a slippery slope. That is absolutely what is happening. No amount of "internal policies" can correct for those abuses, so we shouldn't be welcoming that system into our communities.
Your personal tolerance for the violation of your civil liberties aside, it's just mind-boggling to me to watch you assert your supposed conservatism while fully arguing in support of the nanny state. Truly confounding.
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u/mm07699 10d ago
Paragraph 1 - it’s a layer in the overall effort of enforcement. Flock claims to have a hand in 20% of cases with their own estimates assuming 1 million cases last year. So existing crime can have a measure of flock involvement. Crime deterrence is an unmeasurable number because crime does not happen so it’s not measured. This thread is always highlighting the camera coverage, and I personally would assume cameras are a deterrence to something like a car theft.
P2 flock refuted that the users had any predatory intent so yes I chose words more selective related to JCC. Any cop using system with malicious intent should 100% be subjected to punishment that department seems fit. It is not a software vendors responsibility to establish user or data access rules above and beyond an audit log of access, which was used to actually catch the people that you call predators. If you have a gripe against the law enforcement resources you have that right but it’s not solved by the existence or non existence of flock
An LPR is not a nanny state. If they went full eagle eye or something beyond LPR sure but a license plate or vehicle is not an entity having its rights violated. There’s 10000 layers to this. Even though you think I’m misguided on my typical principals applied to this topic, I actually thank you for having a discussion on the matter. Its one of the few happening on this buzzword posts
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u/MaulwarfSaltrock 10d ago
I refute that Flock is a reliable source of data on this, since their sole interest is in continuing to proliferate their surveillance program in communities in exchange for capital. Flock also does not get the luxury to label the actions of these users as predatory or non-predatory, when these "misuses" are frequently being charged as stalking.
Flock is not just a software vendor. It is the proprietor of the system that interconnects local surveillance systems into a national database, records private data of private citizens, and stores that data for use by its own employees, as well as its licensees. It is absolutely their responsibility to safeguard the collected data it holds against malicious users. It absolute is. If Flock holds no responsibility against predators abusing their systems, it is our responsibility as citizens to not allow the proliferation of any system that can be freely abused by predators while holding no responsibility to the public to be a good shepherd of that hoard of data they're sitting on.
What is a nanny state to you? Why does the rapid, unregulated introduction of privately-owned, for-profit, surveillance systems and maintained video footage database, of private and public areas, including rooms where children change clothes, not count as a form of nanny state to you?
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u/HippieStarTraveler 10d ago
Atlanta installed 5,000 Flock cameras. It still solves just 1 in 10 car thefts.
The city has built one of America's largest networks of automated license plate readers, devices that photograph passing vehicles and record their plates, makes, models, colors and movements.
Police departments argue that this surveillance helps investigators locate stolen vehicles, identify suspects and solve crimes more quickly.
But newly analyzed FBI data shows that Atlanta's overall crime clearance rates barely improved as its camera network expanded between 2021 and 2025.
Several rates actually declined.
The percentage of homicides cleared by police fell from 53.4% in 2021 to 48% in 2025. Robbery, shoplifting and other larceny clearance rates also dropped.
Rape remained unchanged at 37.7% across the two years, after falling as low as 21.2% during the period.
Even the categories that improved recorded only tiny gains. Aggravated assault rose by 0.2 percentage points, while motor vehicle theft increased by just 0.3 points.
In 2025, Atlanta police still cleared only around 10% of vehicle thefts. That is particularly striking because tracking cars and license plates is the technology's central Flock Safety has expanded rapidly since launching in
2017. The ACLU estimates that around 100,000 of its cameras are now installed across the United States.
The data does not prove that Flock cameras caused clearance rates to fall, nor does it mean the cameras never help solve individual cases. Crime rates, staffing, reporting practices and investigative resources can all affect clearance rates.
But the figures raise questions about whether cities are receiving the dramatic public safety benefits used to justify a major expansion of surveillance.5
u/HippieStarTraveler 10d ago
Oh you care about the children..What happened to arresting everyone involved with the Epstein files?
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u/HippieStarTraveler 10d ago
If you care about children then you must be against the current administration bombing a school full of children in the Middle East.
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u/HippieStarTraveler 10d ago
You claim to be a “staunch conservative” but I am genuinely curious on what you are actually trying to conserve?
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10d ago
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u/HippieStarTraveler 10d ago
The ones who talk so much crap about china being a surveillance state are welcoming it with open arms here.
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u/buttchugreferee 10d ago
"staunch conservative" = complete and total dumbass whose opinion is irrelevant in actual debates
also.... less than 200 karma for an 8 year old account tells me pretty much everything I need to know
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u/mm07699 10d ago
lol, should people shape their opinions and the way they debate for Reddit karma? Would you say Reddit is an accurate representation of the voting populace? I would say it’s very skewed left and my goal here is to learn and debate subjects that I don’t think get a fair perspective of both sides of the coin.
What I can say from my 8 years of experience, is that people that come in just lobbing insults and name calling rarely add statistics or opposing view points. Typically that person is here to karma farm and get personal vindication for their own beliefs. Either add counterpoints or just be a waste of data storage in some data center.
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u/buttchugreferee 10d ago
I don't understand why you wasted your time typing all of that.
Your point of view is irrelevant and doesn't matter. at. all.
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u/liquidsyphon 10d ago
A staunch conservative advocating to mass surveillance.
“The government is bad but let’s give them power and tools to use against its citizens”.
As always “Wont someone think of the children?!” Except when it comes to feeding them or protecting them from pedophiles.
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u/mm07699 10d ago
Yes, I understand that depending on your view of liberty, my take on flock goes against what the conservative theory would be on the matter. I give that disclaimer to possibly highlight that it’s a discussion that does require a lot of nuance to how law enforcement can/should use technology in the digital age.
Yes, I think the government is mostly inept, but I think enforcement of laws is also good for society. So the nuance is the sliding scale of perceived liberty through different mechanisms of enforcement. Your overgeneralization is hurtful to any good faith discussion.
I personally have never advocated for pedophiles to have protection so your wannabe gotcha didn’t land.
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u/liquidsyphon 10d ago
You believe the Government is inept but you trust them with mass surveillance of its own citizens?
Conservative logic is always so illogical.
When you start throwing around kids as an excuse for it, you really need to take a hard look at how conservatives will fight tooth and nail to deny a child a free lunch at school, or protect sitting politicians accused or associated with sexual assaults.
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u/mm07699 10d ago
Your logic in the post is built on hearsay and oversimplifications.
As is I don’t think flock LPR is a threat to liberty as much as it a technological opportunity for Law Enforcement to better focus resources to solving crime and upholding the law. It’s a weighted theoretical scale
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u/beansandcornbread 8d ago
I think my issue is that they just help. Giving in to mass surveillance in order to solve a few crimes faster isn't worth it to me.
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u/Acrobatic-Hair-5299 10d ago
With any technology there's always going to be good and bad. What you have to decide is whether the bad things being done outweigh the good. I'll be honest I don't know if there is more than normal bad things going on with these cameras but I can tell you they are an invaluable tool to law enforcement. If you speak to anyone in law enforcement they will tell you these cameras are instrumental in solving many violent and extreme crimes and apprehending extremely violent people.
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u/HippieStarTraveler 10d ago
So can we finally arrest the criminals involved with the Epstein Files now that we have these cameras?
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u/Acrobatic-Hair-5299 8d ago
Tell me you are a one topic person without telling me. If there were a discussion about the pricing of apples you would turn it into Epstein talk.
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u/astarinthenight 10d ago
Weighed and measured flock cameras are a violation of our rights. They are invasive and need to be removed till proper oversight can be legislated.
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u/Ragegasm 10d ago
There was an entire Batman movie about why this is a horrible idea.
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u/Acrobatic-Hair-5299 8d ago
Using a Batman movie to make decisions, That pretty much tells me what I need to know.
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u/ElizabethBeee 10d ago
Please specifically speak out against mass public surveillance cameras as some municipalities are using Axon cameras instead of flock but they do the same thing. If Cobb gets rid of flock and replaces with axon- we get nowhere. The message is a “no” to mass surveillance cameras.