User:Louis/Flock installer's 911 call on a reporter in Milton, Georgia

A Flock Safety installer called 911 after a reporter filmed him in public, & Milton, Georgia police stopped the reporter, releasing him without a charge about 17 minutes later. Brendan Keefe, a national investigative reporter for InvestigateTV, had parked at a distance on a suburban street outside Atlanta on August 19, 2026, with a press placard on his dashboard, to film the installer putting up an upgraded camera. The installer drove off, Keefe followed several cars behind, & the installer told a 911 dispatcher he was being followed & harassed by someone taking videos & pictures.

Flock told InvestigateTV it does not object to the press photographing its cameras or personnel in public, & that its field workers may call police when they believe they are being threatened, harassed, or followed.

Flock personnel privacy complaints and company surveillance policies

Between June & October 2026, news reports documented at least two instances in which Flock Safety personnel called 911 on people filming them in public, as well as instances in which personnel scrubbed their personal information online, barred press from a company conference, or asserted personal privacy while the company operated its public camera network.

Date & setting	Personnel involved	Personal privacy complaint or protective action	Company surveillance policy or practice
June 5, 2026, outside Flock's Smyrna, Georgia distribution center	Distribution site quality manager James Boyce	The manager called 911 asking police for "a favor" after YouTube creators including security researcher Benn Jordan filmed from outside the perimeter, raised the possibility three times that the group might be armed despite seeing no weapons, & recorded them on his cell phone from inside the building while police issued a trespass warning.	The caller introduced the company on the same 911 call as "Flock Safety. We do the license plate reading cameras that solve 20% of crime across America", while operating a network that InvestigateTV described as the "same category of public recording" as the creators' filming.
2026, online employee records	Individuals within Flock Safety	Company personnel took extreme measures to hide & scrub their personal information online following growing negative attention & Benn Jordan's earlier video report on unencrypted Flock camera feeds.	The system collects vehicle & license plate images, make, color, date, time, & camera location every time a driver passes a camera & sends the data to law enforcement.
August 18 to 20, 2026, Flock Forward 2026 conference in Atlanta, Georgia	Conference organizers & company spokesperson	The company canceled Benn Jordan's conference registration & hotel booking four days before the event & turned away both Jordan & InvestigateTV reporters at the venue, with a spokesperson saying the conference was "a customer event and not open to the media."	A spokesperson said by email that the company does not object to members of the public or press photographing Flock cameras or personnel in public, & Chief Communications Officer Josh Thomas argued in an April interview that "the whole community is our customer".
August 19, 2026, suburban street outside Atlanta & Milton, Georgia	Field camera installer	The installer packed up & drove away when credentialed InvestigateTV reporter Brendan Keefe filmed him from a distance on a public street, called 911 claiming he was being followed & "harassed" by someone taking videos & pictures, withheld his full name on the 911 call, & according to Officer Smith was worried about privacy, being in the news, & whether coverage would target him or his family, leading to a 17-minute three-car police stop of Keefe.	The company's License Plate Reader Policy states that its cameras collect images from public areas "where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy", while Chief Communications Officer Josh Thomas said in an April interview that license plates are "plain view information" & drivers can only opt out if they "want to opt out of society."
August 2026 Fox News interview, reported August 23 & 28, 2026	Founder & CEO Garrett Langley	The CEO stated on Fox News' Saturday in America that privacy is not the only priority & that he, his family, & his employees value their privacy, while arguing that Americans must prioritize "compromise" between safety & privacy.	The CEO called demands to ban Flock's surveillance cameras absurd during the same interview, & later stated at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, as reported on October 15, 2026, that society should not "pause progress" on automated license plate reader expansion & that Flock's cameras "can detect and track people".
August 27 & September 28, 2026 reports on Google Maps Street View	Founder & CEO Garrett Langley	Social media users circulated images of an unverified Atlanta property purportedly belonging to Langley that had been blurred on Google Maps Street View, a residential privacy feature for which Google requires the homeowner or tenant to submit proof of address.	The company boasts more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states logging more than 20 billion vehicle scans every month, in a system InvestigateTV reported is largely impossible for drivers in many communities to opt out of.

Installer's 911 call on August 19, 2026

Keefe drove to the installation on August 19, 2026, after a family member spotted the Flock camera being worked on. He wore a yellow safety vest & a hat with the logo of InvestigateTV's Atlanta affiliate, where he also works. Jalopnik, a news & opinion website about cars, described the footage & reported that Keefe did not speak to the contractor or interact with him in any way. When Keefe began to shoot video, the installer packed up his equipment & drove away, & Keefe followed several cars behind, hoping to document the next stop.

Forsyth County initially answered the installer's 911 call & transferred it to a neighboring jurisdiction; InvestigateTV obtained recordings of both calls through public records requests. After the transfer, the installer told the dispatcher:

I was getting harassed, pretty much. Taking videos and pictures. And now, the same vehicle that pulled over where I was working at has been following me.

The installer told a dispatcher "I work with Flock Safety. And I called originally because I’m getting followed", in a call InvestigateTV obtained through public records requests.

He described Keefe's car, then Keefe himself, down to his hat & high-visibility vest. Asked for his name, he said he did not "want them to hear my full name" on the call, The New Republic reported.

Three police cars and a 17-minute stop in Milton

Minutes after the 911 call, once Keefe entered Milton, Georgia, one officer pulled him over & two other units joined her. According to MotorBiscuit, a digital platform covering the automotive industry & motorsports, the body camera footage captured her identifying herself as Officer Smith with the City of Milton Police Department & saying she stopped him because "there is a vehicle that says that you have been following them".

Keefe told her, on footage from his own dashboard camera & the police body camera:

I’m a member of the press, and I was following at a distance because I’m documenting them putting up Flock cameras. I’m an investigative reporter

While Keefe waited on the shoulder, the officer called a supervisor & relayed what Keefe had told her:

He said that, yeah, he was following him to where he was trying to catch this person on video setting up the Flock cameras, but it was not to where you know so close as to break any laws or give the appearance he was stalking him, or anything like that. Yeah, he was following him, but he was not chasing him.

According to the officer, Flock installers have been "told just to not engage" in such situations. She said the installer was also concerned about privacy:

And his worry more than anything is that, you know, he’s just an employee. Anybody like you and me. And now he’s going to be in the news and he doesn’t know if it’s going to be targeted at him or his family.

Keefe asked if the officer was suggesting the installer was entitled to privacy while working in public:

"So just to be clear, he’s entitled to his privacy in a public place?" Keefe asked. "Isn’t that the whole argument that people are criticizing Flock for?"

The officer answered, "I’m not saying that. I’m just letting you know what he’s concerned about", adding, "I’m not telling you how to interpret that." She also told him "I know, media, you know, the First Amendment and all of that", followed by:

But also, we should probably be a little more careful on who we put on TV and stuff like that.

About 17 minutes after the stop began, the officers returned to their vehicles & Keefe was allowed to drive away. The Auto Wire, an independent automotive news publication, reported that police released him without a charge.

Flock Safety's statement on filming its workers

InvestigateTV asked Flock about people documenting its installations & whether it instructs employees or contractors how to respond. A spokesperson replied by email:

We do not object to members of the public or press photographing Flock cameras or personnel in public. Employees and contractors working in the field are expected to prioritize their safety and may contact law enforcement when they believe they are being threatened, harassed, followed, or otherwise face a safety concern.

InvestigateTV's report reproduces the emailed statement in which a Flock spokesperson said Flock does not object to members of the public or press "photographing Flock cameras or personnel in public."

Smyrna 911 call in June 2026

InvestigateTV counted the Milton stop as one of at least two documented cases in 2026 in which people working for Flock called police on people engaged in the "same category of public recording into which the company asserts its technology fits". On June 5, 2026, police in Smyrna, Georgia, responded to a 911 call from a Flock employee after a group of YouTube creators began filming outside the company's distribution center there. Asked for the name of the business, the caller said:

It’s Flock Safety. We do the license plate reading cameras that solve 20% of crime across America

The dispatcher answered "And we appreciate y’all", & the caller replied "No, thank you", laughing, then said "We need a favor."

He said the group had "been driving around the perimeter, basically harassing everyone" working at the facility. The caller told the dispatcher:

Three young white males, probably mid-twenties, I’m not sure if they’re armed. And they’re carrying filming equipment as well

Three times during the call he raised the possibility that the people filming might be armed, though when asked he told the dispatcher he had not seen any weapons. When police arrived, body camera footage showed the employee was inside the building, & over the phone he identified himself as James Boyce, the distribution site's quality manager. Boyce, holding a cell phone, said he was recording, & the officer replied, "Everybody’s recording".

During the encounter, one of the YouTube creators confronted Boyce on how calling the police about being filmed seemed hypocritical, saying, "That’s what you guys do to us, without our consent", & adding:

And I think it’s interesting, when you guys have this happen, you call the police and make us get stopped. But then you do it and it’s okay?

No one in the group was charged; they were ordered to leave the premises under an official trespass warning. In its emailed statement, a Flock spokesperson said the encounter came shortly after an incident at the company's headquarters in which, the spokesperson alleged, people claiming to have an interview with CEO Garrett Langley tried to get into the building. The spokesperson said that incident raised security concerns that also exist in a broader environment in which Flock employees & contractors "have received threats or been subjected to violent rhetoric", citing social media threads & the arrest of a California man accused of threatening a Flock camera installer with a knife & vandalizing the installer's vehicle. The statement continued:

We fully support people expressing criticism, asking tough questions, and making their voices heard. Threats of violence, or rhetoric that encourages or celebrates violence against employees, should never be part of that discourse

Benn Jordan, an online & YouTube content creator, was among those outside the warehouse & identified himself to officers as a security researcher working with the YouTube creators. Months before the Smyrna incident, Jordan spoke with InvestigateTV about his earlier video report that identified encryption vulnerabilities that would allow anyone to access dozens of Flock camera feeds. Flock said it determined the vulnerability was present in just 60 to 70 of its AI-powered video cameras & blamed an internet service provider for sending the wrong SIM cards. Jordan said during the interview with InvestigateTV that growing negative attention had led some within the company to take extreme measures to hide their personal information:

"That’s the most absurd part of it, is that their response to this controversy is scrubbing data as a company that literally collects data every single time you pass a camera and sends it to law enforcement,"

In a video released following Flock Forward 2026, a conference for public safety & security professionals held August 18–20, 2026 in Atlanta, Jordan detailed how his registration & hotel booking were canceled four days before the event. Both Jordan & InvestigateTV tried to attend the conference & were turned away; when InvestigateTV inquired about attending in a journalistic capacity, a Flock spokesperson said, "Flock Forward is a customer event and not open to the media."

Vehicle data Flock cameras record

Flock's License Plate Reader Policy, last updated June 30, 2026, defines its license plate reader (LPR) system as one or more automated high-speed cameras used with data processing to convert vehicle & license plate images into computer-readable data, & lists what the system collects: an image of the plate, an image of the vehicle, vehicle characteristics such as color & make, the plate number & state, the date & time, & the camera location. Flock's product page for its license plate readers defines a license plate recognition (LPR) camera as one that "captures license plates and key vehicle characteristics, such as make, color, and body type" to help generate investigative leads.

Flock's policy defines "LPR data" as information collected by or stored in the LPR system, including the license plate image, vehicle image, vehicle characteristics such as color & make, plate number, plate state, date, time, & camera location.

Flock advertises searches of full, partial, & temporary plates, plus a feature it calls Vehicle Signature that generates investigative leads from limited information, across a network it says connects agencies in 49 states. InvestigateTV puts that network at roughly 120,000 license plate readers. Flock CEO Garrett Langley announced on August 13, 2026 that the company was updating its recommendation & default to a seven-day retention period for that data & introducing "Evidence Mode", a feature rolling out in the coming weeks under which detectives can preserve specific automated license plate reader (ALPR) data as evidence for an active investigation in cold storage, consistent with existing laws & policies. Langley wrote that existing customers would keep their current, democratically approved retention periods & that customers who adopt the seven-day recommendation would receive Evidence Mode at no cost. Flock later clarified that the seven-day default applies to new law-enforcement customers, while private-sector customers keep the retention terms established for their accounts & existing policies & applicable laws can also produce different retention periods. Under Flock's LPR policy, LPR data is stored briefly on the camera, transferred to the AWS Government Cloud, & hard deleted on a rolling seven-day basis by default, which may be increased or decreased on a case-by-case basis if a customer's law or policy requires a different schedule.

Under Flock's LPR policy, images stored in the system are collected from areas visible to the public where there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. During an April interview, InvestigateTV asked Flock Safety's Chief Communications Officer Josh Thomas whether the company considers law enforcement agencies or citizens to be its customers, & Thomas said at the time, "So ultimately, I would argue that the whole community is our customer". InvestigateTV reported that in many communities it is largely impossible to opt out of Flock's technology documenting everyday movements. When Keefe asked Thomas during the April interview why a person or "the spouse or ex-spouse of a police officer" cannot opt out of data collection on their movements, Thomas explained why a person cannot opt out: if a car gets stolen or something happens, & because the government requires a license plate by law, the plate is "plain view information". He went on:

Your license plate is part of the plain view. And so why can’t you opt out. You can, if you want to opt out of society.

By Thomas's reasoning, a Flock installer working on a public street is as much plain view information as the plates his cameras record.

CEO Garrett Langley's privacy statements and blurred Google Street View home

In an August 2026 Fox News interview with Saturday in America co-host Kayleigh McEnany, reported by The Times of India on August 23, 2026, Flock CEO Langley stated after McEnany asked about privacy concerns that privacy is not the only priority:

"I value my privacy… but what we’re talking about is safety as well. And so I think when people talk about just one of these things, privacy or safety, they’re prioritizing the wrong thing. What we have to prioritize as a country is compromise: how do we have our safety, and how do we balance privacy?"

In the same report, The Times of India wrote that Langley called demands to ban the technology absurd while saying there should be regulations, stating about a ban, "That’s like banning vehicles. That would never have made sense," & adding, "Instead what we did is we introduced laws against drunk driving, laws around airbags." In an August 28, 2026 report on the interview, The Times of India quoted Flock CEO Garrett Langley as saying:

"I value my privacy. My family values their privacy. My employees value their privacy. But what we are talking about is safety as well,"

On August 27, 2026, Newsweek reported that after Flock Safety founder & CEO Garrett Langley appeared on Fox News' Saturday in America calling for a "compromise" between public safety & privacy, numerous posts on X circulated an address purportedly belonging to Langley & some shared what they said was a blurred image of Langley's home on Google Street View, with one X user writing that the "compromise apparently doesn’t apply to him." Newsweek stated that it had not verified the address & was not publishing or linking to it, & The Times of India reported on August 28, 2026 that it was not confirmed whether the address shared online was Langley's real address as social media users shared a screenshot of a blurred Google map. Newsweek also reported that The Washington Post had identified nearly 50 instances that month of police officers charged or accused of using Flock's system for unauthorized purposes, including stalking current or former romantic partners or family members. On September 28, 2026, Cybernews reported that users on X circulated what they claimed was Langley's home address & photographs of a property in Atlanta, Georgia, & that internet users noticed Langley's property had been blurred on Google Maps Street View & marked his home on Google Maps as a public toilet. Cybernews noted that Google allows homeowners & tenants to request that their homes be blurred in Street View for privacy & requires proof of address for a residential blur request.

During a Wednesday panel at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco, reported on October 15, 2026 by The American Bazaar & TechRadar, Langley defended the expansion of surveillance technology, stating according to TechCrunch:

"If we want to live in a society where, if you commit a crime, you have a higher probability of being held accountable, we shouldn’t pause progress,"

The American Bazaar reported that Langley said in addressing a customer's concerns that the company's systems do not use facial recognition, "but they can detect and track people," & that while Flock does not want to dictate how police departments & city governments perform their duties & can offer recommendations & default settings, it intends to minimize mandatory features & policies. TechRadar reported that when asked whether Flock had ended any contracts with law enforcement agencies over abuse of its products, Langley said the company had not "fired" any customers, while arguing, "If a customer knowingly broke the law, we would fire them immediately."

Georgia's stalking statute

Georgia defines stalking in Georgia Code § 16-5-90(a)(1):

A person commits the offense of stalking when he or she follows, places under surveillance, or contacts another person at or about a place or places without the consent of the other person for the purpose of harassing and intimidating the other person.

Paragraph (1) of the stalking statute provides that a person commits stalking when he or she "follows, places under surveillance, or contacts another person" without consent "for the purpose of harassing and intimidating the other person".

The same paragraph defines the purpose element:

the term “harassing and intimidating” means a knowing and willful course of conduct directed at a specific person which causes emotional distress by placing such person in reasonable fear for such person’s safety or the safety of a member of his or her immediate family, by establishing a pattern of harassing and intimidating behavior, and which serves no legitimate purpose.

Filming a person can fit the statute's words "places under surveillance", so the offense turns on its purpose element. That element requires a course of conduct, a pattern of harassing & intimidating behavior, & conduct serving no legitimate purpose. Keefe's following was one drive that ended minutes later in Milton, & he told the officer he was following at a distance to document Flock camera installations as an investigative reporter. One drive behind a worker on August 19 to film his next installation is not by itself a pattern, & recording a camera installation on a public street for a news story is a legitimate purpose.

Smith v. City of Cumming

In Smith v. City of Cumming, 212 F.3d 1332 (11th Cir. 2000), the court agreed that the plaintiffs had a First Amendment right, subject to reasonable time, manner & place restrictions, to photograph or videotape police conduct. The court wrote, at page 1333:

The First Amendment protects the right to gather information about what public officials do on public property, and specifically, a right to record matters of public interest.

The court nonetheless affirmed because, although the Smiths had a right to videotape police activities, they "have not shown that the Defendants’ actions violated that right".

Smith addresses recording police & public officials & does not decide whether the right reaches a private contractor at work. Keefe was recording a Flock camera going up on a public street weeks before a Senate subcommittee held a hearing on Flock's network, which makes the installation a matter of public interest in the plain sense of the opinion's words.

911 calls as grounds for a traffic stop

In Navarette v. California, 572 U.S. 393 (2014), the Supreme Court reviewed the caller-identification features of the 911 system & concluded, at page 401:

a reasonable officer could conclude that a false tipster would think twice before using such a system

On the same page, the Court added:

Even a reliable tip will justify an investigative stop only if it creates reasonable suspicion that "criminal activity may be afoot."

In Florida v. J. L., 529 U.S. 266 (2000), the Court held that an anonymous tip that a person is carrying a gun is not, without more, enough to justify a stop & frisk. At page 272 it required that a tip be:

reliable in its assertion of illegality, not just in its tendency to identify a determinate person

The Milton caller told the dispatcher "I work with Flock Safety" & described Keefe's car & clothing, though he withheld his full name. His call was reliable at identifying Keefe. J. L. treats that as a separate question from whether the call reliably asserted a crime.

The conduct the caller described was following & taking videos & pictures, & the word he used for it was "harassed". Following is one of the acts Georgia's stalking statute lists, but the statute makes it an offense only when done for the purpose of harassing & intimidating the other person. The officer told her supervisor that when she came up to them, Keefe was "behind him but not like right on his bumper".

Milton's Flock contract

In February 2022, Milton's City Council approved, on its consent agenda, extending Milton Police's relationship with Flock Safety by adding nine security cameras to the one Flock camera the city already had. The Roundabout, a Milton newsletter, reviewed the city's checkbook & reported on September 10, 2026 that Milton paid Flock $341,235.62 for license plate cameras in 22 payments from October 2020, where its copy of the city checkbook begins, through "this past May".

The Roundabout also reported that resident Lindsay DeFranco, a candidate for state representative, used public comment to present records she had obtained about the city's Flock contracts & payments, telling Council the system had grown from 10 cameras to at least 27 & that Flock-related payments had passed $227,000 by the end of 2025, a period for which The Roundabout's review of the city's published checkbook produced "essentially the same" figure before the total rose to $341,235.62. Later in the meeting, Councilmember Carol Cookerly disputed the accuracy of that presentation from the dais, calling it "incredibly sophomoric" & referring to "the lies at the podium".

Senate investigation and hearing in 2026

On August 26, 2026, Sen. Josh Hawley, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Counterterrorism, launched an investigation into Flock Safety. His office quoted him addressing the company:

Your company boasts more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states and more than 20 billion vehicle scans every month.

Senator Hawley, announcing his investigation of Flock Safety, wrote that the company "boasts more than 120,000 cameras across 49 states".

On September 23, 2026, the subcommittee held a hearing titled "Always Watching: Flock’s Nationwide AI Surveillance Network" on how police officers have abused automated license plate readers (ALPRs) to stalk civilians & fellow officers; InvestigateTV reported that the leaders of the major surveillance companies were no-shows. InvestigateTV's reporting uncovered at least 19 instances in one year in Georgia of law enforcement officers arrested or relieved of duty for misusing Flock's database for unauthorized personal reasons. InvestigateTV also reported that privacy advocates & public records watchdogs raised alarms after Flock removed officer names from external network searches & stripped license plate numbers entirely from system audit logs, limiting the public's ability to verify whether their vehicles had been searched.

Flock sent Hawley an email response ahead of the hearing. InvestigateTV quoted Flock Chief Legal Officer Dan Haley:

Flock does not believe that Americans’ privacy should depend on one vendor’s good judgment, its current leadership, or its commercial incentives

At the September 23, 2026 hearing, Benn Jordan, an independent security researcher who discovered dozens of Flock cameras streaming openly online, warned lawmakers about digital vulnerabilities, asking, "Why create this much data when we can’t secure it?" & urging Congress to ensure any regulations placed on Flock apply across the surveillance industry, including competitors like Axon.

See also

• Common Questions, Arguments, & Responses when discussing Flock Surveillance
• User:Louis/Apex license plate reader program