Flock Surveils You — But Don't You Dare Film Them

Flock Safety — a $8.4 billion company that has deployed tens of thousands of cameras to record the movements of millions of Americans without their consent — called the police on a reporter who filmed one of their employees in public. The employee fled the scene, declined to give his name to the 911 operator, and sent three police cruisers after an award-winning journalist who was committing no crime. Filming in public spaces is explicitly protected by the First Amendment.

Flock's chief communications officer had the audacity to frame mass warrantless surveillance as a community service. When asked why Americans can't opt out, he said: "You can, if you want to opt out of society." A company that believes you have no right to privacy also believes it has every right to its own.

We call on the media to cover Flock's treatment of this reporter not as an amusing irony, but as a revealing window into the company's true character. A surveillance giant that weaponizes police against journalists filming public property is not a public safety company — it is an authoritarian one. The public deserves reporting that holds Flock to the same standard it applies to everyone else: if you're in public, you can be filmed.