We're Flocked

399 Cameras in the City. 1,500 Across the Metro. No Public Count From the City Itself.

While you drove to work this morning, cameras logged your plate, your car's make and color, the time, and the place. That record went into a nationwide database searched by thousands of law enforcement agencies you have never heard of.

Birmingham has never published how many cameras it runs, where they are, how long data is kept, or who can search it. The numbers above come from Flock's own device records, not the city.

Whatever it catches, it records everyone. Every plate, every trip, kept and searchable, whether or not you are suspected of anything.

Why Should You Care?

No court has settled whether this is legal. The Supreme Court has said that tracking "the whole of a person's movements" is a search. Massachusetts' highest court said enough cameras in enough places would be one. Birmingham's network size, retention, and access are all unpublished.

It has already been abused. A Kansas police chief tracked his ex-girlfriend 228 times. A Texas sheriff's officer searched cameras nationwide for a woman who had an abortion. A Colorado family was held at gunpoint over a false plate match. In Alabama this year, officers in Springville and Moody lost their jobs over unauthorized searches.

It is not secure. Researchers documented 51 vulnerabilities in Flock cameras. Police logins are for sale on dark-web forums. Your location data is labeled by gig workers overseas.

Nobody is checking. A state rule has required a published plate-reader policy since March 2022. Birmingham has one. It has never published it. No audit result, no retention period, no sharing settings, no hearing on privacy.

Your Power Company Sells the Cameras

Birmingham's contract is not with Flock Safety. It is with Alabama Power. The utility owns the poles and the cameras, bills the city, and brings Flock in as its software subcontractor. The mayor has said so himself: "We don't even have a contract with Flock. We actually have a contract with Alabama Power."

That is why there is no Flock line item in any city budget. The $9.7 million network is billed as a utility service, and Birmingham is one of "over 80 municipalities" the utility told the council it sells cameras to.

Your Rights Are at Stake

Think about everywhere you drove last week:

• Dropping your kids at school
• Visiting a doctor's office
• Attending your place of worship
• Meeting a friend for coffee
• Going to a political meeting
• Stopping at a lawyer's office

Every trip was logged. Every location recorded. Every timestamp stored. Not because you did anything wrong, but because you might.

In a democracy, the government is supposed to answer to the people. Mass surveillance flips that relationship. When everyone is tracked "just in case," the presumption of innocence quietly disappears.

This isn't a partisan issue. Conservatives and progressives alike have raised alarms about unchecked government surveillance. It's not left vs. right. It's citizens vs. secrecy.

And right now, we have no say in how the system operates, who searches it, or what happens when it is abused. The council has voted on it three times. It has never held a hearing on privacy.