If you've been driving around Brunswick and Glynn County lately, you may have noticed some new cameras appearing along our roads.
They're part of a growing network of Flock Safety cameras — automated license plate readers that can capture information about passing vehicles and make that data searchable by law enforcement.
And judging by recent conversations in local Facebook groups, people around here have very different feelings about them.
Supporters point to cases where the technology has helped police locate stolen vehicles, identify suspects and solve serious crimes. One local commenter described how a friend's hit-and-run was allegedly solved within an hour with the help of the cameras.
"I rather them be up. My fiancé's friend got in a hit and run and within an hour they had the truck, so yes, keep them up. They help more than you think."
Others say cameras are already everywhere anyway — on businesses, doorbells, phones and dashboards — so they don't understand what all the concern is about.
"I don't care if they put cameras at every corner. Doesn't bother me. I have nothing to hide."
Another resident made a similar argument:
"Every state and city has cameras. Most red light intersections have cameras. All of the parks in Glynn County have cameras. The person in the car beside you or behind you has cameras. Stores and restaurants have cameras. I don't understand what the big deal is honestly."
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about" was a common sentiment.
But others see an important distinction between a security camera recording the front of a store and a government-connected network capable of documenting where vehicles travel and making that information searchable.
One commenter put it this way:
"Remember when you used to believe in small government and personal privacy? Now you cry for the surveillance state to save and protect."
Another questioned the priorities behind the rollout:
"We got Flock cameras before our roads got fixed, and before we got a sidewalk on Old Jesup. There are several other things citizens of this community have been in need of, and asking for, for years."
Without some degree of privacy, can we really have freedom?
The usual response is that these systems have safeguards and that we should trust law enforcement to use them only for legitimate investigations. But we don't have to imagine a hypothetical future in which that trust is violated.
It has already happened right here in Georgia.
Earlier this month, five Albany police officers were fired and arrested after an internal audit found they had allegedly accessed Flock license-plate data multiple times for "non-law enforcement purposes." They were charged with misuse of license plate data and violation of their oaths of office.
And this wasn't an isolated incident. Just weeks earlier, two supervisors with the Cherokee County Sheriff's Office were also fired and charged over alleged misuse of an automated license-plate reader system.
So when people ask, "What are you worried about if you have nothing to hide?" the answer is simple:
We should be worried about what people with access to the information might choose to do with it.
The issue isn't whether you personally are committing a crime. It's whether the government should have the ability to create a searchable record of the movements of millions of innocent people in the first place.
Technology doesn't stand still.
Combine a growing network of cameras with massive databases and increasingly powerful artificial intelligence, and we're creating surveillance capabilities that would have seemed like science fiction not very long ago.
Think about what that could eventually mean.
A database doesn't have to simply answer the question, "Did this stolen car pass this camera?"
With enough cameras, enough stored data and sufficiently powerful AI, it could potentially answer much broader questions.
Who regularly attends a particular church?
Who visits a gun store?
Who attends a political protest?
Who visits an addiction treatment center?
Who regularly spends the night at someone else's house?
Who meets with whom — and how often?
Those examples may sound extreme today. But the infrastructure required to answer questions like these is increasingly being built around us, one camera at a time.
That concern was reflected in one of the local comments:
"The fact that so many people are okay with them wanting to watch every move we make is wild. At what point will people realize we are slowly losing our freedom piece by piece under the guise of 'protection'?"
Maybe you trust everyone who has access to these systems today. But what about five years from now? Twenty years from now?
What happens when political leadership changes? When laws change? When databases are connected in ways that weren't originally envisioned?
And once this infrastructure is built, it doesn't simply disappear.
The Albany case also raises another uncomfortable question: How many instances of misuse are never discovered?
In this case, an internal audit reportedly caught the alleged abuse. That's encouraging from an accountability standpoint. But it also demonstrates that people with authorized access apparently had the ability to search this information for purposes that had nothing to do with legitimate law enforcement.
That's why the "I've got nothing to hide" argument doesn't work so well.
Privacy isn't about having something to hide.
Most of us close the bathroom door even though we're doing nothing illegal. We use passwords. We put curtains on our windows. We don't publish our entire browsing history for strangers to examine.
Privacy is part of being free.
At the same time, there's no denying the other side of this conversation.
If one of these cameras helps police quickly identify the vehicle involved in a hit-and-run, recover a kidnapped child or catch someone who committed a violent crime, it's difficult to tell the victim or their family that the technology wasn't worthwhile.
As one commenter noted about the cameras being used elsewhere in Georgia:
"Here in Columbus, Flock cameras have helped solve a few murders and helped police solve and recover a few stolen vehicles."
And another local resident offered perhaps the most straightforward argument in their favor:
"I'm sure you'd like them if someone broke into your house or car and it was captured on this and it could give the police an idea who and where they went."
Flock cameras may absolutely help solve crimes. That's a legitimate argument in their favor.
But the fact that a technology can be used for good doesn't mean we should ignore its potential for abuse — especially when that abuse is already happening in our own state.
Perhaps the real conversation shouldn't simply be whether these cameras are "good" or "bad."
We should be asking:
How many cameras are being installed in Brunswick and Glynn County?
How much are taxpayers paying for them?
What information do they collect?
How long is that information stored?
Who can search it?
Is every search logged and regularly audited?
Which outside agencies can access our locally collected data?
Can federal agencies search it?
Can the system be used to track someone's movements even when they aren't suspected of committing a crime?
And what safeguards exist to prevent today's crime-fighting tool from becoming tomorrow's mass-surveillance system?
Those are questions residents deserve clear answers to — preferably before an extensive surveillance network is built rather than afterward.
The reaction we've seen locally shows just how divided people are. Some residents say the cameras make them feel safer. Others see them as another incremental step toward a society where our movements are routinely recorded, stored and searchable.
It is surprising how many people seem completely comfortable with that trade-off.
Maybe George Orwell's 1984 has become a cliché whenever surveillance comes up. But the warning at the heart of the book remains worth considering: technology can give governments powers that previous generations never had, and once society becomes accustomed to being watched, getting that privacy back may be much harder than giving it away.
So where do you stand?
Do Flock cameras make you feel safer?
Are you comfortable with law enforcement having access to a searchable database of vehicle movements if it helps solve crimes?
Would strict limits on data retention, sharing and access make you more comfortable?
Or do you believe the potential for government surveillance and abuse outweighs the benefits?
