What the Flock?

Flock cameras have become punching bags on campaign trails from Michigan to Tennessee this fall. Nobody in Baton Rouge is throwing any haymakers over them. Here it's a pillow fight over privacy, not party.

Why it matters: Somebody's watching you whenever you're behind the wheel in East Baton Rouge Parish, and nobody at Metro Council has asked whether that's OK.

Camera count: Baton Rouge's got more Flock cameras watching it than most cities its size, and the badge doesn't seem to mind.

• BRPD and the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office both run active networks, and Central police use their own readers.
• Police Chief TJ Morse says the systems help recover more than $2.5 million in stolen property most years, and every search gets logged.
• That kind of audit trail is exactly what was missing in Jefferson Parish, where a deputy got fired this summer for running his ex-fiancée's plate 5,000 times.

Uneven map: Zoom in on a crowdsourced camera map, and East Baton Rouge starts to look lopsided.

• The camera cluster is thick through St. George and elsewhere along the southern and southeastern swing of the parish.
• North Baton Rouge—the parish's highest-crime turf—has barely a blip.
• Neither BRPD nor the Sheriff's Office gives official camera locations, so there's no easy way to tell if a camera is for law enforcement or a nearby HOA.
• These pins are volunteer-reported, not an official registry—so a lighter cluster in North Baton Rouge could mean fewer cameras, or just fewer people looking—or reporting.

State pushback: Baton Rouge's Metro Council hasn't touched the issue, but a Shreveport-area Republican wants to go on a statewide Flock hunt.

• State Rep. Danny McCormick of Oil City is drafting a bill for next spring's session, calling the cameras warrantless surveillance.
• McCormick says the anger crosses party lines—conservatives and civil libertarians alike.

Security or nanny state: This isn't a Mechanical Hound tracking dissenters without a warrant, but it's not exactly asking permission, either.

• Ask Morse, and it's a crime-fighting tool; ask the ACLU, and it's more like a leash.
• ACLU of Louisiana advocacy director Sarah Whittington says solving crimes doesn't erase the fact that thousands of innocent drivers get tracked with zero judicial oversight.
• Baton Rouge privacy advocate Chris Alexander doesn't mince words: the cameras are "digitally tracking your every movement."

The bottom line: It's fascinating the privacy and civil liberties people are willing to sacrifice in the name of public safety—whether it's full-body X-ray scans at the airport or eye-on-a-pole surveillance cameras along a street near you.