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This article first appeared in the Louisville Courier-Journal.
When Shively Police Officer Asad Zahir was arrested for improperly using Flock Safety’s Automated License Plate Reader, it added yet another data point to the growing list of state and local police abusing surveillance technologies.
The allegations against Sahir are particularly disturbing. Over the course of five months, Zahir is accused of carrying out more than 2,000 unauthorized searches to monitor and target his ex-girlfriend. More than 240 of these searches occurred while Zahir had an active order of protection against him.
Falsifying official entry logs under the guise of "narcotics investigations," Zahir, like others in state and local government, turned a tool intended to promote public safety into a personal weapon of coercion.
That much is alarming. The response of the Shively Police Department and other local officials is even more troubling. While discussing the arrest, officials were quick to frame Zahir’s arrest as a triumph of internal oversight and as the direct result of individual malfeasance.
Police Chief Andre Bottoms, for example, urged the public not to judge the technology – or the department – on the "poor decisions made by one officer." In a town hall meeting at the University of Louisville, ULPD Chief Bryan Luckett described Flock as a “great investigative tool” before quipping, “I believe Flock is safe … unless you’re dating a police officer.”
To those who study policing, surveillance and governmental abuses, this is a familiar refrain. Whenever state-sanctioned technologies are weaponized against citizens, public officials predictably place full blame on specific actors.
Flock cameras aren't worth the 'compromise'
Without a doubt, the individuals who abuse these technologies deserve blame and should be prosecuted. But the "few bad apples" defense conveniently shifts public attention away from much deeper problems. By solely focusing on the actions of one person, officials work to shield broader institutional failures from meaningful scrutiny.
This most recent incident is far from an isolated misstep. Since 2018, there have been 176 documented instances of ALPR abuse across the country, from surveilling protestors to stalking current or former romantic partners. Importantly, this number is undoubtedly understated.
Defenders of these surveillance technologies point to these system's measurable benefits – helping to recover stolen vehicles, locate missing children or assist in homicide investigations. These successes are real, and they form the backbone of the industry's sales pitch to municipal governments. However, these benefits hide a fundamental question: should routine public safety come at the expense of our privacy, civil liberties and constitutional protections under the Fourth Amendment?
For some, the answer is clear. Flock CEO Garrett Langley, for example, stated in a recent interview that, “When people talk about just one of these, privacy or safety, they're prioritizing the wrong thing, and what we have to prioritize as a country is compromise."
This notion of "compromise" is a dangerous sleight of hand. Framing universal tracking as a necessary tradeoff for “safety” normalizes a model where every citizen is treated as a suspect in waiting and one that tries to pass the buck on government abuse. Apparently, Mr. Langley and Chief Bottoms are content with a “compromise” that requires over 2,000 abusive searches before an automated algorithm flags an abuse of power. This is not a safeguard; it is a monument to passive and unchecked overreach.
The pushback against this network is gathering steam. At least 56 municipalities have canceled their Flock contracts. Residents across the country continue to question the constitutionality of public-private mass surveillance. The Supreme Court’s recent Chatrie decision is already raising serious constitutional questions over a just-passed Kentucky law on this subject. All of this has culminated in widespread outrage, with many instances of individuals obstructing or destroying these cameras.
Pushback is forcing policymakers to listen
Stopping this expansion of mass surveillance requires dismantling the institutional incentives that make public-private tracking so lucrative and low-friction. Rather than relying on voluntary corporate restraint or AI-driven post-facto police audits, the burden is on citizens to send a clear message to local, state and federal lawmakers that these actions are unacceptable. As the recent pushback against Flock has shown, when the public makes noise, policymakers are forced to listen.
A reasonable starting point would be placing hard statutory limits on warrantless collection and retention of ALPR data and barring public entities from contracting with networks that bypass judicial oversight. At the same time, courts must continue to apply Fourth Amendment protections to persistent technological tracking, recognizing that long-term digital surveillance is functionally identical to physical trespass.
The lesson of Officer Zahir's arrest is not that the system worked because an officer was eventually caught. The lesson is that when governments partner with private contractors to monitor citizens with minimal friction and oversight, the question is not if abuse will occur, but how gross that abuse will be.
Security purchased by giving up privacy is not safety – it is conditional liberty waiting for the wrong person to log into the database.
Abigail R. Hall is a scholar at the Bluegrass Institute and a professor of economics at the University of Tampa. She is a native of Louisville. Patrik S. Ward is an economics student at the University of Tampa and member of the Adam Smith Society.
