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Bay County resident urges commissioners to reject Flock Security cameras over privacy and security concerns
Summary
At the Nov. 18 meeting a local software engineer, Jerith Dietrich, urged Bay County commissioners to vote against Flock Security camera products, alleging inconsistent company messaging on AI/facial recognition, prior misuse of data and nationwide searchable camera networks; he proposed contract bans and technical mitigations.
Jerith Dietrich, who identified himself as a software engineer, addressed the Bay County Board of Commissioners during public comment on Nov. 18, asking commissioners to vote against any procurement of Flock Security cameras. Dietrich told the board he is worried a centralized dataset managed by a private vendor is ‘‘a matter of when, not if’’ it will be breached and cited recent industry reporting of multiple breaches this year.
Dietrich said Flock Security has given inconsistent messaging about whether its systems use AI or facial recognition. He cited third-party marketing and advocacy reporting suggesting the company’s products can be used for facial-recognition-style profiling and said downstream processors could apply recognition tools even if cameras do not perform on-device face matching.
As examples of misuse, Dietrich referenced media reporting and advocacy organization findings he said showed law enforcement using Flock’s network to run searches across large numbers of cameras nationwide, including an instance he described as a search in an abortion-related probe. He said such cross-jurisdictional searches, and the ability of individual departments to enable advanced features, leave constituents without meaningful control over how camera data is used.
Dietrich proposed concrete mitigations for any contract with Flock Security: a physically segregated, Bay County–only data store (air-gapped or physically restricted to county facilities), mutual (two-way) SSL certificate authentication rather than password-based logins, and explicit contract language banning facial recognition and any third-party downstream processing that performs face recognition for any purpose.
The board did not take immediate action on procurement during the meeting. Dietrich offered to discuss technical details further with staff.
The account above is based solely on public comments recorded in the meeting transcript. It attributes claims to Dietrich as he made them; the meeting record does not include a response from Flock Security or a formal staff recommendation on procurement.
