Carl Gunn spends some of his Saturdays sitting in a lawn chair on the side of roads in Tampa Bay — bearing the summer heat as he holds a massive pole in his hands.
Whatever for?
To block and protest Flock cameras in his area.
These black cameras sit at the top of a pole with a solar panel attached. They're slightly inconspicuous and can be found all over the Tampa Bay area, from parking lots to neighborhoods and on the sides of interstates.
The company and police departments say they're to help solve crimes, but concerns are growing across the country about how the information they capture is used.
What are Flock cameras for?
According to Flock, the LPR cameras capture vehicle events to help law enforcement agencies with their investigations. This includes license plates, vehicle characteristics and the time and location cars passed the camera.
"That information helps agencies identify vehicles relevant to an investigation using Flock searches, alerts, and approved data sources they choose to enable, in accordance with their policies, local laws and community values," a statement reads on Flock's website.
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The company said it has helped solve cases like stolen vehicles, burglaries, assaults, missing persons and other "serious crimes."
"In 2025, Flock technology supported more than one million criminal investigations and public safety incidents, assisted in an estimated 20% of solved cases in jurisdictions where it was deployed, and helped locate more than 10,000 missing people," a Flock spokesperson wrote in a prepared statement.
You can learn more about Flock's procedures on its website.
A man staking out a cause
For Gunn, 77, his protests against Flock first originated when he noticed a camera lying on the ground.
"Somebody had cut it down, and I didn't know what it was," he told "Florida Matters Live & Local."
"Don't be following me. I feel it's against my Fourth Amendment Rights. I feel it's a crime."Carl Gunn
He later saw that another camera was installed, so he went ahead and studied it and determined: "I don't like this."
Gunn then got a pole from his pool, stuck a broomstick on the end of it and put a sign on it, reading: "Down With The Flock."
He looked around to see which cameras were accessible so as not to block sidewalks and to have a little bit of shade in this Florida heat.
"At my age, it burns me out real quick," he added.
Then he does a mini sit-in of sorts, getting out his lawn chair and putting his sign in front of the camera to block it as cars go by.
And so he became officially known as the "Flock Blocker."
Overall, Gunn said he's doing the protests to bring attention to what the camera is doing, and how he doesn't like it following him.
"I'm not a lawbreaker. Well, I may speed every now and then, but it's by accident. But I don't want them doing it," he told host Matthew Peddie. "I'm free, white and 21. Don't be following me. I feel it's against my Fourth Amendment rights. I feel it's a crime."
Flock disagreed that license plate readers go against the Fourth Amendment, writing that more than 40 courts across the country have determined the readers are not a violation and "cannot track the whole of an individual's movements."
Controversy over the cameras
Surveillance in America has continued to evolve with technology. And Matthew Guariglia, a senior policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said the issue some see with tools like Flock cameras is "they are interconnected."
"So by driving past 10 cameras, 15 cameras on your route to work, they could essentially collect all that data in a centralized way and track you as you go about your day," Guariglia said.
Problems can then come because the legal system is set up where you need "individualized suspicion," he added. Meaning, police suspect you of committing a crime.
The traditional route is they then go out and get a warrant signed by a judge saying there's evidence you did it, and then they collect information about you.
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"These tools have kind of inverted the entire system so that they're collecting information on us all the time, and then once they have all that data, then they're deciding who's suspicious," Guariglia said.
Jean-Luc Adrien, an attorney with Brancato Law Firm, said that when police offload "finding suspicion" to an automated system, problems can arise. For example, data sets are not always updated or people are being jailed based on an automated misread or outdated information.
"For years, police have — not everyone — but enough that a term 'driving while Black' came about, where police offloaded their development of reasonable suspicion to racial biases and pretextual stops happened," Adrien said. "That was litigated, still found to be legal pretextual stops, although not moral. In this instance, it's the same thing that's happening."
Another issue is how law enforcement is using the data collected from the cameras. For instance, Guariglia explained how there have been cases in different parts of the country where officers have been found to use the technology to stalk people and use it inappropriately.
For instance, WTSP reported how a Haines City police officer was arrested after being accused of accessing Flock cameras 717 times to track his estranged wife's car.
A Flock spokesperson said law enforcement agencies own and control their data and that access is limited to authorized viewers — with every search requiring a documented reason. Each search also creates a permanent audit trail. Data is automatically deleted after 30 days unless an "agency establishes a different retention period consistent with applicable law and policy."
Guariglia said he had yet to see proof that "a lot of this auditing or protective work is really going to — in a large scale — prevent officers from abusing this technology."
"We understand there are questions about privacy and data and believe privacy and public safety can coexist," a Flock spokesperson wrote. "Flock strongly supports legislation establishing guardrails governing License Plate Reader (LPR) use."
Amid these worries and Gunn's protests, St. Petersburg Police Department Police Chief Anthony Holloway said the cameras do not use facial recognition technology and information is only accessed when connected to a legitimate public safety purpose. The St. Pete Catalyst reported that Holloway said officers who misuse the system face disciplinary action and can be fired.
In general, Guariglia feels there are not enough overall safeguards to make the technology less worrisome for those concerned about privacy.
"The bare minimum we need is a warrant requirement," Guariglia said. "I think one thing people should note is that these devices are justified by saying they're going to be out there finding the worst crimes and the worst criminals, but the other 99% of the time when there's no active murder suspect being chased down, these devices don't just turn off and wait for the next serious crime. They are on, and they are recording data all the time."
