August 12, 2026: Flock Surveillance cameras were first used in 2019 by the Atlanta, Georgia Police Department. The cameras were used for collecting license plate information, especially the numbers of stolen cars or those used by criminals the police were searching for. Flock cameras also operate in areas with Shot Spotter systems to observe and identify shooters.

It is also common for police department employees to abuse the system by following friends, family, girlfriends, ex-girlfriends, etc., as well as criminal suspects.

Flock has limited prospects with the military. Some American military bases are using Flock cameras in housing areas or base entrances. For combat operations, the Army, Navy, and Air Force already use lots of surveillance camera systems. Modern tanks contain many, difficult-to-spot, external cameras. These allow the tank crew to be constantly aware of who or what is near their tank. The Air Force, Marines and Navy have surveillance pods that allow pilots to see individuals on the ground 20 kilometers below.

The Army's heavy use of battlefield surveillance began two decades ago. During the Afghan War, the U.S. shipped dozens of aerostats (tethered blimps) to Afghanistan. In the last few years, the U.S. Army has combined communications and electronic eavesdropping gear and software with day/night camera towers and aerostats to produce BETSS-C (Base Expeditionary Targeting and Surveillance Sensors-Combined). These observation towers have been used since 2003 in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Army buys Eagle Eye mobile surveillance tower systems for about $600,000 each. This is a security system consisting of day/night cameras, a laser rangefinder and designator, all mounted on a truck-mounted tower. Over the last five years, the original static towers have gotten more mobile and grown taller. The tallest Eagle Eye tower is 107 feet tall, allowing the cameras to spot vehicles up to 25 kilometers away. Great for keeping an eye on thinly populated areas in a desert, which western Iraq and many parts of Afghanistan have plenty of. The earlier 30-foot tower can see out to 11 kilometers, the 60-foot tower to 16 kilometers, and the 84-foot tower to 20 kilometers. The 30-foot tower was adequate for most situations, which usually involved guarding a base, but it also served as a communications relay for widely dispersed troops. The towers can be easily taken apart or erected by troops.

When temporary bases are set up, an Eagle Eye tower provides the equivalent of a permanent UAV presence, which, just by being there, tends to discourage attacks or any misbehavior in the vicinity of the base.

Then there is the RAID (Rapid Aerostat Initial Deployment) system, which uses a blimp floating at about 1,000 feet, tethered by a cable that provides power and communications to the day-and-night cameras up there. The big problem is ground fire from rifles and machine guns. Iraqis, in particular, liked using the RAID blimps as targets. Rifle fire won't destroy the blimps, but did cause them to be brought down more frequently for repairs. Normally, the blimps can stay up for 30 days at a time, but the bullet-hole repairs brought some of them down every few days. The steel tower systems also suffered gunfire damage, but rarely any that damaged the equipment. It was soon found that tower-mounted cameras were just as good as aerostats in most situations and much cheaper.

BETSS-C turned the towers into more than just a surveillance system. BETSS-C operators had radio links to nearby bases and the towers in those bases. Thus, bases could call on each other for help in chasing down any spotted hostiles, as well as use video or electronic information each tower might pick up on the bad guys.

The towers were a big help in both Iraq and Afghanistan, where they were all over the place. This kind of surveillance makes it more difficult for the enemy to sneak around bases, either to collect information, plant a roadside bomb, or set up an ambush. BETSS-C software contains many intelligence tools and links to databases. Using BETSS-C, operators can reveal seemingly innocent behavior as part of something more sinister and preventable.