The Bottom Line: The Flock Panic -The newest distraction is to demonize the very technology that can heep us safe

Look, I get it. Flock cameras are the new villain of the week. Cue the pearl-clutching, the “invasion of privacy” sermons, and the breathless social-media threads about how The Man is watching your license plate like it’s a reality show.

Someone, somewhere, will inevitably call me a bootlicker for not joining the panic. Fine. Label away. Supporting the lawful use of tools that help catch murderers, rapists, terrorists, and sex offenders apparently makes you a traitor to the cause of pure, unfettered anonymity.

How radical of me. Excuse me for being a law-abiding citizen.

Last year, I had a car stolen. Thieves took it from in front of my house at 2 am. Whatever camera system helped the Fort Smith Police to track it leaving Fort Smith headed east on Rogers/Highway 22. Because they knew the general direction, law enforcement in that direction were notified,

They located th vehicle two days later in a ravine near Ozark. A little worse for wear with a broken driver's side window broken out and a few miscellaneous items missing. I'm convinced without the cameras I would have never recovered the SUV.

Here’s the part that never makes the viral rant: the government -- and plenty of private companies --have been tracking you for decades. Social Security number? Check. Driver’s license? Check. Hunting and fishing licenses, passports, the whole bureaucratic parade.

Every time you log onto your phone or computer, some marketing outfit is quietly vacuuming up your habits so they can sell the data to the highest bidder.

The Turner Turnpike has been snapping pictures of your tags for years. Walmart’s security cameras can lock on and follow you from the produce aisle to the checkout just to make sure you’re shopping and not shoplifting.

Your phone knows where you are right now. Go stand in the middle of nowhere, ask Siri or her digital sisters “Where am I?” and-- as long as there’s a signal --she’ll drop a pin on your exact location like it’s no big deal.

The courts have said repeatedly that you don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy when you’re out in public. Driving down Rogers Avenue, cruising I-40 or I-49, wandering a state park, visiting a cemetery, attending a ballgame, or trying to board a plane ... congratulations, you’re in public.

 The Constitution is not a force field that renders every camera a constitutional crisis the moment it records a plate or a face in an open space.

If you’re not doing anything you shouldn’t be doing, the mythical Flock Camera Boogeyman isn’t coming for you. But maybe -- just maybe-- law enforcement can use the same technology to track down the people who are doing the things we all claim to hate.

The real invasion of privacy isn’t a camera reading a tag on a public road. It’s the criminal who decides your house, your car, or your kid is fair game.

We have actual problems: rising violence, predators who actually hurt people, and a long list of everyday risks that don’t generate nearly as many think pieces.

Tag readers and facial recognition are not the end of civilization. They’re tools. Like every other tool, they can be used well or poorly.

Obsessing over them while ignoring the far older, far more thorough systems already watching us is peak selective outrage.

So go ahead and call me a bootlicker. I’ll wear it while I keep pointing out that we have a lot more urgent things to worry about than whether a camera noticed your bumper on a public highway.

The real boogeymen are still out there. Most of them aren’t the ones installing cameras.