Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs, a Republican and Tennessee Republican Party chairman, has called for a nationwide pause on the rollout of Flock Safety surveillance cameras, arguing that the technology needs constitutional safeguards before being expanded further. Speaking on Fox News' "The Sunday Briefing," Jacobs said the automated licence-plate-reading cameras raise significant privacy concerns and blocked their deployment in Knox County. The intervention adds a prominent Republican voice to a growing bipartisan debate over mass surveillance technology and how far local governments should go in deploying it without clear legal limits.

Flock Safety's camera network, used by police departments across the United States to track vehicles via licence plates, has faced criticism from privacy advocates and some lawmakers on both the left and right who fear the data collected could be misused or accessed without proper oversight. Jacobs framed his objection around constitutional protections, suggesting that safeguards should be established before more communities adopt the cameras, rather than after widespread deployment has already occurred. His comments position him among a growing number of local officials pushing back against rapid expansion of surveillance infrastructure pending stronger legal guardrails.