Evanston cancelled Flock. The cameras stayed up six more months
The short version: Evanston voted to kill its Flock contract, but the cameras lingered for six months until officials resorted to cease-and-desist letters and trash bags, as Verified Privacy VPN reports.
Our Take
A city council vote should mean something. In Evanston, it apparently didn't — at least not right away. As Verified Privacy VPN (vp.net) lays out, officials cancelled their Flock Safety contract, ordered the cameras removed, and then watched them keep running for another six months anyway. It took a formal cease-and-desist and, almost comically, trash bags thrown over the lenses to actually make the surveillance stop.
This is exactly the pattern we keep seeing: getting Flock installed is fast and frictionless, but getting it removed is a bureaucratic slog that favors the vendor, not the public. Once a city signs up, the cameras become sticky infrastructure — contracts, data pipelines, and vague 'transition periods' all work in Flock's favor, even after elected officials say no. If a unanimous cancellation vote can't get cameras down on time, imagine how hard it is for residents who never got a vote at all.
Evanston's trash-bag standoff is a small, absurd symbol of a bigger problem: these systems are built to persist. Check our camera map to see what's watching in your area, and if your city is debating a Flock contract — coming or going — use our take-action resources to push for real accountability, not just a vote on paper.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Verified Privacy VPN (vp.net), published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.