'To maintain safety': Portsmouth police defend Flock cameras as neighbors raise privacy concerns

Our Take

WTKR's report out of Portsmouth lays bare a familiar script: police tout Flock Safety cameras as a crime-fighting tool, residents raise privacy concerns, and officials respond with the same reassurance we hear in city after city — 'it's to maintain safety.' But 130 ALPRs blanketing one city isn't a targeted tool, it's a dragnet. Every car that passes those cameras gets logged, time-stamped, and stored, whether the driver is a suspect, a saint, or just someone heading to church. That's not policing a crime, that's surveilling a population.

Credit to WTKR News 3 for giving airtime to the neighbors pushing back, because the public rarely gets to see this debate play out at all. Most of these networks expand quietly through city council votes nobody attends and budget line items nobody reads. Portsmouth residents now know what's watching them; plenty of other towns don't even have that much.

If you want to see how deep this network runs in your own backyard, check our camera map — and if you're ready to push back at your next council meeting, our take-action page has the tools to help you do it.