FlockWatch™ 🐑 Surveillance Camera • The Commercial They Don’t Want You to See 👀

Our Take

Paul Rubino's mock commercial for "FlockWatch™" is satire, but it works precisely because it doesn't have to stretch far from reality. The fake pitch — real-time facial recognition, license plate tracking, all wrapped in the soothing language of "public safety" — is basically the actual sales deck Flock Safety and its competitors bring to city councils every week. When comedy and marketing copy start sounding identical, that's not a coincidence. It's a sign the real industry has already absorbed the absurdity and sold it to us as normal.

What makes this kind of send-up valuable is that it forces people to hear the pitch from the outside. Most residents never see the actual contract language or vendor demo reel; they just notice a new camera pole and maybe a local news segment about "crime-fighting technology." Rubino's bit reframes that quiet rollout as what it actually is: a product launch for a network that logs where you drive, when, and how often, with little independent oversight of who gets to query that data later.

If the video got a laugh out of you, turn that reaction into something useful. Check our camera map to see whether a real version of "FlockWatch" is already watching your street, and visit our take-action page for ways to push back before the joke becomes permanent infrastructure in your town.