Flock Surveillance: A Call for Freedom | New Hanover Cancels Its ALPR Contract 4–0
The short version: New Hanover County's 4–0 vote to dump its Flock contract proves organized local pushback can actually beat surveillance creep.
Our Take
A unanimous vote is a rare thing in local government, and New Hanover County just delivered one against automated license-plate readers. Credit to DeFlockILM for getting cameras rolling outside the Sheriff's Office and documenting the fight in real time — this is exactly the kind of grassroots accountability journalism this issue needs. Too often these contracts get rubber-stamped in a consent agenda nobody reads; this time, residents showed up and commissioners actually listened.
What makes this win notable isn't just the outcome, it's the reminder that Flock's business model depends on nobody paying attention. Once a county starts feeding plate scans into a nationwide network shared across thousands of agencies, walking it back gets a lot harder than voting it down before renewal. New Hanover had the rare chance to hit pause before that data-sharing sprawl locked in, and they took it.
Every county sitting on a Flock contract right now should be asking the same questions New Hanover's commissioners finally asked out loud: who sees this data, how long is it kept, and what did we actually get for the money. Check our camera map to see if readers are already watching your roads, and if you want to push your own local government toward a vote like this one, our take-action page has the playbook.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of DeFlockILM, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.