They pitched these license plate readers to catch the "bad guys" 🇺🇸👁️

Our Take

Darin Olson's video lands on the exact bait-and-switch we've been flagging for years: ALPR networks get sold to city councils as tools for catching violent fugitives and stolen cars, then the internal usage logs tell a different story. Once the cameras are up, the query logs fill with lookups that have nothing to do with the original pitch — divorces, immigration status, personal curiosity, political surveillance. The scope quietly expands because the technology makes it so easy, and there's rarely anyone checking the math between 'what we promised' and 'what we actually do.'

What makes this pattern so dangerous is that it's invisible to the public until someone pulls the audit logs or a whistleblower leaks a report. Most residents have no idea how many Flock cameras are in their town, who has access to the data, or how long it's retained. That's precisely the gap we're trying to close — check our camera map to see what's already watching your streets, because the first step in fighting mission creep is knowing the mission crept.

Credit to Darin Olson for digging into the internal records instead of just repeating the vendor talking points. If this hits home, don't just watch and scroll — use our take-action resources to push your local government for transparency on who's accessing this data and why.