Blacklisted from digital ID this can happen

Our Take

This video from the channel Digital ID, Mass Surveillance and Digital Currency raises a question that should sound familiar to anyone tracking Flock Safety's spread: what happens when you get flagged by a system you never consented to join, and have no real way to appeal? The creator is talking about digital ID infrastructure specifically, but the underlying mechanics — centralized databases, opaque flagging criteria, and life-altering consequences for ordinary people — are the same ones we see with automated license plate readers every day.

Flock's camera network doesn't issue you a digital ID card, but it does something functionally similar: it builds a persistent record of your movements that police departments, and increasingly private actors, can query, share, and act on. A 'hit' in that system — right or wrong — can trigger a stop, a flag, or worse, with little transparency about how the list was built or how to get off it. The 'blacklist' framing isn't hyperbole when agencies have already shown they'll run plate data through immigration and reproductive-health dragnets without public input.

Credit to the channel for keeping public attention on digital ID and surveillance convergence — it's part of the same conversation we're having about plate readers. If you want to see how dense this tracking infrastructure already is near you, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not just watch it happen, our take-action page has concrete steps for pushing back locally.