CDC head wants "abortion surveillance." Flock cameras are ready to help.
The short version: A Georgia State Senate candidate warns that CDC talk of 'abortion surveillance' pairs ominously with Flock's license-plate reader network already blanketing U.S. roads.
Our Take
Credit to Alec Miller, running for Georgia State Senate, for connecting two stories that rarely share a headline: public health officials floating the idea of tracking abortion-related travel, and the thousands of automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras that Flock Safety has already installed on behalf of local police departments. Whatever the CDC intends by "abortion surveillance," the infrastructure to make state-line monitoring trivial already exists — it's bolted to utility poles in your neighborhood right now.
This is the core problem with ALPR networks: they're built as general-purpose tracking systems, not single-purpose tools. Once a camera logs your plate, time, and location, that data can be queried for whatever purpose someone with access decides is urgent — a stolen car today, a reproductive health crackdown tomorrow. Flock markets its product to police as a tool for violent crime, but the same database doesn't care whether the query is about a carjacking or a drive to an out-of-state clinic. Mission creep isn't a hypothetical with this technology; it's the business model.
Communities that think they're immune because their state protects abortion access should remember that plate data doesn't respect state lines, and neither does data-sharing between agencies. If you want to know whether these cameras are already watching your commute, check our camera map, and if you want to push back on your local council or sheriff before the next camera goes up, our take-action guide walks you through it.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Alec Miller for Georgia State Senate 31, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.