A man dressed as Darth Vader spoke up at a San Diego city council meeting about Flock cameras

Our Take

Credit to FOX 2 Detroit for surfacing this clip, because it captures something real: ordinary people are showing up to council meetings, sometimes in costume, to say the same thing over and over — nobody asked us if we wanted a network of license plate cameras logging our every drive around town. The Vader getup is funny, sure, but the instinct behind it isn't a joke. When city councils fast-track Flock Safety contracts with little public debate, dressing up and making noise in the three minutes you're allotted is often the only leverage a resident has.

This is the pattern we track constantly: a department quietly signs on, cameras go up at intersections and neighborhood entrances, and the first most residents hear about it is when someone spots the device or a reporter asks a question nobody planned for. San Diego is just the latest city where public comment has become the de facto check on surveillance expansion, because state and local oversight structures mostly aren't built to catch it early.

If you want to know whether your own neighborhood already has these cameras watching your plates, check the map, and if you'd rather not wait for your turn at the mic to matter, our take-action page has concrete steps for pushing back before the contract is signed, not after.