Canadian police quietly deploying AI-powered cameras, sensors

Our Take

CBC News' reporting on Canadian departments "quietly" deploying AI-powered cameras and license plate readers should sound familiar to anyone following Flock Safety's spread south of the border. The word "quietly" is doing a lot of work in that headline — it's the same pattern we see everywhere: police departments sign contracts, cameras go up on poles, and the public finds out after the fact, if they find out at all. No ballot measure, no real public hearing, just a vendor pitch and a budget line.

What makes ALPR networks different from a single speed camera or doorbell cam is the aggregation. One camera is a photo. Thousands of networked cameras feeding into a searchable database is a surveillance system that can reconstruct anyone's movements over weeks or months — and that capability doesn't respect a national border. The same companies, the same sales pitches about "fighting crime," and the same lack of independent audits are showing up in both countries, which is exactly why this kind of journalism matters.

If you want to see how far this has already spread in your own backyard, check out our camera map tracking known ALPR locations across the US, and if you think your city council should be asking harder questions before signing the next Flock contract, our take-action page has concrete steps for pushing back.