Does Switching Cameras Fix the Privacy Problem?
The short version: Privacy Bee asks the right question: swapping Flock for a competitor doesn't solve mass license plate surveillance — the business model itself is the problem.
Our Take
Credit to Privacy Bee for naming something we see constantly in city council meetings: when a community pushes back on Flock Safety, the proposed fix is often just a different vendor with the same basic architecture — cameras on every corridor, plates logged by default, data shared across a growing network of police agencies. Changing the logo on the camera doesn't change the fact that your daily movements are being recorded and retained whether or not you've ever been suspected of a crime.
The real question communities should be asking isn't "which company should we trust with this," it's whether blanket, suspicionless tracking of every driver belongs in American towns at all. Vendor competition can shave off a few rough edges — pricing, interface, maybe some audit logging — but it doesn't touch the core problem of a permanent, searchable record of where everyone goes. That's a policy and oversight failure, not a procurement one.
If your town is debating ALPRs, or you want to see how far this has already spread, check our camera map to find deployments near you, and visit our take-action page for tools to push your local officials on transparency and limits before another contract gets signed.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Privacy Bee, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.