Palo Alto City Council could rebuild public trust by covering Flock cameras, canceling contract

Our Take

Matt Schlegel's framing cuts right to the point: trust isn't rebuilt by promising better policies for a surveillance system, it's rebuilt by removing the surveillance system. Once a city council votes to blanket a community in automated plate readers, every subsequent 'transparency report' and 'policy update' is just damage control. Covering the cameras and canceling the contract is the only move that actually returns power to residents instead of asking them to trust a vendor's dashboard.

Palo Alto isn't unique here — it's the same script playing out in hundreds of towns that signed on to Flock Safety's pitch without asking who gets to query the data, how long it's kept, or which federal agencies end up with backdoor access. 'Public trust' language from a city council should be a red flag, not reassurance, when the underlying system logs every car that passes a given corner, forever, regardless of suspicion.

If you want to see whether your own neighborhood has been wired up the same way, check our camera map, and if Palo Alto's debate has you wondering what residents elsewhere have done to push back, our take-action page has the playbook. Credit to Matt Schlegel for putting this fight in plain terms.