Read the agenda before Flock arrives

Our Take

The habit AI Safety Watch is pushing here is exactly right: Flock Safety contracts rarely get a headline-grabbing public debate. They show up as a line item on a Tuesday night agenda, get bundled with routine budget approvals, and pass before most residents know a citywide license plate tracking network is about to go live in their neighborhood. The 404 Media story they cite, about a mayor who actually read the fine print and said no, is the exception that proves the rule. Most councils don't get that kind of scrutiny.

That's the real value of a channel like this pointing a camera at municipal paperwork instead of just talking about AI in the abstract. Flock's pitch to city officials is always framed as crime-fighting convenience, but the fine print usually includes indefinite data retention, vague sharing agreements with other agencies, and zero mechanism for residents to opt out of having their movements logged. Once the cameras go up, they rarely come down, and the surveillance network only grows as neighboring towns join the same data-sharing pool.

If you want to see how far that pool already stretches, check our camera map for ALPR locations near you, and if your city council has a Flock item on the docket, don't wait for a viral news story to do something about it, use our take-action resources to show up before the vote, not after.