EVIL COPS. FLOCK CAMERAS. OIL RUNS THE WORLD.

Our Take

When a commentary channel like The Vaush Pit — known for political streams, not surveillance beat reporting — puts Flock cameras in a video title alongside cops and oil, it's a signal. ALPR surveillance has leaked out of the niche privacy-advocate corner of the internet and into the general political conversation. That's a good thing, even if the framing is blunt and the details in the description are thin. We'll let the video speak for itself once it's embedded, but we're glad to see the creator putting a spotlight on this.

Here's the part that doesn't need a hot take: Flock Safety's network of automated license plate readers now spans thousands of communities, quietly logging the movements of ordinary people with no warrant and often no public vote. Whether you come at this from a civil-liberties angle, a distrust-of-police angle, or a 'who's actually profiting off this data' angle, the endpoint is the same — a permanent, searchable record of where your car has been, built without your consent.

Commentary videos like this one matter because they reach audiences who'd never read an EFF report or a city council transcript. If this is the first time you're hearing that a camera near your house might be a Flock unit, don't just take our word for it — check our camera map to see what's actually been deployed near you, and head to our take-action page if you want to push back on it locally.