Flock fight: Virginia proposal to ban license plate cams gets bipartisan support | NBC4 Washington
The short version: Virginia lawmakers from both parties are pushing to ban Flock cameras statewide, a sign ALPR backlash has gone mainstream.
Our Take
When Republicans and Democrats in the same statehouse agree on anything these days, it's news. When they agree that a mass surveillance network needs to go, it's a signal. NBC4 Washington's Drew Wilder reports that Virginia lawmakers are moving on a bill to ban Flock Safety's license plate cameras statewide, and the bipartisan momentum here matters more than the specifics of any single bill's language. This isn't a fringe privacy complaint anymore — it's a legislative trend line.
What's driving it is the same thing driving pushback everywhere Flock's cameras go up: nobody voted for a system that logs every car's movements, shares that data across thousands of agencies, and operates with almost no public accountability. Local police departments sign the contracts, but the surveillance dragnet doesn't respect city or county lines. That's exactly why statewide action, not just piecemeal city council votes, is the right scale for this fight.
Virginia joins a growing list of states where lawmakers are being forced to reckon with what their constituents already know: these cameras are everywhere, and almost nobody agreed to be tracked by them. If you want to see how dense the network is near you, check the map, and if you want to push your own legislators the way Virginia's are being pushed, our take-action page is a good place to start.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of NBC4 Washington, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.