Assemblyman Michael Cashman raises concern over increasing number of Flock cameras in Northern Ne...
The short version: A New York assemblyman publicly questions the rapid spread of Flock cameras in the North Country, adding a rare elected voice to the pushback.
Our Take
Credit to MyNBC5-WPTZ for giving airtime to Assemblyman Michael Cashman, who's apparently noticed what a lot of residents in Northern New York already have: Flock Safety cameras are multiplying fast, and almost nobody voted on it. That's the pattern across the country — a police department signs a contract, a few poles go up, and suddenly there's a permanent record of every car that passes through town, with little public debate before the cameras are already running.
It matters when a sitting lawmaker says this out loud, because most of these rollouts happen entirely below the radar of state government. Local police chiefs sign the deals, Flock markets the tech as just 'helping solve crimes,' and elected officials who should be asking about data retention, access logs, and whether out-of-state or federal agencies can tap into the network often find out after the fact, same as everyone else. One assemblyman raising a flag doesn't fix that, but it's a start toward the kind of scrutiny this technology has mostly avoided.
If you want to see how many of these cameras are already watching your own commute, check our camera map, and if you'd rather not wait for Albany to catch up, our take-action page has concrete steps for pushing back at the local level.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of MyNBC5-WPTZ, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.