COVID with Flock Cameras? Arrested for a Potted Plant! 🤣 #shorts

Our Take

Revenge Of The Cis plays this one for laughs — a Michigan dystopia where buying a potted plant during COVID gets you flagged, tracked, and hauled off thanks to automated license plate readers. It's absurd, it's a #shorts gag, and it's not meant as investigative journalism. But like a lot of good satire, the punchline only works because the premise isn't actually far-fetched.

Flock Safety's camera network wasn't built with pandemic lockdowns in mind, but the capability the joke hinges on — a government or private network quietly logging where every car goes, then cross-referencing it against whatever rule is in vogue that week — is exactly the capability these systems already provide. Today it's reportedly used for stolen cars and BOLOs; tomorrow it's whatever a city council, a state AG, or a federal agency decides counts as 'essential travel' or worse. The infrastructure doesn't care what the rule is. It just logs the plate.

That's the real takeaway buried under the comedy: once a surveillance network exists, its use case can change overnight, often without new public debate or your consent. If you want to see how many of these cameras are already watching your commute, check our map, and if you'd rather not wait for a future 'what if' to become a real headline, see what you can do at take action.