Philadelphia City Council calls on Harrisburg to regulate Flock cameras

Our Take

CBS Philadelphia's report captures something we hear from city councils across the country: local officials adopting Flock cameras, then realizing they have no real authority to govern how the data gets used, shared, or retained once it's flowing into a national network. Philadelphia asking Harrisburg to step in is effectively an admission that city-level 'policy' on ALPRs is toothless without state law backing it up — and that vacuum is exactly how mass surveillance infrastructure spreads unchecked.

What's notable here isn't the cameras themselves, it's the jurisdictional buck-passing. Flock's pitch to municipalities is always local — public safety, stolen cars, missing persons — but the data doesn't stay local. It's pooled, searchable, and shared well beyond city limits, often without the public ever voting on it. A council resolution asking the state to regulate is a tacit acknowledgment that Philadelphia lost control of this the moment the cameras went up.

Pennsylvania residents should watch whether Harrisburg actually moves, or whether this becomes another symbolic ask that evaporates once the news cycle passes. 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 lawmakers, our take-action page has steps for pushing your own city council now.