YAL activists showed up at a city council meeting in Portsmouth, NH to voice opposition to Flock and
The short version: Young Americans for Liberty activists took their opposition to Flock's ALPR network straight to Portsmouth, NH city council, and that's exactly the kind of local pressure that works.
Our Take
Credit where it's due: Young Americans for Liberty didn't just tweet about Flock Safety, they showed up. Local council chambers are where these camera contracts actually get approved or killed, and a room full of residents saying no is worth more than a hundred angry comments online. Portsmouth joins a growing list of towns where ordinary people are asking their elected officials why a private company's ALPR network is quietly logging every car that passes through town.
What makes this fight interesting is that it's not breaking down along the usual left-right lines. Civil libertarians of every stripe are waking up to the fact that a system built to catch stolen cars is also building a permanent, searchable record of where you drive, when, and how often. That data doesn't stay local either, it gets shared across networks with police departments and federal agencies who never had to ask your city council for permission.
If you want to know whether Flock or another ALPR vendor is already running in your area, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back the way these activists did, our take-action page has the tools to get you started at your next council meeting.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Young Americans for Liberty, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.