Trump Backs Flock Cameras: 'They Help Catch A Lot Of Criminals'

Our Take

When the President casually tells a camera crew that Flock's ALPR network "helps catch a lot of criminals," it's the kind of soundbite that sounds harmless until you think about what it actually endorses: a privately built, largely unregulated system that photographs and timestamps every car passing thousands of intersections, then stores that data for police departments to search at will. WKOW 27 News captured the moment, and it's worth watching precisely because of how casually a sitting president can wave away the surveillance implications of a technology most Americans have never consented to.

Catching criminals is the pitch every surveillance vendor makes, and it's not entirely false — plate readers do occasionally help solve crimes. But that's not the same as justifying a system that tracks the daily movements of millions of law-abiding drivers, shares data across jurisdictions with little oversight, and has already been misused by officers for personal reasons in multiple documented cases. Presidential endorsements like this one tend to accelerate adoption without any accompanying push for transparency, audits, or public input — the exact opposite of what a technology this powerful demands.

If you want to know how far this network has already spread, check our camera map to see what's watching your own neighborhood. And if you think your city council should be asking harder questions before signing another Flock contract, our take-action page has tools to help you push back.